I was playing with how to handle super-strength in a system design I've had going for a while, and started thinking about one of the limits I wanted to impose on the system: I wanted to keep the mechanics from being able to create damage values so high that even the most grazing hit (this system incorporates degree of success into damage calculation) nonetheless amounted to a fatal blow in one shot. From this I realized what the real goal of that limit was: I have always been profoundly resistant to situations where a single failed roll, or even a single player choice made in ignorance of the circumstances, can cause character death. Hence, the title of the thread: the One-Roll InstaKill -- this encompasses more than combat, of course, and includes things like saving throws or even the classic sphere-of-annihilation-in-the-statue-mouth trap.
In terms of the "Elements of Tactics" article I so often quote from Mr. Brian Gleichman, I prefer systems where the pace of decision -- i.e. how much time and opportunity is available to recover from any specific failure, or more simply, how fast you can lose -- has at least a little room for escape or recovery, even at its grittiest. I have always thought that in practice, even among players who mostly go the min-max power-gaming route, losing a character on which you've spent a great deal of development and game time because of a single bad roll or single uninformed choice is profoundly aggravating. However, I was wondering if other people had different perspectives on this, and where and when they considered such level of instant total risk appropriate.
EDIT: I put this in the general RPG discussion forum because I wanted to get examples from what people have actually seen in play, but if this is a better fit for the Design and Development forum, I ask that it be moved there, with apologies for the inconvenience.
Whatever the Dice Decide.
For anyone that cares about this issue, I don't think there is a simple answer. It can be ignored and/or fudged and/or glossed over as minor. Lots of people do have fun playing that way. To the extent that it starts to bug someone, and they want to do something about it, it's tricky. So I don't think there is any particular correct answer, or even better answers, but I can say how I view and what I did about it.
In D&D, the "saving throw" or "save" got corrupted almost from the beginning. It was always supposed to be thought of as, "You done screwed up to the point that you should already be feeling the consequences, but we'll give you a free shot to get away with it, or at least mitigate the fallout." In effect, it's a built in, reusable form of "Hero Points" or "Fate Points" with no points to track! It's no accident that in early D&D, the saves start pretty crappy and get steadily better as the character advances--that is, the more time the player has in the character, the better chance they have to activate their get out of jail free card.
Of course, the GM has to run a game with that in mind. It's not "fair" to throw a horde of wraiths at the party out of the blue and drain all their levels. It is "fair" to convey that nasty things are parked in this corner of the dungeon (however that is done), that they might be wandering around, and then if someone ignores that and bites off more than they can chew, better hope that the save gives them a chance to run for it. If they keep plugging along, miss saves, die--that's working as designed.
What gets lost is that the saving throw is operational, not tactical. If you want the tactical equivalent, then that can be done, too, but it would have a different purpose, and thus a different mechanic, probably different math, and definitely needs a different name. The whole package has to be considered together.
Me, I like a bit of both, operational outs and tactical outs, but still a strong threat of tactical death. What I ended up with in my D&D-like game: Saves in the older style. A hit point buffer that was significant, started higher, scaled slower, topped out lower (e.g. less range between zero and heroes, but still a definite range). Slightly increased damage and critical hits designed in from the ground up to be more than just simple point damage. "Health Points" split in a Wound/Vitality style (named something else but irrelevant for this discussion). Falling damage has chance to go straight to "Wound". What would typically be a "save or die" effect is instead also going partially to "Wounds". "Wounds" are a lot harder to get back naturally and are a bigger drain on magical resources to cure.
Then I emphasized very hard to the players, through play, what Saves are for.
The net effect of all that is that "Save or Die" doesn't happen very often to a fully healthy character (though there is a tiny possibility). Instead, every time the Wounds goes down, the character is that much closer to having such an event. A character with one Wound left is functionally identical to a being in the Save or Die camp. In other words, "Mook" is not a binary flag on a creature. Anyone with very little Wounds (however they got there) is headed for Mook country. Other parts of the system put operational pressure on players to sometimes risk adventuring while wounding, but that's a sliding scale too. Everyone a little banged up, it's worth it to push. A couple of people clinging to only 1 or 2 Wounds, probably not. I just set up the gauge. It's the players that make the call.
Now, possibly none of that is directly useful to what you want to do. In my case, there's nothing particular special or novel about any mechanic I chose. It's how they work together, how they are named, how they are presented, and how they work with the rest of the system that makes it work as it does. I hope it helps a little.
It depends a bit on medical technology and magic. "Head vaporized" can be instantly lethal or a short term set back. As the doctor says in Fifth Element, "There's a hundred live cells in there, it's more than I need."
I'm also not a huge fan of "Save or Die" type mechanics, as I tend to find them anti-climactic. I would pretty much always prefer a player be killed by poor decision making, or tactics, rather than by simple RNG. For things like poison, curses, etc. I prefer the concept of a building status effect (such as the way things like that work in Dark Souls). It's not often implemented on the tabletop, but it could be through something like an effect that deals a percentage of the player's HP per round, rather than rolled damage. That puts the player on notice that they have X number of rounds to remediate the problem before they die, and at least gives them some chance at clever problem solving.
For combat on the other hand, I do think that one hit kills should be a possibility. If your players can never one-shot even a weak enemy, they're never going to feel like their character is truly powerful. At the same time, there are lots of narrative situations (the classic being the city guards holding a player up at crossbow-point) where being able to be instantly slain by an attack is necessary for the verisimilitude of the game. The issue of the players running up against an enemy that can one-shot them I see as being more of a problem of poor GM-ing, rather than system design. Such enemies should be clearly signposted, and the players given reasonable opportunity to avoid fighting them. If a GM chooses to drop a max-level dragon on a low-level party, with no warning, and no opportunity to escape, the flame-breath should have a chance to instantly vaporize them, but the party has every right to consider the GM is being a dickhead.
Quote from: Stephen Tannhauser on October 05, 2022, 04:45:09 PM
I was playing with how to handle super-strength in a system design I've had going for a while, and started thinking about one of the limits I wanted to impose on the system: I wanted to keep the mechanics from being able to create damage values so high that even the most grazing hit (this system incorporates degree of success into damage calculation) nonetheless amounted to a fatal blow in one shot.
My inclination is always don't get cute, don't get clever. You want to do that, just do it. Maybe the most a grazing hit can ever do is 50% of the target's health. Or 90%. Or whatever you find easy to calculate.
QuoteFrom this I realized what the real goal of that limit was: I have always been profoundly resistant to situations where a single failed roll, or even a single player choice made in ignorance of the circumstances, can cause character death. Hence, the title of the thread: the One-Roll InstaKill -- this encompasses more than combat, of course, and includes things like saving throws or even the classic sphere-of-annihilation-in-the-statue-mouth trap.
This requires clarification as to what "single" means. I don't think I've ever experienced starting up a new session then right off the bat everyone has to roll save or die. Or for the first time the GM asks, "What do you do?" and the answer leads to instant death. That said, it's not always going to be obvious what "single" means since any instance is only ever arrived at through a series of dice rolls and decisions. It's clear in combat when you say "no single hit", but other than that, what do you mean?
What about Save-or-Die poisons in old school D&D? Generally the monster must first hit, then you fail a save. That's two rolls. Although there's no decision-making in between. And so in a way that amounts to one less-likely-roll. Well, what if you're fighting a bunch of goblins? After your turn, 5 of them attack you, and out of some freak chance they all critical. You don't get to make decisions in between those. Is that really any different from one super-freakish hit? On the other hand, the 5 goblins do have to commit their action to attacking you. They're giving up something else they could have done. So maybe the unit action or opportunity cost has something to do with how you determine what "single" is.
QuoteIn terms of the "Elements of Tactics" article I so often quote from Mr. Brian Gleichman, I prefer systems where the pace of decision -- i.e. how much time and opportunity is available to recover from any specific failure, or more simply, how fast you can lose -- has at least a little room for escape or recovery, even at its grittiest. I have always thought that in practice, even among players who mostly go the min-max power-gaming route, losing a character on which you've spent a great deal of development and game time because of a single bad roll or single uninformed choice is profoundly aggravating. However, I was wondering if other people had different perspectives on this, and where and when they considered such level of instant total risk appropriate.
I could give you a lot of different perspectives on this. I'll limit myself to 2.
First, is gamers as a whole have always been bi-polar on this topic. On the one hand, yeah, nobody wants to love their beloved character on a single freakish roll. And by the way, it's always "single" and always "freakish." To me, this kind of sounds like the lady doth protest too much. It speaks of a dire need to dodge all responsibility for your own character's fate. And so I'm often less than sympathetic. The opposite end of the spectrum usually involves a high level D&D fighter intentionally take a header off a cliff. Sort of like a short-cut. Since the player knows the character's got plenty enough hit points to survive the fall. And so the opposite belief is, you should never be so tough that you're invulnerable.
Second, I think it was Legend of Zelda I was playing when I was a kid, my godfather started making fun of it. All these hearts. The videogames he grew up on, it's one hit and you were dead. And I played those videogames, too. And they really do work just fine. Perhaps because we go in knowing that it's one hit and you're dead.
In some ways, I think those old games work even better. Because once you get used to the idea of being able to take multiple hits, a nail-biting victory becomes equated with losing most of your hits, but not quite all. And so then a good challenging adventure is one in which the player is expected to lose most of their hits. And that can be a problem. Because if you fall behind early, you might enter the latter half of the adventure not able to take the hits the good design expects you to hit. And it's not entirely clear to me that playing those second two hours with no chance of winning is something that should even be done. In baseball, if the home team is up in the bottom of the 9th, the game ends there and then. You don't continue to play things out once the end is set in stone.
Granted, it's not exactly that in an RPG. You could be destined to lose and still fight for your survival. I just question, if you can't afford to take a hit in the first encounter, what actual benefit is there to designing the RPG form such that it sets the expectation that, yes, you can take a hit without going down? Are we actually gaining something by doing this? Is your favorite character actually any safer for my leading you to believe you've got a buffer against death?
Just playing devil's advocate, really. I do take one cue from the old school video games. You usually get 3 lives. So I'm cool calibrating the RPG to 3 hits and you're done. And I guess that might translate to three bad decisions as well. However, one bad decision to fight 5 goblins will kill you just as surely. And if it's possible for one mistake to be that severe--I guess you should have known better than to take on 5 goblins by yourself--then why can't another mistake, one where it's a single but much more powerful adversary, be just as severe. In other words, why shouldn't there be one hit kills? I get there is strength in numbers. But is there not also strength in strength?
QuoteEDIT: I put this in the general RPG discussion forum because I wanted to get examples from what people have actually seen in play, but if this is a better fit for the Design and Development forum, I ask that it be moved there, with apologies for the inconvenience.
You know how in AD&D 2E, there's a massive hit rule, where if you take 50+ damage in one shot, your character has to make a system shock survival check or die? Gary Gygax's Lejendary Adventure RPG has the exact opposite rule. If you take over 50 damage from any single source, you get a special "Disaster Avoidance Check" of which there are two possible degrees of success. The lesser, you take only half damage, but there may be a complication added--broken bone, or something appropriate to the situation. The greater success, you avoid all damage completely. (For context, LA Avatars usually start with more than 50 health. It's possible to start lower, but you pretty much have to do it on purpose.)
The reason I fucking looooooove this rule is because it boxcars both ears of the bipolar gamer at the same time.
Look. You get an extra die roll. And that reduces the probability of being killed in a single hit. But there's still a chance. Don't be that jerkoff fighter leaping off a building because you're too lazy to take the stairs. And definitely don't be the guy that's going to stand toe to toe with the Titan of Infinite Strength. Because there's a chance, however small, that it will end you. Enough to be a deterrent.
The flip side of it is, imagine being the min-maxing player pumping your harm up to the high heavens. Knowing that if you deal 50 harm, you deal 50 harm, but if you deal 51 or more, you might only end up dealing 25, or even nothing, that's going to make you really not want to cross that threshold. No. We're not limiting how much harm you can do. You want to make it your obsession, you can approach +infinity harm bonus if you want. But a lot of people are going to not want. Rather than continuing to build up the amount of harm you do, it might behoove you to develop your Avatar in other directions. Like maybe focus on being able to make multiple attacks.
We still preserve the idea of a one-hit kill. That threat always exists, and it helps keep PCs humble. But we reduce both the probability of dealing such a blow as well as reducing the number of characters who ever attain the ability to deal such a blow.
What I've seen and do is telegraph one-shot threats. These bejeweled crystalline crabs inject a deadly venom? The fishermen freely tell this rumor to everyone. The venom spike is richly described when the PCs first encounter this monster, etc. etc. At the end, it may be one roll, but there should always be a logical progression to that roll. E.g., the crabs don't hide in an adventure's boots and sting their feet with save-or-die. Or if they do hide in boots, they make a lot of noise. So, I suppose my answer is to fairly and reasonably inform PCs of deadly threats.
I've got a module in front of me that has a 50 ft. deep open pit hidden by an illusionary cave floor. Unless a PC knows and also suddenly decides to cast detect illusion, it's save or die as written. So, again it falls on the GM's shoulders to imagine a way to telegraph this threat. Deep cave holes do not exist in a vacuum. They alter their environment. Sound reverberates differently. Air moves differently. Heat or cold emanates.
Save or die threats should exist. They make the world exciting and dangerous. However, it should not come as a total surprise when a save-or-die roll is made. It's the GM's job to make a save-or-die roll feel fair to the player, and this requires premeditation by the GM.
Quote from: Stephen Tannhauser on October 05, 2022, 04:45:09 PM
I wanted to keep the mechanics from being able to create damage values so high that even the most grazing hit (this system incorporates degree of success into damage calculation) nonetheless amounted to a fatal blow in one shot.
But isn't that exactly what makes a blow from something like a colossus or kaiju so dangerous? Or mooks so weak? I think the mechanics should definitely allow for grazing hits to be fatal at
some point. I think the question is just more about exactly where that potentially happens.
The answer will depend on which decision points and tropes the game wants to include.
Good points about the absence of potential single-roll fatalities undermining the sense of danger and stakes of the game.
To clarify, when I say "single-roll", I generally mean literally only one roll (at most two if in reaction to a GM roll) where the consequences of any failure, no matter how close one comes to success, are immediate and final death regardless of prior PC status, especially if the PC is not given any meaningful choice beforehand that would allow him to avoid that roll. Five low-probability crits in a row, or taking the last hit in a long battle, is not the same thing as facing an enemy where you have no chance to flee and his first successful hit is the end of the line for you, or walking into an undetectable and unavoidable poison-gas trap where you have one roll to survive and that's it. Likewise, situations where the threat of an instant kill is deployed but the PCs have a meaningful capacity to avoid it by other action (e.g. talking your way out of being held at crossbow-point by guards, or simply cooperating with them) don't count.
Part of why it was character superstrength, specifically, that started me thinking about one-roll fatalities was that unlike things like local venomous fauna (which characters can learn about), and obvious uber-destructors like colossi and kaiju, humanoid superstrength isn't always something you can anticipate before engaging. Which goes to another cogent point raised above: The real frustration isn't just a single-roll/single-choice potential fatality, but an uninformed single-roll/single-choice fatality. For any given gamble to be meaningful you have to know what the stakes are first.
My own thought is that this reflects generally changed expectations in roleplaying overall. In the real old-school days of D&D and AD&D1E, the idea that one wrong choice or one bad roll could, and probably would, mean the end of at least some PCs over the course of a campaign seemed to be more generally accepted, if not particularly liked. Nowadays I see much more resistance to that idea, partly because (I think) the time needed, and encouraged, to be spent on character creation and development has increased considerably, which makes the experience of instant, unpredictable, and anticlimactic loss of those characters more frustrating and aggravating.
(Edit: It has just occurred to me that this was, of course, one of the unstated but fairly common reasons to have henchmen and hirelings along on the old-school dungeon crawls: so that if any such unforeseeable instant-death threat came by, the PCs could learn about it by finding a body in the morning.)
Quote from: Lunamancer on October 05, 2022, 11:06:58 PM
Second, I think it was Legend of Zelda I was playing when I was a kid, my godfather started making fun of it. All these hearts. The videogames he grew up on, it's one hit and you were dead. And I played those videogames, too. And they really do work just fine. Perhaps because we go in knowing that it's one hit and you're dead.
In some ways, I think those old games work even better. Because once you get used to the idea of being able to take multiple hits, a nail-biting victory becomes equated with losing most of your hits, but not quite all. And so then a good challenging adventure is one in which the player is expected to lose most of their hits. And that can be a problem. Because if you fall behind early, you might enter the latter half of the adventure not able to take the hits the good design expects you to hit. And it's not entirely clear to me that playing those second two hours with no chance of winning is something that should even be done. In baseball, if the home team is up in the bottom of the 9th, the game ends there and then. You don't continue to play things out once the end is set in stone.
Granted, it's not exactly that in an RPG. You could be destined to lose and still fight for your survival. I just question, if you can't afford to take a hit in the first encounter, what actual benefit is there to designing the RPG form such that it sets the expectation that, yes, you can take a hit without going down? Are we actually gaining something by doing this? Is your favorite character actually any safer for my leading you to believe you've got a buffer against death?
This may come across as pedantic, but there's a couple things I think are worth pointing out about those old games. For one thing, a lot of older games were made to be punishingly difficult, either to extract quarters from kids in an arcade, or to cover the fact that the game itself was actually extremely short. Also, if you die in a videogame, you get to start over and play the same game again (roguelikes excluded), so part of the game is learning from past mistakes in order to make further progress each time. That's an opportunity you don't get in a tabletop RPG. More importantly, games where you die in a small number of hits usually are not RPGs. They're action games (or platformers or Action-RPGs), where the player's manual skill at the game can allow them to avoid those hits. It's a lot less fair to the player to impose that level of punishment when their being hit is a matter of stats and randomness, rather than a matter of skill.
If a player decision leads to a one roll instant kill, I am fine with it. There is always room to check for internal consistency first. "Are you sure you want to do that? As a trained adventurer you do know that..." In combat, it is best to telegraph the move allowing for a player decision. "You see the scaly monster inhale deeply" Now is the PC hangs out in the breath weapons arc of fire, it's the player that got the character killed.
I find this a difficult issue to deal with, because in doing so, one must also deal with two different, contradictory methods to make the game fun. On the one hand, instant kills are realistic. If a sniper head shots you then you're done. There ain't no such thing as hit points in real life. And realism is fun becomes the game becomes more impactful and engaging. On the other hand, having control of your character and playing the same character for a while is also fun, and instakills take away from these quite a lot.
D&D's solution is hit points, which I consider ablative plot armor. Each near death experience (like getting hit by a sword – take a real solid hit from a sword in real life and you're probably dead) makes it more dramatically reasonable that your character will die. When it becomes reasonable enough, he does so. This isn't a bad solution, as long as you don't try to think about it too hard. You get both character longevity and sudden death when it becomes appropriate.
The question in my mind is why should there be mechanics that bypass this? Yes it gives some variety to damage mechanics, which to be fair are pretty monotonous: "You take x points damage. You take y points damage. You take z points damage." And it spices up the game for bored players who think their characters are safe because they still have buckets of hp. But you go back to the downside of a realistic game, and lots of folks are not okay with this. It also bugs me to have multiple damage mechanics; it's not an elegant solution.
The approach I like the best of those I've seen so far is one I came up with myself. First get rid of saves. Then instant effect spells do a high amount of damage, and if (and only if) one takes all of your hit points then the spell takes full effect. Frex, petrify might do 50 hp damage, and if it "kills" a character, then he turns to stone rather than dying. It's a tradeoff versus just using a moderate damage spell of the same level: it hits hard, but it's much easier to recover from, using stone to flesh rather than raise dead. This keeps hit points intact and serving their purpose, but also allows instant effect spells.
Lots of variations are possible, depending on how close to baseline D&D you want to be. Maybe if the victim has more than 50 hp in the above example, they are slowed for a few rounds and no damage is done. Maybe the damage is special petrify damage, tracked separately, and stone to flesh heals it, or maybe multiple stone to flesh are required until enough healing is done to reverse the effect. Maybe stone to flesh returns the character at 1 hp.
And different effects would need to be reworked. For something like deadly poison, I'd be inclined to say that it does 50 point of damage d6 rounds after the attack, unless a cure poison removes the effect first. There's a lot of room for creativity.
The only downside I see to such a system is that it would be a lot of work to develop. I haven't because I'm busy right now with other RPG products, but maybe someday.
Quote from: Stephen Tannhauser on October 06, 2022, 05:24:28 PM
Good points about the absence of potential single-roll fatalities undermining the sense of danger and stakes of the game.
To clarify, when I say "single-roll", I generally mean literally only one roll (at most two if in reaction to a GM roll) where the consequences of any failure, no matter how close one comes to success, are immediate and final death regardless of prior PC status, especially if the PC is not given any meaningful choice beforehand that would allow him to avoid that roll. Five low-probability crits in a row, or taking the last hit in a long battle, is not the same thing as facing an enemy where you have no chance to flee and his first successful hit is the end of the line for you, or walking into an undetectable and unavoidable poison-gas trap where you have one roll to survive and that's it. Likewise, situations where the threat of an instant kill is deployed but the PCs have a meaningful capacity to avoid it by other action (e.g. talking your way out of being held at crossbow-point by guards, or simply cooperating with them) don't count.
Part of why it was character superstrength, specifically, that started me thinking about one-roll fatalities was that unlike things like local venomous fauna (which characters can learn about), and obvious uber-destructors like colossi and kaiju, humanoid superstrength isn't always something you can anticipate before engaging. Which goes to another cogent point raised above: The real frustration isn't just a single-roll/single-choice potential fatality, but an uninformed single-roll/single-choice fatality. For any given gamble to be meaningful you have to know what the stakes are first.
My own thought is that this reflects generally changed expectations in roleplaying overall. In the real old-school days of D&D and AD&D1E, the idea that one wrong choice or one bad roll could, and probably would, mean the end of at least some PCs over the course of a campaign seemed to be more generally accepted, if not particularly liked. Nowadays I see much more resistance to that idea, partly because (I think) the time needed, and encouraged, to be spent on character creation and development has increased considerably, which makes the experience of instant, unpredictable, and anticlimactic loss of those characters more frustrating and aggravating.
(Edit: It has just occurred to me that this was, of course, one of the unstated but fairly common reasons to have henchmen and hirelings along on the old-school dungeon crawls: so that if any such unforeseeable instant-death threat came by, the PCs could learn about it by finding a body in the morning.)
That changes things. How often does such an unlikely scenario ever happen except when the DM has decided to railroad the players to a TPK?
Even if it's a single hit kill save or die trap, since it's just sitting there waiting for you to trigger it, there are tons of things you can do to approach it. So it's not just one decision, so to speak.
Quote from: mAcular Chaotic on October 07, 2022, 12:58:15 AM
Quote from: Stephen Tannhauser on October 06, 2022, 05:24:28 PM
Good points about the absence of potential single-roll fatalities undermining the sense of danger and stakes of the game.
To clarify, when I say "single-roll", I generally mean literally only one roll (at most two if in reaction to a GM roll) where the consequences of any failure, no matter how close one comes to success, are immediate and final death regardless of prior PC status, especially if the PC is not given any meaningful choice beforehand that would allow him to avoid that roll. Five low-probability crits in a row, or taking the last hit in a long battle, is not the same thing as facing an enemy where you have no chance to flee and his first successful hit is the end of the line for you, or walking into an undetectable and unavoidable poison-gas trap where you have one roll to survive and that's it. Likewise, situations where the threat of an instant kill is deployed but the PCs have a meaningful capacity to avoid it by other action (e.g. talking your way out of being held at crossbow-point by guards, or simply cooperating with them) don't count.
Part of why it was character superstrength, specifically, that started me thinking about one-roll fatalities was that unlike things like local venomous fauna (which characters can learn about), and obvious uber-destructors like colossi and kaiju, humanoid superstrength isn't always something you can anticipate before engaging. Which goes to another cogent point raised above: The real frustration isn't just a single-roll/single-choice potential fatality, but an uninformed single-roll/single-choice fatality. For any given gamble to be meaningful you have to know what the stakes are first.
My own thought is that this reflects generally changed expectations in roleplaying overall. In the real old-school days of D&D and AD&D1E, the idea that one wrong choice or one bad roll could, and probably would, mean the end of at least some PCs over the course of a campaign seemed to be more generally accepted, if not particularly liked. Nowadays I see much more resistance to that idea, partly because (I think) the time needed, and encouraged, to be spent on character creation and development has increased considerably, which makes the experience of instant, unpredictable, and anticlimactic loss of those characters more frustrating and aggravating.
(Edit: It has just occurred to me that this was, of course, one of the unstated but fairly common reasons to have henchmen and hirelings along on the old-school dungeon crawls: so that if any such unforeseeable instant-death threat came by, the PCs could learn about it by finding a body in the morning.)
That changes things. How often does such an unlikely scenario ever happen except when the DM has decided to railroad the players to a TPK?
Even if it's a single hit kill save or die trap, since it's just sitting there waiting for you to trigger it, there are tons of things you can do to approach it. So it's not just one decision, so to speak.
Every TPK or player kill I have handed out has been to reward aggressive stupidity in players. So much so, that I am loathe to change that. This includes the guy who insisted his normal human character could survive in vacuum, the guy who jumped on a grenade and claimed his character would survive because he had enough hit points, the monk who thought he could punch a gelatinous cube with no ill effects, the free trader vs a patrol cruiser pointless fight, the first level party screaming "Charge!" and attacking a fully grown black dragon with no preparation, etc, etc.
Stupidity kills in my games. A leading cause of death is second hand stupidity (don't stand next to someone throwing rocks at a guy with a shotgun).
Quote from: Mishihari on October 07, 2022, 12:57:48 AM
The only downside I see to such a system is that it would be a lot of work to develop. I haven't because I'm busy right now with other RPG products, but maybe someday.
I think you will also run into a downside dealing with conversion ratios for special cases to hit points. It becomes "hit points by indirection", which has its own problems. I found dealing with those problems less elegant than simply designing for two tracks. Because it really gets back to how you want the game to feel. Hit points protect you from X but don't help you against Y. The only way to make that seem right (to a particular person) is to find out what they put into X and Y, then engineer the system to accommodate it. YMMV.
Looking at how many of the responses were talking about damage using a hit points model, I think I've realized at least part of where my problems specifically are coming from: Part of the reason I was trying to err away from single fatal hits in combat, specifically, was because in a number of the systems I'm working on, I've adopted a character design and development model which doesn't allow PC capacity to take damage to improve at the same rate as enemies' abilities to inflict it, as is the case for most level-based HP-using systems.
As a result I think I may have fallen into the GURPS trap, where the only way to face or survive (even for long enough to find an escape) opponents who can deal out superhuman quantities of damage is to have explicitly superhuman capacities to resist damage, rather than making HPs available as "plot armour" to every PC. (I find myself remembering the early editions of GURPS Supers, where a specific rule patch granting all PCs a number of "Stun" points equal to 5x their base HPs was needed to allow combat to start feeling like it did in the comic books.)
I am now trying to decide between adding some form of "plot armour/HP" mechanic, or build in "max damage" limits in other areas. To quote Spike Jones' "None But The Lonely Heart", "I must go away somewhere and figure this thing out."
Is this for a superheroes game?
Isn't there a fundamental tension between superheroes and dying? They don't die very often in the fiction, IIRC.
Quote from: rytrasmi on October 07, 2022, 04:17:35 PM
Is this for a superheroes game?
Isn't there a fundamental tension between superheroes and dying? They don't die very often in the fiction, IIRC.
It's for a universal system which was designed to have some sliding bars to adjust for play style; there is a way to upgrade damage tolerance between "Grittily Realistic" and "Wildly Cinematic", but even at the top level it was turning out that a Mortal Wound was easier to inflict in one blow than I wanted, once base damage got beyond a certain point.
My current working solution defines the "Titanism" (superstrength) Power so that hand-to-hand damage is capped at a flat rate no matter how much weight the Titan can lift, but I've always felt that to be a little clunky.
Quote from: rytrasmi on October 06, 2022, 11:40:42 AM
I've got a module in front of me that has a 50 ft. deep open pit hidden by an illusionary cave floor. Unless a PC knows and also suddenly decides to cast detect illusion, it's save or die as written.
I always carry a 10' foot pole.
Quote from: DocJones on October 07, 2022, 08:41:41 PM
Quote from: rytrasmi on October 06, 2022, 11:40:42 AM
I've got a module in front of me that has a 50 ft. deep open pit hidden by an illusionary cave floor. Unless a PC knows and also suddenly decides to cast detect illusion, it's save or die as written.
I always carry a 10' foot pole.
Indeed! That is a tried and true solution. But when I imagine a party of adventurers walking through a tomb complex tapping everything they see, I can't help but think it's a bit ridiculous. It's what a group of paranoid noobs would do. Best to tap every brick in the room to be safe. The experienced group would know don't waste time tap-tapping that, tap-tap this over here.
If the default is tapping everywhere, then this pit trap would be easily discovered. So why is it there? To punish those who don't tap everywhere? It feels like a cheap "gotcha" trap. You failed your save and fell to your death. That'll learn you to tap everywhere you go!
Quote from: rytrasmi on October 08, 2022, 10:27:32 AM
Quote from: DocJones on October 07, 2022, 08:41:41 PM
Quote from: rytrasmi on October 06, 2022, 11:40:42 AM
I've got a module in front of me that has a 50 ft. deep open pit hidden by an illusionary cave floor. Unless a PC knows and also suddenly decides to cast detect illusion, it's save or die as written.
I always carry a 10' foot pole.
Indeed! That is a tried and true solution. But when I imagine a party of adventurers walking through a tomb complex tapping everything they see, I can't help but think it's a bit ridiculous. It's what a group of paranoid noobs would do. Best to tap every brick in the room to be safe. The experienced group would know don't waste time tap-tapping that, tap-tap this over here.
If the default is tapping everywhere, then this pit trap would be easily discovered. So why is it there? To punish those who don't tap everywhere? It feels like a cheap "gotcha" trap. You failed your save and fell to your death. That'll learn you to tap everywhere you go!
I'd deal with this by allowing some kind of perception check
Quote from: rytrasmi on October 08, 2022, 10:27:32 AM
Quote from: DocJones on October 07, 2022, 08:41:41 PM
Quote from: rytrasmi on October 06, 2022, 11:40:42 AM
I've got a module in front of me that has a 50 ft. deep open pit hidden by an illusionary cave floor. Unless a PC knows and also suddenly decides to cast detect illusion, it's save or die as written.
I always carry a 10' foot pole.
Indeed! That is a tried and true solution. But when I imagine a party of adventurers walking through a tomb complex tapping everything they see, I can't help but think it's a bit ridiculous. It's what a group of paranoid noobs would do. Best to tap every brick in the room to be safe. The experienced group would know don't waste time tap-tapping that, tap-tap this over here.
If the default is tapping everywhere, then this pit trap would be easily discovered. So why is it there? To punish those who don't tap everywhere? It feels like a cheap "gotcha" trap. You failed your save and fell to your death. That'll learn you to tap everywhere you go!
That is why there exists wandering monster checks.
If you have infinite time, it makes sense to tap everything. After all, why not? Your lives are on the line, it pays to be safe. But the wandering monster checks (as well as dwindling resources like torches) creates a timer. It forces you to prioritize. Sure, you COULD spend all your time (and this requires time tracking) tapping everything, but you'll end up getting attacked by monsters and getting depleted of hit points and resources before you've even gone ten feet into the dungeon. So to make any real progress, you have to prioritize and make your best judgment about what actually needs investigating. With all of that, a dungeon crawl is more like a time trial -- seeing how far and how fast you can get deep into the dungeon.
This only works if you have wandering monsters, resources, and tracked time -- all things modern D&D removed, so it naturally creates the situation where super tedious activities become the default rewarded activity and as a result people end up thinking dungeon crawls are no good and boring, when in reality it's because they took out all the things that make them work.
Quote from: rytrasmi on October 08, 2022, 10:27:32 AM
Quote from: DocJones on October 07, 2022, 08:41:41 PM
Quote from: rytrasmi on October 06, 2022, 11:40:42 AM
I've got a module in front of me that has a 50 ft. deep open pit hidden by an illusionary cave floor. Unless a PC knows and also suddenly decides to cast detect illusion, it's save or die as written.
I always carry a 10' foot pole.
Indeed! That is a tried and true solution. But when I imagine a party of adventurers walking through a tomb complex tapping everything they see, I can't help but think it's a bit ridiculous. It's what a group of paranoid noobs would do. Best to tap every brick in the room to be safe. The experienced group would know don't waste time tap-tapping that, tap-tap this over here.
If the default is tapping everywhere, then this pit trap would be easily discovered. So why is it there? To punish those who don't tap everywhere? It feels like a cheap "gotcha" trap. You failed your save and fell to your death. That'll learn you to tap everywhere you go!
There's also the meta-issue that players get tired of having to say "I check all the floors with my ten foot pole" for every room of the dungeon they go into, and if the DM just assumes it, all those traps become pointless.
Quote from: mAcular Chaotic on October 08, 2022, 03:37:05 PM
This only works if you have wandering monsters, resources, and tracked time -- all things modern D&D removed, so it naturally creates the situation where super tedious activities become the default rewarded activity and as a result people end up thinking dungeon crawls are no good and boring, when in reality it's because they took out all the things that make them work.
It's too bad this isn't on topic, because this paragraph here needs to be circled, bolded, highlighted, and tattooed to the insides of gamers eyelids. It's strange to watch from a thousand feet up. And it's not just dungeon crawls. You could be doing a story-driven adventure, and it still requires a time element and sense of urgency in order to actually be good and exciting. And I'm sure you can point at examples of grotesquely contrived story elements just to establish that urgency. But meanwhile, this entire time, you had these things that gave you ready-made time elements. They were given to you, made sense, and never contrived.
And the arrogance with which gamers strip these things out of the game. "Well, muh opinion." Or "stupid old-timers, we know better now," or "we've moved past the wargaming roots." It's like watching a living example of the bike fall meme.
As a fan of dead comedians, George Carlin being way up high on the list, I can't help but think some of the fault lies in some of the soft language we've adopted that makes you sound smart but strips away a lot of the meaning.
Like "resource management." Yeah. I have to admit. It sounds boring when you put it like that. So stop calling it resource management. Because it's not. That's the wrong abstraction. And that's what makes people miss what's going on. What if I started referring to the category of things that include torches, oil, ammunition, and rations as "time elements" instead. I'm sure some of the same people who don't think twice about saying, "I don't like RPGs with resource management" would not be saying, "I don't like RPGs with time elements." And even if they did, if they suddenly found their games slowing to a crawl, how much more likely do you think they'd be to correctly link it to their dismissal of time elements?
One thing I've seen happen quite a bit is players getting burned out on campaign-length story-driven adventures. Because plot urgency can be difficult to switch off some time.
In an attempt to circle back to something that is on topic, "plot armor" is an even worse term. It's got to go. It doesn't simply miss something or misunderstand the concept. It was intentionally a creative departure. And one that isn't even at all accurate as far as D&D goes. Or really any RPG I've played. Because there are other ways to stop someone aside from reducing them to zero hit points. Hit points provide no plot immunity to such things. Something like Fate Points of whathaveyou. THAT could be accurately termed plot armor. Hit points are not.
I really don't think we can have a serious conversation about this topic using the term "plot armor." As I understand the OP, he's okay with there being one-hit-kills as long as its reasonably foreseeable and you've got some alternative. We're not talking about universal insulation of the plot. And that also doing so much damage that hit points go from max to zero on a grazing blow is also a thing and a thing we want to avoid. Well, if it's a thing that we have to find a work around to, clearly hit points are not working as plot armor.
Quote from: rytrasmi on October 07, 2022, 04:17:35 PM
Is this for a superheroes game?
Isn't there a fundamental tension between superheroes and dying? They don't die very often in the fiction, IIRC.
They actually fo die relatively often its just they don't stay dead.
Quote from: rytrasmi on October 08, 2022, 10:27:32 AM
Quote from: DocJones on October 07, 2022, 08:41:41 PM
Quote from: rytrasmi on October 06, 2022, 11:40:42 AM
I've got a module in front of me that has a 50 ft. deep open pit hidden by an illusionary cave floor. Unless a PC knows and also suddenly decides to cast detect illusion, it's save or die as written.
I always carry a 10' foot pole.
Indeed! That is a tried and true solution. But when I imagine a party of adventurers walking through a tomb complex tapping everything they see, I can't help but think it's a bit ridiculous. It's what a group of paranoid noobs would do. Best to tap every brick in the room to be safe. The experienced group would know don't waste time tap-tapping that, tap-tap this over here.
If the default is tapping everywhere, then this pit trap would be easily discovered. So why is it there? To punish those who don't tap everywhere? It feels like a cheap "gotcha" trap. You failed your save and fell to your death. That'll learn you to tap everywhere you go!
You could also tie a rope to the waist of your scout, or toss a stone ahead of you.
Of course 10 foot poles and the like are all last century (1970s) technology.
It's 2022 and we now have passive perception, danger sense, and true sight now.
Quote from: Lunamancer on October 08, 2022, 05:54:40 PM
Quote from: mAcular Chaotic on October 08, 2022, 03:37:05 PM
This only works if you have wandering monsters, resources, and tracked time -- all things modern D&D removed, so it naturally creates the situation where super tedious activities become the default rewarded activity and as a result people end up thinking dungeon crawls are no good and boring, when in reality it's because they took out all the things that make them work.
It's too bad this isn't on topic, because this paragraph here needs to be circled, bolded, highlighted, and tattooed to the insides of gamers eyelids. It's strange to watch from a thousand feet up. And it's not just dungeon crawls. You could be doing a story-driven adventure, and it still requires a time element and sense of urgency in order to actually be good and exciting.
Agreed. Part of the problem with current game philosophy is resistance to all the things that remind the players that what they're doing
is playing a game. Dungeon crawls are boring stories because they aren't designed to be
stories, they can't be built to rely on a dramatic character arc that intertwines with the plot.
QuoteI can't help but think some of the fault lies in some of the soft language we've adopted.... Like "resource management." ...What if I started referring to the category of things that include torches, oil, ammunition, and rations as "time elements" instead.
Well, the thing about resource management is that its most important aspect is the
management, the players' decisions: the time taken to run out of a resource is directly related to how profligately the PCs spend it, and PC willingness to spend the resource is directly related to the time and effort required to replenish it. A "time element" would be more appropriate for expenditures on which the PCs have much less room for relevant decision -- e.g. if you go through two torches in an hour of exploration and you carry twenty-four torches, you have twelve hours in the dungeon, period; you can't speed up the rate at which a torch burns. So there's room for both ideas.
QuoteIn an attempt to circle back to something that is on topic, "plot armor" is an even worse term (for hit points). ...there are other ways to stop someone aside from reducing them to zero hit points. Hit points provide no plot immunity to such things.
...As I understand the OP, he's okay with there being one-hit-kills as long as its reasonably foreseeable and you've got some alternative. We're not talking about universal insulation of the plot. And that also doing so much damage that hit points go from max to zero on a grazing blow is also a thing ... we want to avoid. Well, if it's a thing that we have to find a work around to, clearly hit points are not working as plot armor.
Well, I did note above that part of the reason I was having problems was that my current game
doesn't use a hit point model for measuring physical injury, which means PC capacity to take damage doesn't naturally and universally increase nearly as fast as the game's capacity to dole it out.
That said, I would say the term "plot armour" is still applicable as a term for any game-rule factor (hit points, Fate points, Drama Dice, etc.) that protects PCs from dying which isn't a direct representative simulation of an in-setting reality. Not all factors have to protect against all threats with the same applicability for that to still be apt, I'd say.
(Now the idea of boiling
all forms of PC harm, impairment or survivability down to one reserve of points, and implementing all threats as deductions to this reserve -- cf. the idea suggested above which replaces "saving throws" with effects that do "virtual" HP damage and take effect if they reduce HP to 0 but have no effect if they don't -- sounds like it might make for an interesting game.)
Quote from: mAcular Chaotic on October 08, 2022, 03:37:05 PM
Quote from: rytrasmi on October 08, 2022, 10:27:32 AM
Quote from: DocJones on October 07, 2022, 08:41:41 PM
Quote from: rytrasmi on October 06, 2022, 11:40:42 AM
I've got a module in front of me that has a 50 ft. deep open pit hidden by an illusionary cave floor. Unless a PC knows and also suddenly decides to cast detect illusion, it's save or die as written.
I always carry a 10' foot pole.
Indeed! That is a tried and true solution. But when I imagine a party of adventurers walking through a tomb complex tapping everything they see, I can't help but think it's a bit ridiculous. It's what a group of paranoid noobs would do. Best to tap every brick in the room to be safe. The experienced group would know don't waste time tap-tapping that, tap-tap this over here.
If the default is tapping everywhere, then this pit trap would be easily discovered. So why is it there? To punish those who don't tap everywhere? It feels like a cheap "gotcha" trap. You failed your save and fell to your death. That'll learn you to tap everywhere you go!
That is why there exists wandering monster checks.
If you have infinite time, it makes sense to tap everything. After all, why not? Your lives are on the line, it pays to be safe. But the wandering monster checks (as well as dwindling resources like torches) creates a timer. It forces you to prioritize. Sure, you COULD spend all your time (and this requires time tracking) tapping everything, but you'll end up getting attacked by monsters and getting depleted of hit points and resources before you've even gone ten feet into the dungeon. So to make any real progress, you have to prioritize and make your best judgment about what actually needs investigating. With all of that, a dungeon crawl is more like a time trial -- seeing how far and how fast you can get deep into the dungeon.
This only works if you have wandering monsters, resources, and tracked time -- all things modern D&D removed, so it naturally creates the situation where super tedious activities become the default rewarded activity and as a result people end up thinking dungeon crawls are no good and boring, when in reality it's because they took out all the things that make them work.
Oh, I agree. The issue I have is traps that don't allow you to "prioritize and make your best judgment about what actually needs investigating." It's just a pit covered with an illusion of cave floor, in my example. There are many bad traps like that. Why would I pull out the 10 foot pole right now?
Quote from: rytrasmi on October 09, 2022, 09:41:32 AM
Oh, I agree. The issue I have is traps that don't allow you to "prioritize and make your best judgment about what actually needs investigating." It's just a pit covered with an illusion of cave floor, in my example. There are many bad traps like that. Why would I pull out the 10 foot pole right now?
Passive perception. Something odd about the trapped area catches the character's attention. Infer what the threat might be and how to approach it from there. Conversely, roll for trap followed roll vs trap is nothing more than a press X to move forward with chance of resource loss.
Quote from: Stephen Tannhauser on October 08, 2022, 09:49:09 PM
Agreed. Part of the problem with current game philosophy is resistance to all the things that remind the players that what they're doing is playing a game. Dungeon crawls are boring stories because they aren't designed to be stories, they can't be built to rely on a dramatic character arc that intertwines with the plot.
Wait. What?
You start in the ordinary world. There's a call to adventure. You find out about the dungeon (perhaps from an actual mentor, or perhaps just someone filling the mentor role in this instance). You prepare--buy equipment. You step through the dungeon entrance crossing over into the underworld. You go through a series of trials that test your wits. As you do so, you learn how this strange new place works. If you don't give up, you face the dragon or whatever other thing that stands between you and the prize. If you succeed, you get the prize. Then you have the return journey to bring it back to the village.
In what bizarro realm is this not a story? It's the Hero's Journey in spades. Not only is the dungeon crawl a story. It is so on point in that capacity that you only have to fill in a few blanks and you're ready to go. And the game system itself even helps you fill in a lot of those blanks. The Dungeon Crawl the literal conception of the most dramatic symbolism and expressions of the most iconic of stories. Why do you think of all the board games, war games, Braunsteins, and improv games that existed the time, why did Dungeons & Dragons blow up the way it did? It hit all the right spots. It resonated. And the game's name set the tone.
There are a lot of things you could tell me that explains why the current game philosophy is resistant to the dungeon crawl.
Tell me the kids these days have no idea what they're doing. I could buy that. Why would they? This is still new to them and they're still learning. No shame, no malice.
Tell me we've become a hobby of wankers. We spend more time thinking about, hypothesizing and theorizing about playing, and so we idealize what could be, sometimes oblivious to how the realities of actual play make our wildest dreams non-viable. That's plausible.
Tell me an uptight elitist mentality has seized the hobby. Hard to deny when you look back as far as Lorraine Williams right up today where the foremost game in the hobby is controlled by a soul-less corporation. Totally believable.
Tell me dungeon crawls have just been done to death. They were great for what they were. But the market now demands a fresh update to the hero's journey. I would say Great! Can't wait to see it!
Tell me that nobody knows how to write a good dungeon crawl anymore. Joseph Campbell is dead, along with all the original founders of Hollywood, and now the American film industry is a pale shadow of its formal self. Well, the Chieftain Giant of the RPG hobby died in 2008. And look at what the hottest releases today. All rehashes of decades old works.
But dungeon crawls not a story? Not credible. We have 100% lost our way if we can get to the point where we seriously utter those words.
QuoteWell, the thing about resource management is that its most important aspect is the management, the players' decisions:
the time taken to run out of a resource is directly related to how profligately the PCs spend it, and PC willingness to spend the resource is directly related to the time and effort required to replenish it.
Strongly disagree. In fact, this is the exact reason why I said what I said. I can totally appreciate that some people enjoy that sort of thing, and that's what the importance of tracking torches and rations to them. But I do not think that is the most significant function.
QuoteA "time element" would be more appropriate for expenditures on which the PCs have much less room for relevant decision -- e.g. if you go through two torches in an hour of exploration and you carry twenty-four torches, you have twelve hours in the dungeon, period; you can't speed up the rate at which a torch burns. So there's room for both ideas.
And I would say this right here is the more significant purpose. In D&D terms, you go in with 24 torches, it's like saying you have 72 turns to complete this quest. That instantly creates sense of urgency.
Technically you CAN speed up torch expenditure. You could lose a torch throwing it down a corridor to see what's down there, or a torch could get destroyed when using it as a weapon. If players understand it just cost them 3 turns, that's more impactful than crossing out yet another of many torches.
You can also double your burn time by lighting extra torches so the party can split up. There might be a good reason to split up. But if players are aware that while split up, they're going to burn 2 turns for every 1, then it's going to have to be a really good reason. Simply covering more ground like it's Scooby Doo isn't a good enough reason.
That's the problem with the term "resource management." It's too broad. Technically time itself is a resource. All time limits are an example of resource management. Not all examples of resource management are time limits. So when you say resource management when talking about a resource that governs a time limit, you think you're covering your bases, but you're actually losing information. You lose fidelity. You speak in imprecise terms. And worse still, imprecise terms that are off-putting to people who might not be off-put otherwise.
QuoteWell, I did note above that part of the reason I was having problems was that my current game doesn't use a hit point model for measuring physical injury, which means PC capacity to take damage doesn't naturally and universally increase nearly as fast as the game's capacity to dole it out.
Well, in that case I object to the term "hit point model." Actually, I usually find the term "model" objectionable for some technical reasons we don't need to get into. But I know of a lot of RPGs that use something like hit points. I know almost none of them that have the capacity to take damage--the growth of hit points--keeping up with or outpacing damage. It seems to mostly be a D&D and D&D knockoff kind of thing. And when I try to explain one of these other RPGs to players who don't know much beyond D&D, I say "this is like your hit points" and it's always understood and without any assumptions that they must skyrocket as the game goes on.
QuoteThat said, I would say the term "plot armour" is still applicable as a term for any game-rule factor (hit points, Fate points, Drama Dice, etc.) that protects PCs from dying which isn't a direct representative simulation of an in-setting reality. Not all factors have to protect against all threats with the same applicability for that to still be apt, I'd say.
I see what you're saying. I think where we got our signals crossed here is I think hit points DO represent in-setting reality. So I don't see them as a separate sort of meta-game mechanic that protects your character. So when you call them plot armor, I don't get the message that it refers to an out-of-setting thing. And the problem is that in-setting, your character is safe at least 99% of the time. Just because nothing is kissing your character right now doesn't mean something else could. And so I have to parse the meaning hinging on possibility. Not probability or actuality. Meaning plot armor rings to me as all-or-nothing thing. All because I don't interpret hit points the same way as you. So I would renew and revise my claim that the term is counter-productive. It's obscuring what perhaps we need to get to the bottom of.
One way game systems have implemented insta-kills is with "mook" rules.
For instance, in Feng Shui, heroes can fight off waves of low-level baddies, in imitation of "heroic bloodshed" movies like A Better Tomorrow, or scenes where Bruce Lee beats up everybody in the building.
In Feng Shui, mooks are low level baddies, nameless and possibly faceless as well. Any successful attack one-shots them, and there are character classes with feats that allow them to attack groups of mooks in a single action.
The key is that mooks are a special underclass of antagonist who exist to be disposed of en masse. They're cannon fodder.
You can also have named antagonists who are the equals of the heroes, or bosses who can take on an entire party. They use the same rules as PCs, and can't be mowed down like blades of grass.
One nice thing about the way Feng Shui does it is that characters can be optimized to fight lots of low level guys, or they can be optimized to take on the high level Big Bads one on one, but generally not both. It gives you the ability to have different characters doing different things, and they complement each other and work well as teams.
I've often thought that a similar mechanic would work well for spy games. If an agent is sneaking into a base, they can take out nameless guards without raising an alarm, but a high-level henchman or mastermind is a different story.
Quote from: Lunamancer on October 09, 2022, 09:50:41 PM
Quote from: Stephen Tannhauser on October 08, 2022, 09:49:09 PM
Agreed. Part of the problem with current game philosophy is resistance to all the things that remind the players that what they're doing is playing a game. Dungeon crawls are boring stories because they aren't designed to be stories, they can't be built to rely on a dramatic character arc that intertwines with the plot.
Wait. What?
You start in the ordinary world. There's a call to adventure. You find out about the dungeon (perhaps from an actual mentor, or perhaps just someone filling the mentor role in this instance). You prepare--buy equipment. You step through the dungeon entrance crossing over into the underworld. You go through a series of trials that test your wits. As you do so, you learn how this strange new place works. If you don't give up, you face the dragon or whatever other thing that stands between you and the prize. If you succeed, you get the prize. Then you have the return journey to bring it back to the village.
In what bizarro realm is this not a story? It's the Hero's Journey in spades. Not only is the dungeon crawl a story. It is so on point in that capacity that you only have to fill in a few blanks and you're ready to go. And the game system itself even helps you fill in a lot of those blanks. The Dungeon Crawl the literal conception of the most dramatic symbolism and expressions of the most iconic of stories. Why do you think of all the board games, war games, Braunsteins, and improv games that existed the time, why did Dungeons & Dragons blow up the way it did? It hit all the right spots. It resonated. And the game's name set the tone.
What he means is, that modern games don't try to have you play the game as a game. An old school dungeon crawl is played as a series of decisions made by the player about how to balance a number of different resources, turns, time, and so on. It's almost like a board game in that respect. A story does come out of it, but first and foremost, it's a GAME.
The anti-dungeon ethos is more like... playing through a soap opera where your PC is one of the main characters. Mere resources and things like that aren't what matters, they're just a distraction. It's the character exploring facets of their personality and relationships that is what it's all about. In that sense, it's called a "story."
The player makes decisions as their character, which are not always optimal -- for example, someone might play a cowardly barbarian or one who frequently loses his head and then plays that to the hilt. If you did that in an old school dungeon crawl, well, I actually would encourage someone to stick to their character's guns, but I think most people here would just say that person isn't playing very skillfully because those old school games are more about the player outwitting the obstacle course placed in front of them rather than living out a character's life and their reactions to things. Am I wrong?
In that way, an old school dungeon crawl CAN'T exist for that type of game because it would swiftly kill those characters rather than enable them to achieve their ideal ending.
To put it in another way, old school dungeons are the survival horror genre while modern adventures are more like adventure movies like Indiana Jones or the Mummy. A character acting proper to one genre would be out of place in the other genre.
Ironically, the GAME as a GAME aspect does rear its head, but within the confines of character generation -- all the game interaction is moved inside the PC's world, and about what they can do.
Quote from: mAcular Chaotic on October 10, 2022, 06:55:54 PM
What he means is,
I really have no intention of hijacking the thread here, but I found myself saying "Wait. What?" even more from your explanation. So I'm only going to address select points in hopes of shrinking this down and keeping it as a side bar that doesn't distract too much from the main topic.
QuoteThe player makes decisions as their character, which are not always optimal -- for example, someone might play a cowardly barbarian or one who frequently loses his head and then plays that to the hilt. If you did that in an old school dungeon crawl, well, I actually would encourage someone to stick to their character's guns, but I think most people here would just say that person isn't playing very skillfully because those old school games are more about the player outwitting the obstacle course placed in front of them rather than living out a character's life and their reactions to things. Am I wrong?
Maybe. I've got a little bit of a different idea as to a) what a dungeon is and b) what a personality is. And hopefully once I've explained it, you'll understand why I'm left asking, "Optimal play? What does that even mean?"
As I've already alluded to, the dungeon is one of the most dramatic representations of the extraordinary world or "the underworld" as it's often termed in the Hero's Journey motif. It's also thought of as a realm of chaos. One where the Hero--or the PCs--don't quite understand the rules because it's a world alien to their own ordinary world.
In economics terms (appropriate if we're going to kick around this idea of "resource management"), what we're dealing with when we step into the dungeon is conditions of radical uncertainty. And to unpack that a bit, economist Frank Knight drew a distinction between risk and uncertainty.
We as gamers are very familiar with risk. If you try to kick open a door, for example, you don't know whether you will succeed or fail. But you do know that given your Strength your chance is 2 in 6. You don't know the outcome, but you do know the probability distribution. This is frequently true of core mechanics. We can often figure out the opponent's AC and calculate our hit probabilities, for example.
Uncertainty is the DM adding in the possibility that the door might be locked rather than just stuck and you don't have any chance of success. Or that the door might not even be stuck at all and you don't have any chance of failure. Here, you have some concept of what might happen, but you as player do not know what the probability distribution is.
With radical uncertainty, the door might also be trapped, and the type of traps and its possible effects is limited only by imagination. Not only do you not know what will happen, not only do you not know what the probability distribution is, you don't even know what the range of possibilities are. That is radical uncertainty.
And that's what the dungeon presents you with. Right from the very first room. Do you go left? Right? Straight ahead? The darkness, the twists and the turns. It conceals all the information you need to arrive at an informed, rational, strategic, or "optimal" course of action. So it's beyond me how anyone can seriously claim that what characterizes an old school dungeon crawl is "optimal play."
Maybe that could be a thing in a pussy new school dungeon crawl (okay, maybe "middle-aged" school is more accurate). One where DMs adopt the idea that players need to be provided with sufficient information to make informed decisions. One where there should be adequate clues and warnings whenever something is dangerous. (
Highlight this paragraph, because this does raise an issue that goes to the purpose of what's being asked for in the OP.) Yeah. Given that information, I suppose it is possible to start making optimal decisions.
But what if you don't begin with that? What's your strategy? Gather information? Sure. That's probably a good idea. But where are you going to look for it? It goes right back to the same question. What is your strategy? What does this "optimal play" I keep hearing about tell us about what we should do here?
It is my admittedly less-than-expert opinion that the reason evolution has created humans with a wide variety of different personalities is because they are all different strategies for solving how to survive and thrive in a world of radical uncertainty. If certain real world personality types keep getting killed, that's probably a DM problem. Not a feature of dungeon crawls.
Granted, sometimes players adopt unrealistic and downright goofy personalities. Personalities that do not exist or have no basis in reality. And that's fine. This is fantasy, after all. In a world with magic, there may very well be different personalities that have evolved and are viable. Me? I'm happy playing the neutral arbiter to test whether or not a new personality is viable in the fantasy world. Because I really don't know the answer to that. And I'm curious to see the answer. Other DMs might prefer to adapt to keep the personality viable and alive. A difference of tastes. Nothing endemic to Dungeon Crawls per se.
QuoteAn old school dungeon crawl is played as a series of decisions made by the player about how to balance a number of different resources, turns, time, and so on.
If we could hop in Bill & Ted's phone booth and go back to the old school times and drop in on a group doing a dungeon crawl and ask, "Hey, what are you guys doing? What makes it so much fun?" I think at most 1 time in 10 they might describe something similar to how you characterize old school dungeon crawls here. If that. The other 9 times out of 10, it will be something like "We're exploring a dungeon and fighting monsters in search or riches," or "We're facing off against the minions of the evil Douchebagmancer who seeks to cleanse mother earth." They're going to be people immersed in the fictional events, or "the story", not people who think they're trying to spend as little of their wheat was possible so that they can build a road right through the middle of the Evil King Dickhead's kingdom.
Quote from: Lunamancer on October 10, 2022, 09:04:35 PMIf we could hop in Bill & Ted's phone booth ... and ask, "Hey, what are you guys doing? What makes it so much fun?" I think at most 1 time in 10 they might describe something similar to how you characterize old school dungeon crawls here. If that. The other 9 times out of 10, it will be something like "We're exploring a dungeon and fighting monsters in search or riches," or "We're facing off against the minions of the evil Douchebagmancer who seeks to cleanse mother earth." They're going to be people immersed in the fictional events, or "the story", not people who think they're trying to spend as little of their wheat was possible so that they can build a road right through the middle of the Evil King Dickhead's kingdom.
M. Chaotic pretty much summed up what I meant, but I wanted to reply to this point specifically because I think you're half right: I suspect most groups (mine certainly included) never
described how they engaged with the game in the game terms, because it's the unique narrative framework that gives RPGs their particular coolness factor. But at least half (if not more) of the in-game
decisions, I suspect (and can confirm for my groups in practice), were made with an eye to what was the smartest decision for the situation under the rules, not to what was the most dramatically moving or plausibly in-character choice for the PC-as-protagonist under the plot.
You make an interesting argument that character effectiveness, in practice, manifests in ways shaped very much by the personalities producing it; if everybody's on the same page about it being the
PCs' personalities, rather than the players', which are the source for this, then you do get something a little bit more like what I consider a "story". But I think in practice most groups don't put in this level of effort, partly because the structure of the game as a game doesn't incentivize it, partly because constantly staying in character for a long game begins feeling more like work than play for most players.
(For clarification, what I mean by "a story" is, a sequence of connected plot events where the protagonists make choices, in keeping with their characters, that affect the outcomes in meaningful ways, and are in turn affected by those outcomes in ways that show how plot and character are intertwined. Part of the reason I tend not to see dungeon crawls as producing stories is that dungeon crawls, as settings and plot sequences, are very seldom tailored to a specific envisioned character arc for the players' unique PCs, and in practice seldom produce one unless the GM puts a lot of preplanning work into it.)
QuoteI think where we got our signals crossed here is I think hit points DO represent in-setting reality. So I don't see them as a separate sort of meta-game mechanic that protects your character.
What kind of in-setting reality would you say they represent? It can't be strict literal physical bodily capacity to tolerate injury, for reasons too many discussions have already (I think) well established.
Quote from: Stephen Tannhauser on October 10, 2022, 09:44:01 PM
But at least half (if not more) of the in-game decisions, I suspect (and can confirm for my groups in practice), were made with an eye to what was the smartest decision for the situation under the rules, not to what was the most dramatically moving or plausibly in-character choice for the PC-as-protagonist under the plot.
So three points I have in response to that:
1) I can appreciate the distinction between "with an eye to what was the smartest decision" and the actual smartest decision. But I would also say if that's all it was, "an eye to" then we can't just assume it was a hose-fest for anyone who did decides they're just going to play their character instead. After all, they might stumble upon the actual smartest decision. It's fair game for all. That's the thing. I'm not sure if ever once in my entire time gaming I ever experienced a group that was homogenous as we assume in these sorts of discussions. The guy sitting next to you might legit have a different framework. If you can both paly in the same game simultaneous, the DM is doing a great job as far as I'm concerned.
2) What is "dramatically moving" or "plausibly in character"? I think the second one is easier. If a decision benefits the character, or at least seems to be the one most likely to benefit the character given only the limited information the character has, then I would say that is the plausibly in-character decision. Plausible characters act in ways that match their motives and priorities. And is something really "dramatically moving" if it seems contrived? They can cue up the dramatic music all the want. If the act is absurd, making no logical sense, the more the beat calls for drama, the more it comes off as comedy, parody, or satire.
3) The main point I hashed out with the whole radical uncertainty thing is that "the smartest decision" is just not ever a known quantity. It's hard to use that as a measuring stick, either for evaluating the reasonableness of role-play, or for evaluating the strategic quality of it.
QuoteYou make an interesting argument that character effectiveness, in practice, manifests in ways shaped very much by the personalities producing it; if everybody's on the same page about it being the PCs' personalities, rather than the players', which are the source for this, then you do get something a little bit more like what I consider a "story".
I don't concede to that condition. I'm actually not even convinced that playing your character is more "real roleplaying" than playing yourself but in your character's shoes. I think some of the things that emerge from different personality types is we tend to focus on different things. Therefore we tend to notice different things. So our information differs. And we have different rankings in our preferences. Therefore we find to be "optimal" varies. But what we all have in common is given what limited information we know, and given what we like the most, we all do tend to seek just that the best we can manage. As long as your perceptions and preferences are baked into your character's shoes (the former, at the very least, can be achieved via game mechanics or what the DM feeds your senses), then playing yourself but in your character's shoes I think is actually the highest, most genuine form of role play. And it works at least as good as aping different personalities in terms or differentiating the characters in the party from one another.
QuoteBut I think in practice most groups don't put in this level of effort, partly because the structure of the game as a game doesn't incentivize it, partly because constantly staying in character for a long game begins feeling more like work than play for most players.
Yeah. Sometimes. If I were to pat myself on the back, I think most people see me as a lot more interesting as the average person. The girls these days would say I'm not "basic." But overall, I would say I'm plenty boring enough with a boring enough life that it's not that hard to create a character that is a lot more interesting than me to play. I've found when I take my characters too seriously, you're right, I do get burnt out on them. And a part of that ties into what I call the kumbaya session, but that's a topic for another day. The flip side is, when my characters are more wild and free, sometimes I welcome the opportunity to be them rather than myself, and I don't have any problem at all staying in character.
Fucking Gartak, man. Gotta respect a dude who doesn't give a fuck about game mechanics enough to come up with the stupid idea of riding his shield like a surf board down a set of stairs while swiping at enemies with his scimitar as he slides down. When I chose to do that, I full well knew I was signing my ass over to the GM to fuck me over any way he saw fit. To this day, I still can't say for 100% sure whether it was a strategic advantage or disadvantage over doing something normal. I have no idea what was in the GM's secret notes, or how things would have played out otherwise. What I do know is, it moved the game forward. I had more fun playing my character, and so I kept on playing my character. And the game itself was more fun, so we all kept on playing. That meant more game sessions, more opportunity to earn XP. That meant bigger pay-off.
That's the thing of it. Even if you're playing a pussy enough game where you have enough information to make "optimized" decisions, if it's boring, it's going to be short-lived. And that itself makes it less lucrative and gives you a less chance of hitting a "high score" in the long run, versus playing a bumbling ass who is only half as effective but is so fun you never want to stop playing.
Quote(For clarification, what I mean by "a story" is, a sequence of connected plot events where the protagonists make choices, in keeping with their characters, that affect the outcomes in meaningful ways, and are in turn affected by those outcomes in ways that show how plot and character are intertwined. Part of the reason I tend not to see dungeon crawls as producing stories is that dungeon crawls, as settings and plot sequences, are very seldom tailored to a specific envisioned character arc for the players' unique PCs, and in practice seldom produce one unless the GM puts a lot of preplanning work into it.)
Emphasis mine. This is both a worthy and a tricky point. In the Hero's Journey archetype, the goal is to get the magic elixir. There are some variations. Maybe it's gold. And of course in particular stories, it's almost always something very specific.
On the one hand, I'm tempted to say that the goal actually should be tailored to the specific character. Because it has to matter enough for the character to face the radical uncertainty of the dungeon. Those unfair 50' pit traps with poisoned spikes. And face the dragon or whatever alternate version of that we're talking about.
On the other hand, if you have the hubris to think you can run a much, much greater story. And I'm talking about one as compelling approaching the same cultural influence as the Christ story, then what you have to do is stretch your imagination to make that magic elixir the most sought after thing imaginable. Not necessarily something tailored to the PCs. And the dragon has to be the most intimidating and dangerous obstacle imaginable. Not necessarily an adversary tailored to the PCs. And the dungeon the most confusing, self-doubt sowing bunch of chaos imaginable. You get the picture. And then step back and see what kind of hero emerges that can succeed at this quest. Rather than the quest be tailored to the heroes, let the heroes rise to the quest.
Either one of those is perfectly kosher if you ask me.
QuoteWhat kind of in-setting reality would you say they represent? It can't be strict literal physical bodily capacity to tolerate injury, for reasons too many discussions have already (I think) well established.
Eh, but I think too many of those discussions were entirely stupid, hashed out by morons who only seemed smart, and who made fatal assumptions without even realizing they were making assumptions. But I have what I think is a relatively simple response that doesn't involve backtracking through all of that.
Imagine everyone has 100 hit points. Whether you're a fighter or a mage, a dwarf or an elf, 1st level of 40th level. We're accepting the same, quite reasonable premise from which half-wits deride the notion of physical hit points as being stupid. That becoming better at deciphering Mesopotamian demonic fan fic written in cursive doesn't actually cause you to grow muscles out of your neck and suddenly enable your body to hold more pints of blood. I'm not arguing that. It's entirely off the table and removed from discussion.
So does that mean it's just as easy to kill Biff the 4th level Barbarian as it is Melvin the 1st level Mage? No. Biff's got some razzmatazz. That same blow that would have pierced Melvin's heart, Biff did a limbo maneuver and the sword only sliced his left nipple. So whereas it kills Melvin, dealing 100 hit points of damage, for Biff it only did like 10 hit points of damage.
Wouldn't it be cool if we had a system that did that? Where you got more skilled as you level rather than more beefy? And where that skill translated as damage reduction rather than more hit points?
I'll pretend you said yes so we can move forward and eventually get to the point. And maybe you already see where this is going.
I'm not going to do a standard armor absorb. It's not a 100-point blow and Biff had 90 points of limbo armor. Because the problem with that is if the blow was only half as strong, a 50-point blow, then Biff's 90 points of limbo armor would negate it entirely. Biff should at the very least lose a layer of skin if we said this was a hit. So what if instead of a flat 90 point reduction, Biff has a 90% reduction, taking 5 damage from the 50-point blow.
Now I remove the magic curtain to reveal these are not hit points I'm talking about but rather percentages of hit points. Melvin's got 4 hit points. Biff's got 40 hit points. The first hit is one that does 4 damage. The second does 2 damage.
And that's all that it is.
Percentages may have been cool in the 70s when even highschool drop outs could do double digit division in their heads. But in the soft, dull-witted, tail-between-our legs world of nerds, who are supposed to good at academics, in 2022 which is supposed to be more advanced in the 70's, division and percentages has become a bridge too far for RPGs. Only Gary Gygax had the vision to foresee this bleak future. And so he created the brilliant hit point system to do this math for us degenerates. The least we could do is be grateful for it.
Now it's not the only argument I have against the "hit points are not meat" Cathedral. There are many and more nuanced ones. But this one does stand pretty well on its own without needing a 40-page thread. So that's the one I'm going with no, reserving the right at a later point to specify why each and every "muh abstract hit points" theory goes wrong.
Quote from: Lunamancer on October 10, 2022, 11:24:49 PMI can appreciate the distinction between "with an eye to what was the smartest decision" and the actual smartest decision. But I would also say if that's all it was, "an eye to" then we can't just assume it was a hose-fest for anyone who did decides they're just going to play their character instead.
...The main point I hashed out with the whole radical uncertainty thing is that "the smartest decision" is just not ever a known quantity. It's hard to use that as a measuring stick, either for evaluating the reasonableness of role-play, or for evaluating the strategic quality of it.
A "hose-fest", no, but the entire point of the conflict between "approach the challenge as a game" and "approach the challenge as a story" is that there
is conflict, that the most effective option from a tactical viewpoint (which requires skill at the game rules to spot) and the most interesting option from a dramatic viewpoint (which requires talent for cooperatively constructing improvised narratives) aren't the same. You're right that they don't
have to be different, but in my experience, they almost always are. If they weren't, there wouldn't be so much discussion about how to handle it.
Can the smartest tactical decision sometimes be unclear? Certainly; if it was always clear the game wouldn't be tactically challenging. But the point of it being a
tactical decision is that better knowledge of the rules translates into reliably better performance at selecting the best option.
QuoteI'm actually not even convinced that playing your character is more "real roleplaying" than playing yourself but in your character's shoes.
I'm not sure I agree, but I think that really is veering a little too far off the original topic, so I'll shelve that one and move on.
QuoteThis is both a worthy and a tricky point. In the Hero's Journey archetype, the goal is to get the magic elixir. ...Rather than the quest be tailored to the heroes, let the heroes rise to the quest. Either one of those is perfectly kosher if you ask me.
Sure, but you have to know which your players want first, and take into account that the structure of the game may itself tilt the likely outcome one way or the other. If what you want is a hero rising to a quest (and here we wind back to my original dilemma), a game that makes extremely anticlimactic conclusions to said quest not only possible, but likely, may not be the best choice of tool for that.
QuoteOnly Gary Gygax had the vision to foresee this bleak future. And so he created the brilliant hit point system to do this math for us degenerates. The least we could do is be grateful for it.
I have to admit that I don't see how your explanation of hit points renders them any less abstract than any of the others. If the point (no pun intended) is that each individual hit point represents a smaller and smaller fraction of bodily integrity as character level rises, then the individual points themselves are still sliding measures that have different values relative to different characters and creatures, which makes them pretty abstract to me.
Moreover, I don't see the point of insisting that HPs represent solely a physical thing for the character and then cheerfully ignoring all the subsidiary effects that would accrue to a character as his percentage of injury mounted. Gygax himself explicitly said in the 1E DMG that they represented more than purely physical injury (this is from page 82):
Quote from: DMGIt is quite unreasonable to assume that as a character gains levels of ability in his or her class that a corresponding gain in actual ability to sustain physical damage takes place. It is preposterous to state such an assumption, for if we are to assume that a man is killed by a sword thrust which does 4 hit points of damage, we must similarly assume that a hero could, on the average, withstand five such thrusts before being slain! Why then the increase in hit points? Because these reflect both the actual physical ability of the character to withstand damage - as indicated by constitution bonuses- and a commensurate increase in such areas as skill in combat and similar life-or-death situations, the "sixth sense" which warns the individual of some otherwise unforeseen events, sheer luck, and the fantastic provisions of magical protections and/or divine protection. Therefore, constitution affects both actual ability to withstand physical punishment hit points (physique) and the immeasurable areas which involve the sixth sense and luck (fitness).
The Wounds system in my own game was deliberately designed to be much closer to a more direct representation of physical damage
as physical damage, and nothing else, but I am now running into the problem that since the limits on how far this can be improved are much stricter than the limits on how damage sources scale up, characters will get
more fragile compared to their likely opponents as they get more powerful, not less. This was the issue I was trying to work around.
Quote from: Stephen Tannhauser on October 11, 2022, 01:50:58 AM
The Wounds system in my own game was deliberately designed to be much closer to a more direct representation of physical damage as physical damage, and nothing else, but I am now running into the problem that since the limits on how far this can be improved are much stricter than the limits on how damage sources scale up, characters will get more fragile compared to their likely opponents as they get more powerful, not less. This was the issue I was trying to work around.
Phrased that way, I can answer that: You've got to set the mechanics aside for a moment and revisit the math. Then adjust the mechanics to fit the math. How you adjust the mechanics will depend partly on the feel you are going for, and partly on the limits of what those mechanics can support, and partly on how much the cold reality of the math impinges on both.
You want one of three things: Either low and high powered characters are roughly equally threatened by "mortal" (Wounds-dealing, life-threatening damage) or low powered gets a little boost early that erodes as the game's challenges get worst or high powered characters begin to get a handle on such things as they deal with the challenges. If it changes over time, then the second question is, how much?
I'll suggest two possible approaches (out of several) to illustrate.
1. The highly-limited, second set of Wound points track. This is basically real physical hit points. There can't be many of them (relative to the "feel" of typical hit points). Each one is precious. They can't increase much. Likely, they have to start somewhere higher than 1. You can do a lot more with a range of 5-10 than you can with a range of 1 to 6. The ideal range depends in part on the mechanics used to do Wounds. With numbers that low, the typical Wound is 1 point, with a decreasing possibility of doing a few more (depending on just how deadly you want it). If you really want a random roll that translates directly to Wound point damage (e.g. roll 1d6 for amount of Wound points done), then even that 5-10 range might be a bit too low. Point being, you can fiddle with the margins here, maybe have a Wounds range more in the teens or pushing in rare cases into the low 20's, but there are limits in how far you can go with it.
2. You have some kind of Damage Save or Soak or whatever works best for how you put it together. Then the effectiveness of mortal damage escalates slowly and the ability to Save/Soak it escalates slowly. Whether they escalate in tandem or one outstrips the other is back to that question of how you want it to work. Then it's a matter of tying the math of that system into those goals, same as the first option. It's a little easier to allow the one-hit kill with this, because it's a crap shoot. I'm not getting worn down by the city watch with 20 crossbow bolts. Rather, it's every crossbow bolt has a small chance of killing me outright, and I know that 20 of them with no cover and short range puts the odds of surviving into the "start making a new character while the GM resolves the action".
Me, when I set my Life points (same idea), I started with: "This is how many typical life-threatening hits a starting character can take on average, and the likelihood of a one-shot kill. Then this other thing is the same calculation for an upper-end character. Then double-check with a couple in the middle power levels. Then check the edge cases for an extremely weak starting character and an extremely tough upper-end one." Then I set the Life numbers to make that happen. Which meant the first option was enough to get into the ballpark.
Then whatever way you go, you have to also factor in how the rest of the system plays with that. Maybe, for example, low and high powered characters Soak mortal Wounds about the same, in a vacuum, but high-powered characters have access to better equipment that improves their effective Soak. Or they have enough skills to not get into situations where the take mortal Wounds as often (e.g. better active defenses). Or they have better medical care/magic/high tech/whatever for reacting in that brief window before mortal Wounds become truly mortal. Or more likely, all that and a lot more.
Quote from: Stephen Tannhauser on October 11, 2022, 01:50:58 AM
The Wounds system in my own game was deliberately designed to be much closer to a more direct representation of physical damage as physical damage, and nothing else, but I am now running into the problem that since the limits on how far this can be improved are much stricter than the limits on how damage sources scale up, characters will get more fragile compared to their likely opponents as they get more powerful, not less. This was the issue I was trying to work around.
I'm curious how you model physical damage given the range of uncertainty that exists. Rasputin had to be poisoned, stabbed, and shot, but then some unlucky bastard gets sucker punched, hits his head, and dies instantly. There are systems that deal with this by allowing critical hits to bypass armor and do maximum damage (often plus a roll on a table of serious/deadly wounds), so every human is one unlucky hit away from death. However, these systems don't contemplate super-human physiology.
Quote from: Stephen Tannhauser on October 11, 2022, 01:50:58 AM
A "hose-fest", no, but the entire point of the conflict between "approach the challenge as a game" and "approach the challenge as a story" is that there is conflict, that the most effective option from a tactical viewpoint (which requires skill at the game rules to spot) and the most interesting option from a dramatic viewpoint (which requires talent for cooperatively constructing improvised narratives) aren't the same. You're right that they don't have to be different, but in my experience, they almost always are. If they weren't, there wouldn't be so much discussion about how to handle it.
I don't think there is a conflict. I never have from day one. I believe sometimes GMs drop the ball. I believe sometimes RPGs drop the ball. Sometimes sore losers will take their ball and go home. Fortunately that seems pretty rare in real life. Just because we sometimes fail to facilitate a mutually satisfactory accommodation does not mean there exists an irreconcilable difference. It just means sometimes we fail. In my experience it's rare with no evidence suggesting its endemic.
QuoteCan the smartest tactical decision sometimes be unclear? Certainly; if it was always clear the game wouldn't be tactically challenging. But the point of it being a tactical decision is that better knowledge of the rules translates into reliably better performance at selecting the best option.
In my experience, the opposite is true. Rules knowledges sometimes boosts performance marginally at best, in most cases not at all. And in many cases thinking in rules terms is counter-productive, impacting creativity and adaptability to in-game situations. I've got a lot of first-hand war stories where having a nose in the rulebook has been a detriment. But I'm guessing most experienced gamers have similar stories. What it all adds up and nets out to, is I saw a group of newbs with zero 1E experience go through the original Tomb of Horrors and survive just fine. They were scared but performed really well. And they caught on to some of the tricks and traps that veteran gamers fluent with the rules claim was impossible to figure out with what few clues are given.
The plain definition of "tactical" has nothing to do with rules. It's relating to or using or involving plans, actions, or maneuvers to achieve goals or objectives, and is characterized by ingenuity or skill. Good tactical play is about getting the job done. If your premise is that rules knowledge translates to reliably better performance, then yeah, I guess it would follow that tactical play is rule play. But if on net rule play is detrimental to performance, then tactical play is nearly the opposite of rule play. And that's exactly what we observed the second time ever that I played 3E.
Me and one of the experienced players were both playing thieves. We were separated from the rest of the group on a scouting mission. We came across something like 20 orcs. Far more than 2 thieves could handle. We saw them, they didn't see us. The other player, using rules knowledge, suggested we stealth up to a 30' range so we could get our sneak attack bonus with our bows. My suggested was to move further away, to the bushes in the center of a frozen fountain and fire our bows from there. That way it would take the orcs longer to close the distance, and they would have to negotiate the ice in a tense and threatening situation.
I didn't have the rules knowledge to know how many rounds of fire we'd get before the orcs closed the distance. But common sense told me the answer was more than we'd get at 30'. And I didn't know what the odds were of the orcs slipping on the ice. I used common sense to concluded it would tilt the odds in our favor by more than zero. Under any normal sense of the word, what I suggested was tactical. What the other guy was suggested was just playing the system. They are not the same thing. They could hardly be more different.
QuoteSure, but you have to know which your players want first, and take into account that the structure of the game may itself tilt the likely outcome one way or the other. If what you want is a hero rising to a quest (and here we wind back to my original dilemma), a game that makes extremely anticlimactic conclusions to said quest not only possible, but likely, may not be the best choice of tool for that.
What's an anticlimactic conclusion? If you aren't aware, sometimes in these classical stories, the heroes do fail. What makes RPGs an exceptionally good medium for re-telling these stories is that players are aware explicitly that the hero could fail. That makes the central conflict's stakes much higher than a scripted story.
QuoteI have to admit that I don't see how your explanation of hit points renders them any less abstract than any of the others.
I never claimed it did. Let's recap to put the goal posts back where they were. This was your question:
Quote from: Stephen Tannhauser on October 10, 2022, 09:44:01 PM
What kind of in-setting reality would you say they represent?
And that's what I answered. Every hit in my run down got a taste of physical hit points. But Biff gave up fewer of them because he had razzmatazz. Physical toughness and razzmatazz are in-setting traits characters might possess.
QuoteMoreover, I don't see the point of insisting that HPs represent solely a physical thing for the character
I never did.
Quoteand then cheerfully ignoring all the subsidiary effects that would accrue to a character as his percentage of injury mounted.
Ignored how? I didn't mention them because that issue was never raised. However, I never said or pretended they didn't exist.
QuoteGygax himself explicitly said in the 1E DMG that they represented more than purely physical injury (this is from page 82):
Try looking at the full context. He included this discussion for the sole purpose of justifying how a high level human could have more hit points than a horse. The implication is that the horse hit points are meat. Because if we declare the human is only 30% meat but then also make the horse is 30% meat, we still end up with humans having more meat than horses. It doesn't solve the problem.
So horses are all meat. Presumably that would extend to all animals and beasts. They're all meat. And monsters who physically resemble various animal forms? They're all meat, too. Giants? Meat. All normal (0th level) NPCs are meat as explicitly stated in that section.
When you take a step back and look around, just about all the hit points in all the living beings in the world world are meat. High level characters being the notable exception. And so the widespread misinterpretation was mistaking the exception for the rule. High level characters are the exception. We obsess over them because that's what we play as. But the rule is: Hit Points ARE Meat.
When we start conflating hit points in general, which are basically meat, with fanciful ideas like "plot armor" we've lost the plot (no pun intended).
QuoteThe Wounds system in my own game was deliberately designed to be much closer to a more direct representation of physical damage as physical damage, and nothing else, but I am now running into the problem that since the limits on how far this can be improved are much stricter than the limits on how damage sources scale up, characters will get more fragile compared to their likely opponents as they get more powerful, not less. This was the issue I was trying to work around.
Well, if you weren't so dead-set at arguing with me, the answer was up in there. Biff has razzmatazz.
What you're talking about here is exactly what we see in The Lejendary Adventure RPG. Now I'm not going to over-state the case that Health in LA is all physical damage. Health includes Free Will. Because, as a fantasy RPG, LA includes things like ghosts and poltergeists, things that have no physical form at all. But you can still blast them with magic. So we still need to know how hard they are to kill.
But for now, that's all immaterial (no pun intended). The relevant point is this. At "high levels" of play, when Weapons Ability exceeds 100, each skill point after that translates point-for-point into damage bonus. Your attacks are THAT precise. In the 101+ range, each point of skill costs 400 merits to raise. Whereas Health costs 1000 merits to raise a point. There's no way Health can keep up with Harm.
So LA gives Biff some razzmatazz. Soldiers, Nobles, and several other types automatically gain Luck Ability at high levels. And one of the things Luck Ability does is allow you one free dodge attempt each round. It starts at just 20-30%. But you can raise it at a cost of 250-350 Merits per point while it's under 100%. If you can get it to 100% by the time your equal adversaries can one-hit-kill you, you've got a near-guaranteed dodge rendering their oh so awesome attack near useless. It kind of forces the adversary to pivot to splitting the attack into multiple attacks. That has a minimum Speed requirement. It also takes a hefty penalty, and that penalty eats into that point-for-point harm bonus. So it sets the attacker way back. And in that time you can work up other defenses.
Other types of razzmatazz is there are three Abilities that build a degree of agility that works as damage reduction (just like my example where Biff was on percentile hit points). Or, if Biff either has high enough Speed or happens to win initiative that round, he can opt to use his attack to parry instead. And LA's got a really cool parrying system.
The general idea is, you can't just go all in on one thing because there are ways to bypass it. So you have to start building out laterally. That syphons off points that could otherwise be used to build damage vertically. It doesn't exactly slow down damage growth. But it encourages a slow down in damage growth.
Quote from: Lunamancer on October 11, 2022, 09:35:07 PMI don't think there is a conflict. I never have from day one.
Perhaps an example might help clarify what I mean. Let's say a party of adventurers has been contracted to remove a tribe of orcs that has holed up in a cavern network and is threatening the nearby village. A tactical solution would look at approaches like setting up ambushes, finding back entrances into the caves, and so on. But if one of the PCs is being played to a very strict level of lawful good because his player has decided he wants his character to multiclass into paladin, he might decide he won't countenance this approach, and instead argues for challenging the orc chieftain to a duel, claiming that if he can beat the chieftain he will become the de facto new chieftain and can order the tribe to withdraw.
Now the question is not which of these solutions actually is more likely to work (it could be either, depending on the GM and unspecified factors). The point is that one sees the most desirable approach as based on deduction about likelihood of success given the rules of ambush success probability, resources of missile weapons, to hit bonuses from surprise, and so on; the other sees the most desirable approach as one that plays to his PC's priorities, his sense of drama, and his assumptions (possibly unjustified) about the nature of orcs in the setting. This is the conflict between "narrative" and "tactical" I'm talking about ("tactical" meaning in this context
purely what option will in fact maximize likelihood of success under the rules).
QuoteIn my experience, the opposite is true. ...I saw a group of newbs with zero 1E experience go through the original Tomb of Horrors and survive just fine. They were scared but performed really well. And they caught on to some of the tricks and traps that veteran gamers fluent with the rules claim was impossible to figure out with what few clues are given.
More power to them, but does that sort of thing really represent the average outcome? It certainly never did in my experience. And if they were complete novices, I doubt they were approaching the game with the level of detached analysis necessary to make a distinction between "more likely to succeed by the rules" and "more in-keeping with my character" to start with.
QuoteThe plain definition of "tactical" has nothing to do with rules. It's relating to or using or involving plans, actions, or maneuvers to achieve goals or objectives, and is characterized by ingenuity or skill.
Agreed. But when those plans, actions and manoeuvres have to have their success or failure determined at least in part through the mechanics of the game, knowing how those mechanics interact, and what rules-quantifiable inputs to the system produce the best chance of the optimal output from that system, is a critical part of that process. I've never found it not to be.
QuoteUnder any normal sense of the word, what I suggested was tactical. What the other guy was suggested was just playing the system. They are not the same thing. They could hardly be more different.
My point exactly. You suggested a solution that looked more effective from the narrative details of the situation. Your fellow player suggested one that looked more effective from what he knew of the applicable rules elements. By your own admission, you didn't know the rules well enough to know which solution actually had a better mechanical chance of success by those rules -- if, in fact, the game rules about the orcs crossing ice without falling would give you enough extra shots to offset losing the close-range sneak attack bonus -- and you had to make a decision about which way to go.
That is the conflict I'm talking about.
QuoteWhat's an anticlimactic conclusion? If you aren't aware, sometimes in these classical stories, the heroes do fail. ...That makes the central conflict's stakes much higher than a scripted story.
Of course, but seldom permanently and fatally. The whole point of the
Odyssey is that Odysseus didn't die on his first stop outside Troy; he had lots of failures and setbacks, but they mostly killed his crew. The
Odyssey wouldn't be remembered as a story (or at least it would be remembered as an entirely different kind of story) if Polyphemus had smashed Odysseus's head in with a lucky club blow in that cave. Hence my original goal at wondering how people tried to avoid this kind of outcome or handle it when it happened.
I agree with you that what gives RPGs their unique frisson is that sense of danger and high stakes, and that you have to have at least some chance of final permanent failure for those conditions to obtain. But my point is that that's exactly what makes RPGs
games, not stories. And games where it's too easy to lose too quickly are just as boring as games where it's too easy to win.
QuoteThis was your question:
Quote from: Stephen Tannhauser on October 10, 2022, 09:44:01 PM
What kind of in-setting reality would you say they represent?
And that's what I answered. Every hit in my run down got a taste of physical hit points. But Biff gave up fewer of them because he had razzmatazz. Physical toughness and razzmatazz are in-setting traits characters might possess.
I think I see what you're talking about, and I do appreciate the point -- things that make it harder to land a damaging blow can be just as life-saving as things that make that blow less damaging when it lands.
The difficulty with relying on that kind of "razzmatazz" -- extra luck, additional armour, character abilities that allow for extra dodges, etc. -- to preserve the PCs is that, unlike hit points in the classic D20 system, it is very rarely something that automatically accrues, without extra cost, to every PC across the board as they get more experienced. The players themselves have to choose which if any "razzmatazz" options they take, and will usually have limits on which ones they
can take or how well they can make use of them, based on class or previous character design optimization. And they can make mistakes about what will be more useful in practice -- the 3.5E wizard who takes an armour Feat in an attempt to bolster his survivability, based on his poor HP total, may only make himself and his party
more vulnerable rather than less if his spells fail too often (due to the armour casting penalty) to be of any help.
The hit point buffer, by contrast, works against the vast majority of damage sources (not all of them, but certainly enough to be well worth having) and gives every PC as it accumulates at least a chance to avoid a one-hit kill, without requiring extra forethought to go into selection or deployment. It is becoming clearer to me through this debate (and your patience is appreciated) that if this is the kind of in-game acquired durability I'd like to implement for PCs, I may have to go outside my initial rule structure to find it.
Here is an example of the conflict, Lunamancer.
I run an OSR-adjacent game for some 5e players (specifically, it's a 5e game house ruled to be very OSR-like). Some of them take to it like water; others have pointed out that they feel like playing an actual heroic character, instead of a mercenary type, is punished by the game. If you want to play a character who revels in the glories of combat and wants to wade in to the fray, they will suffer. (This isn't actually that true in my 5e game but even the appearance of it is enough to raise people's hackles.) Or another example, wanting to play a character who gets up close in melee is punishing not just because of the danger but because the added weight they carry from armor makes them the slowest to be able to run away if retreat is necessary, and so they're punished for wanting to play a mighty warrior as compared to an archer or something.
These are not moment to moment tactical decisions but just the general concept of certain characters.
Another point raised is that because the consequences can be dangerous, you feel disinclined to play your character since not only is it hurting you, it's hurting your TEAM, and you don't want to be the one responsible for dragging everyone down. And so even if you might ordinarily want your character to do one thing or another, you'll just do the optimal thing even if it isn't necessarily what your character would really do.
Quote from: Stephen Tannhauser on October 11, 2022, 11:04:07 PM
Perhaps an example might help clarify what I mean.
I appreciate the example, but I'm still at a loss here. I feel as though both are playing their characters. Neither knows which course is actually more likely to succeed. Both approaches I find interesting. It's not clear to me that either course is more dramatic than the other, or either is a more sound approach than the other.
And if this is what's meant by conflict, that two players disagree on the course of action, I don't know what to tell you. I've always assumed that was more or less a normal part of the game that players had hash out among themselves to figure out how to overcome.
I'm not sure why the players' "why" matters in any of this. You could have two different characters both coming from a tactical perspective but disagreeing on which plan they should go with. You could have two characters both trying to do dramatic things that conflict with one another. You could have one tactical and one dramatic but their actual implementations happen to work together well.
So I really don't understand the obsession with these categories.
Quote
More power to them, but does that sort of thing really represent the average outcome? It certainly never did in my experience. And if they were complete novices, I doubt they were approaching the game with the level of detached analysis necessary to make a distinction between "more likely to succeed by the rules" and "more in-keeping with my character" to start with.
My experiences with Tomb of Horrors are right in line with what I typically see when running my homebrew stuff. Rules players are seldom effective. And when I first read Tomb of Horrors, I knew that's exactly how it would go, because in Tomb of Horrors it is to some extent done by design. It was meant to challenge characters with inflated stats. But you don't want to just be writing for Monty Haul degenerates to the exclusion of good, solid fans of the game. So it also has to be beatable by characters without inflated stats. How do you do that? Obviously you have to de-emphasize or bypass the stats. I fucking LOVE save or die because it bypasses hit points. Bloated stat characters can kiss my asp.
QuoteAgreed. But when those plans, actions and manoeuvres have to have their success or failure determined at least in part through the mechanics of the game, knowing how those mechanics interact, and what rules-quantifiable inputs to the system produce the best chance of the optimal output from that system, is a critical part of that process. I've never found it not to be.
And this may be what's at the heart of our disagreement. I'm not going to say it never happens as you describe. But I am going to say something life has taught me is that for most problems and most situations, the significance of the things you don't know is greater than the significance of things you do know. Because that's how it goes when you live in a world of radical uncertainty. It raises questions of how to make good decisions. How do you work towards optimal outcomes under these conditions? It's somewhat of an open question.
Some people obsess over their limited information because it's the only thing they know. But if it doesn't actually correlate with good outcomes, which it wouldn't when it's the unknowns are driving the outcomes, this is information that is leading you down the wrong path. And that's what I see happening when it comes to rules knowledge. You don't know my dungeon layout. You don't know what tricks, traps, and puzzles are in there. You don't know what lives down there. Even ask you explore, you never quite gain the full story.
So what do you know? You know what's on your character sheet. And if you're a real fruitcake you have the Monster Manual memorized.
You don't know to search the rubble in the collapsed corridor. Nothing in the rules tells you to. You just have to be curious.
If you do, you find a strange, small, two-pronged silver magic wand. It's not in the DMG, so you don't know attempting to use it will cause the ceiling to collapse on you. You won't find that in the rules. But you might figure that out based on where you found it.
You might learn the hard way that using the wand is bad. Write it on your character sheet. Wand of Ceiling Collapse. Fucking cursed items! Fucking old school makes no goddamn sense! What wizard would go through all the work of creating a wand that makes the ceiling fall down on him?
You don't know to bring it to the statue room. You don't know to use it on the statue of the bard tuning his instrument. I thought using it was bad. That's what the character sheet says. Unless you deduce it's a magical tuning fork.
This is actually from one of my homebrew dungeon crawls. At every turn, following what you know will lead to bad outcomes. Trying to make sense of what you don't know will help you along. I didn't deliberately design it this way. I was just trying to throw in a cool, fun little thing. It's not like it's even hard to figure it out. You just have to be thinking about the things you find rather than thinking about how to gain a rules advantage.
QuoteMy point exactly. You suggested a solution that looked more effective from the narrative details of the situation. Your fellow player suggested one that looked more effective from what he knew of the applicable rules elements. By your own admission, you didn't know the rules well enough to know which solution actually had a better mechanical chance of success by those rules -- if, in fact, the game rules about the orcs crossing ice without falling would give you enough extra shots to offset losing the close-range sneak attack bonus -- and you had to make a decision about which way to go. That is the conflict I'm talking about.
Well, a couple of corrections. True. I didn't know the rules. But reasoning alone can tell me things. Like the odds of the orcs falling on the ice is greater than zero. I don't know the exact odds, but I can surmise it will work at least a tiny bit better than not doing it. And that's enough of a basis for making a sound tactical decision. Likewise, I don't need to know orcs movement rates or rates of fire of our bows to be able to surmise that the number of shots we'll get before they reach is is greater at 180' than it is at 30'.
There was a third factor I didn't mention. The bushes. I didn't know whether or not the orcs had missile weapons. I surmised the probability that they did was greater than zero. And it turned out a small number of them did. Nostradamus much? And in that eventuality, I had also surmised that the bushes would provide some cover or concealment. I had no idea how much. But it knew it was better than no bushes.
So with three factors in our favor, I had little doubt that my idea had a much better chance of success. And I can tell you with absolute certainty that I was coming from a tactical mindset.
So how did you manage to confuse tactical for narrative? Well, I think obviously you wanted to try to frame this story to illustrate your point, and so maybe there was some hasty judgement involved. Not criticizing you. Just admitting that it would be premature for me to start running victory laps at this point. But an over-riding theme of my strong revulsion to RPG theory is I think it made an error in step one. And from there it's garbage in, garbage out. And this right here is the error that's always bugged me the most. There isn't a great big line separating narrative and tactical. You don't have a conflict. You don't have to choose between them.
I can tell you exactly what I did. What I do. I started recognizing that I can infer tactically important information and clues from the narrative. I recognized there is no conflict. In my view, both aspects of the game are BEST served in tandem with one another. And what I'm saying has enough transcendent truth to it that I can plop my ass down at the game table, not knowing any of the rules, and still pull off tactical play at a high level. I wouldn't be able to do that if I weren't onto something.
And by the way, the other player never argued against my plan. As soon as I laid it out, he was on board.
QuoteOf course, but seldom permanently and fatally. The whole point of the Odyssey is that Odysseus didn't die on his first stop outside Troy; he had lots of failures and setbacks, but they mostly killed his crew. The Odyssey wouldn't be remembered as a story (or at least it would be remembered as an entirely different kind of story) if Polyphemus had smashed Odysseus's head in with a lucky club blow in that cave. Hence my original goal at wondering how people tried to avoid this kind of outcome or handle it when it happened.
You should check out the prequel. It gets to a part where it just starts killing off all these Greek heroes, a lot of recognizable names. I was like, Holy shit!
QuoteI agree with you that what gives RPGs their unique frisson is that sense of danger and high stakes, and that you have to have at least some chance of final permanent failure for those conditions to obtain. But my point is that that's exactly what makes RPGs games, not stories.
When I'm packing up at the end of a really good game session and one or more of the players said to me, "That was a great story!" or when I ask players what it is they like most about playing RPGs and some of them answer, "It's all about a good story"--and they're not talking about some indy avant-garde horseshit. These are normal gamers. Not Ron Edwards incarnate. They're regular gamers who enjoy the good old fashioned bog standard traditional RPG. And they experience stories in real time. Then I jump on line to read people insisting it's not a story, we've got some serious wires crossed somewhere.
QuoteAnd games where it's too easy to lose too quickly are just as boring as games where it's too easy to win.
I don't know. I rather enjoy Blackjack. Hands are over real quick. Of course the fun comes over the course of several hands, trying to build up some winnings. I think that's a level of analysis that's often missed. It's not about the game. It's about the game of games. Imagine a TPK in one of the false entrances of the Tomb of Horrors. Okay. Maybe that game sucked. Then you come back with a new party. Players knowing full well what short work the Tomb made of those first guys. Now the tomb's reputation isn't just flavor text of fancy words and prissy pants drama. It's got real genuine street cred. And that's powerful context for the subsequent attempt where you actually get a few hours of great play out of it.
QuoteThe difficulty with relying on that kind of "razzmatazz" -- extra luck, additional armour, character abilities that allow for extra dodges, etc. -- to preserve the PCs is that, unlike hit points in the classic D20 system, it is very rarely something that automatically accrues, without extra cost, to every PC across the board as they get more experienced. The players themselves have to choose which if any "razzmatazz" options they take, and will usually have limits on which ones they can take or how well they can make use of them, based on class or previous character design optimization.
For what it's worth, LA is a skill-based game with optional class-like structures, but with a twist. You don't choose a class and that tells you your skills. You choose your skills and that determines the class and level you qualify for. You're allowed to learn and grow any skill you like. But as you meet the requirements for working up the ranks, the ranks provide extra benefits. To the extent you want to chase freebies, you prioritize the requirements, and this is what retains some semblance of the classes being meaningful even while allowing total freedom in customization.
A lot of the basic classes offer up "Luck" as one of the freebies at the higher levels. And I like it as a gateway defense ability because that's the one that can negate one but only one attack per round with a simple single skill check. And that's going to be frustrating for an attacker who's maxing out one big power attack. So that's the one most likely to prompt offense characters to start building out laterally. And that slows them down just enough to give players time to figure out their vulnerabilities and start picking up the supplemental skills that help.
QuoteAnd they can make mistakes about what will be more useful in practice -- the 3.5E wizard who takes an armour Feat in an attempt to bolster his survivability, based on his poor HP total, may only make himself and his party more vulnerable rather than less if his spells fail too often (due to the armour casting penalty) to be of any help.
For total newbs, you can just look ahead to the orders (classes), choose the skills according to the order requirements, and then as you work up the ranks. The orders most likely to be doing a lot of fighting--Forester, Soldier, Noble, and even the Demonurge--which sounds like a type of mage, but you learn powers to assume the form of a demon and start fucking shit up that way--will get you Luck as a freebie at the higher ranks. Once it's on your sheet, sooner or later it will save your ass. And when it does, you're like, wow, I should start putting a bunch of points into this. And that guides you along on your way.
Oh, and for what it's worth, armor and magic are not at all incompatible in LA. Armor can slow your speed. And a lot of magic-skills are Speed-based. By the Book, armor does not inhibit these skills at all. But people pining for D&D who want it to, it's easy to extrapolate what the penalty should be. Defensive magics often impact your speed even more than natural armor, but they have some pretty cool effects and grant special invulnerabilities.
QuoteThe hit point buffer, by contrast, works against the vast majority of damage sources (not all of them, but certainly enough to be well worth having) and gives every PC as it accumulates at least a chance to avoid a one-hit kill, without requiring extra forethought to go into selection or deployment. It is becoming clearer to me through this debate (and your patience is appreciated) that if this is the kind of in-game acquired durability I'd like to implement for PCs, I may have to go outside my initial rule structure to find it.
I can tell you, one of the things I liked early on about LA's imbalance between damage dealing and damage taking capacity, is I thought it had the effect of transforming high level play. Low level play is pretty much what you expect out of any RPG in terms of the amount of randomness involved. But at high levels, a lot of the variability is overwhelmed by high stats. But because the stakes are so high (one hit kills), there's still a lot of unpredictability. Think rock-paper-scissors. The stats on it have shown the outcomes are nearly perfectly random. But no element of it is actually random.
Quote from: mAcular Chaotic on October 11, 2022, 11:05:26 PM
I run an OSR-adjacent game for some 5e players (specifically, it's a 5e game house ruled to be very OSR-like). Some of them take to it like water; others have pointed out that they feel like playing an actual heroic character, instead of a mercenary type, is punished by the game. If you want to play a character who revels in the glories of combat and wants to wade in to the fray, they will suffer. (This isn't actually that true in my 5e game but even the appearance of it is enough to raise people's hackles.) Or another example, wanting to play a character who gets up close in melee is punishing not just because of the danger but because the added weight they carry from armor makes them the slowest to be able to run away if retreat is necessary, and so they're punished for wanting to play a mighty warrior as compared to an archer or something.
These are not moment to moment tactical decisions but just the general concept of certain characters.
I run actual old school 1E for all sorts of players. And there has only ever been one instance of someone complaining that they felt they were being punished for being heroic. It was 25 years ago. And if I told you the details of the session, I'm pretty sure you'd say he was actually a tactical player, not a narrative player. Literally every decision he made as informed by the rules. So if you don't count him, it's zero. Zero times I've encountered this problem. How is it this can be such a common problem for you and others but zero for me?
I don't think it's a huge mystery. I assume when people sit down play a game that there's a good chance that at least some of them are going to learn the rules and try to play to gain the greatest advantage for themselves possible. And so if I'm going to run a game that's supposed to have heroic fantasy themes, I make sure doing those things is viable. It's not rocket science.
But I do recognize that if I end up with situations like the ones that you describe, that I've screwed up somewhere. I've done something wrong. And I mean wrong. Like objectively bad. It's something that needs fixing.
If I'm running OSR for 5E players, and the more tactical players are having fun but the more dramatic players feel they are being punished, I don't scratch my head and say, "Well, I guess this RPG appeals to tactical players. Can't please everyone. RPG theory tells me these are different styles and that this sort of conflict is inevitable." No. I admit, either I fucked up as GM. Or I exercised poor judgment in choosing a piece of shit RPG. Or some combination of the two. And I figure it out. And I fix it. And hopefully next time I do better. If I chalk every failure up to subjectivity and conflict, I'll never solve the problem.
One of the reasons I hold 1E in such high reverence is because it actually has solutions. Unlike the 20+ years of RPG theory wank. And you nailed one in your next example. Seinfeld had the close talker. You have the close fighter. Okay. How does he run away? This isn't exactly the problem I was trying to solve many, many years ago when I came upon a solution. I wanted to see if I could start with a 1st level magic-user, by the book, and solo dungeon crawl through the random dungeon generator in Appendix A.
Before I even started giving it a try, I realized right away that running away was going to be key. So I thought I should give the Pursuit & Evasion of Pursuit chapter of the DMG a thorough read. I wanted to have it down cold so I didn't have to be flipping back during play. What I found there was not even really rules. It was tips on handling things players might try to get away. And that was the key. The rules don't give you a fair chance at running a way. You have to make your own chance. And then it suddenly seemed easy. And it felt like better odds than doing some kind of stupid modern RPG opposed skill check. Like literally better off not having a mechanic.
Close fighter's player doesn't need to be a tactical genius or anything like that. In 2 minutes or less, you can give 1 or 2 or 3 simple tips that will be understood and absorbed immediately, and it will never be a problem again. With any luck, it won't be long before Close Fighter starts coming up with their own tricks.
And so here, this one is even more clear, there was never any conflict. Never. This had nothing to do with playstyles or types of players. The problem is just someone was playing badly. Or the GM was adjudicating badly. Or the RPG was bad at offering guidance. Or some combination of the 3. The point is something somewhere was bad. Objectively bad. Not subjectively different preference oriented. One quick fix, and everyone is having fun. No one is feeling punished.
QuoteAnother point raised is that because the consequences can be dangerous, you feel disinclined to play your character
I actually laughed out loud at this. I fact-checked myself with a dictionary just to make sure I wasn't just being a jerk about it. But sure as shit, part of the definition of a hero is one who risks their life or even dies. You can't say, "I wanna play hero. But game punish me for playing hero. Game make hero die. That make me not wanna play hero no more." If you weren't willing to take the risk, you never wanted to play a hero to begin with. Because that's what it means to play the hero. And that's fine if you don't want that. No judgement, not malice. Just understand, whatever it is you want to play, hero isn't it.
Quotesince not only is it hurting you, it's hurting your TEAM, and you don't want to be the one responsible for dragging everyone down. And so even if you might ordinarily want your character to do one thing or another, you'll just do the optimal thing even if it isn't necessarily what your character would really do.
Yes. I realize I cut you off mid-sentence. I realize there was more. And it was important. And that my interjection did not address that important bit. It was not a gotcha. It was something I needed to lay out before answering the main idea.
And here it is. When you finally figure out what it really means to play a hero, I assure you there is nothing sub-optimal about it.
The entire premise here assumes without evidence that you've got optimum play in one corner character play in the other and they're inexorably opposed or conflicted. I reject that premise. It's complete nonsense. Just like Close Fighter, the supposed conflict is really just the product of bad play. It can be corrected. But not if you're telling yourself it was never bad to begin with, and that it was just a conflict of different subjective playstyles. Once you admit it's bad, you can start figuring out how to make it better. And once you figure it out, suddenly everyone's having fun and there's no conflict.
I think the tactical vs narrative false distinction comes from mechanics first vs fiction first. The former insists that only that which is in the rules is possible and the rules must always be applied where the latter asks if the action is possible and capable of succeeding and test with application of rule may not be needed because the outcome is guaranteed to succeed or fail. That is to say, if a PC has the password to a computer system, one would call for a use computer test possibly allowing take 10, or 20, while the other one leaves no doubt that given a compute and the password to it a PC can input it and gain access. This leads to checking one's character sheet or the rules for mechanical interaction vs using one's imagination to develop an action within character's implied capability. Thus, a mechanics player might decline a social interaction due to a poor CHA mod and lack of skill bonus, deferring to a more mechanically favorable character, while a fiction driven played would just have the PC interact because there is nothing prohibiting it and it may be framed favorably to avoid a test, like asking for directions instead of persuade skill-ing for the info using knowledge local. Is in in the rules and how can I get the best bonus, vs can I justify achieving the desired outcome without testing for it.
Quote from: Wisithir on October 13, 2022, 01:52:03 AM
I think the tactical vs narrative false distinction comes from mechanics first vs fiction first. The former insists that only that which is in the rules is possible and the rules must always be applied where the latter asks if the action is possible and capable of succeeding and test with application of rule may not be needed because the outcome is guaranteed to succeed or fail.
Not so much "only that which is in the rules is possible" but more "where the rules are specific, unambiguous, and situation-relevant, they should be applied, or there's no point in having them". And once the rules
are applied, knowing how the input factors of the mechanics affect the output probabilities is a more useful skill (from the point of view of maximizing game success) than knowing in the real world how a real person might implement the real actions those mechanics are simulating.
One of the great objectives of Simulationism, as a game design philosophy, was to create a ruleset not only as extensive and complete as possible, but as closely adherent to the reality it was simulating to the maximum degree possible still compatible with enjoyable playability. The kind of conflict I'm talking about tends to occur at the boundary of that zone between accuracy and playability.
Quote from: Jam The MF on October 05, 2022, 04:50:34 PM
Whatever the Dice Decide.
Can confirm.
I occasionally put something into the game that is not meant to be fought. My players are smart, and have gotten good at recognizing those situations, and retreated or parlayed rather than going "Leroy Jenkins!!!". However, sometimes the dice hate you. One PC took two crits that pulped both legs (he is now known as Lt. Dan). On the other hand, I had a Wizard crit his Magic Missile on the first round of combat and do 69 points of damage to the final-boss demon, blowing it back to the Abyss. And there have been a number of sessions where one or more PCs have been down to "take one more hit and you die", but were able to pull their bacon out of the fire.
Quote from: Lunamancer on October 13, 2022, 12:26:56 AMI appreciate the example, but I'm still at a loss here. ...I'm not sure why the players' "why" matters in any of this.
Let me try a different way of phrasing it: The "tactical" player is playing with an eye to what will be likeliest to "beat" the situation as a structured encounter resolved by the mechanics -- to maximize his odds by the rules. The "dramatic" player is playing with an eye to what will be likeliest to "beat" the situation as a described narrative resolved by GM interpretation -- to obtain success or failure by going outside the rules entirely, or by taking an action to completely change the situation the rules need to cover, and appealing straight to the GM's common sense, logic, or sense of drama to gain referee approval for that action.
Obviously there is lots of overlap between these approaches in practice, and they don't have to disagree on what they find to be the optimal solution to any one encounter. But they are different. And they can produce such disagreements. Being aware of that potential is something to take into consideration when designing games or scenarios.
In both cases, immediate and permanent character death as the result of a single failed decision point tends to be frustrating rather than entertaining, and so structuring the game to reduce the likelihood of this outcome is something I think worth doing. (You mentioned blackjack as an example of a game which still works despite regular, likely and immediate loss, but the catch is that in blackjack, you don't generally risk losing your pot for the entire evening on a single hand. And it takes seconds to reshuffle and deal a new hand, whereas it can take twenty to sixty minutes, sometimes much more, to create a new PC.)
QuoteMy experiences with Tomb of Horrors are right in line with what I typically see when running my homebrew stuff. Rules players are seldom effective. And when I first read Tomb of Horrors, I knew that's exactly how it would go, because in Tomb of Horrors it is to some extent done by design. It was meant to challenge characters with inflated stats. ...(but) it also has to be beatable by characters without inflated stats.
That is an interesting point which I didn't know, but doesn't that disqualify ToH as an example? All that shows is that typical PC rules-based strengths are irrelevant in an adventure which is deliberately designed to make them so, because it wants to subvert expectations created by typical play in that system. You can design one module, or module series, around that approach; you can't design an entire game system around it.
QuoteI am going to say something life has taught me is that for most problems and most situations, the significance of the things you don't know is greater than the significance of things you do know. Because that's how it goes when you live in a world of radical uncertainty.
I have no problem with introducing things not covered by the rules which one has to fall back on common sense to resolve. But introducing things that require non-rule-based thinking to resolve is not the same as making character capacities within the rules completely irrelevant to those characters' survival.
To consider your magical tuning fork, if one player's curious strike of the fork against a wall to see what happened was all it took to cause a cave-in so immediate and complete that it killed the entire party, I would call that counterproductively dangerous -- but I'd be willing to bet that wasn't the actual consequence in play, was it? Rather, I'd guess that any cave-in so caused would take the form of a series of saving throws which players could succeed at to escape, or to minimize damage such that those who did escape could save them. And if it did, then a player who correctly guessed there was a possibility of that outcome might decide whether to risk it or not based on his own knowledge of whether his saves gave him enough likelihood of surviving it -- and once again, knowledge of the rules becomes a critical part of the player decision process about what to risk.
Sooner or later, in any RPG, success comes down to a die roll against a target number, affected by modifiers (yes, sometimes you can find another option that doesn't require a roll, but not always). Deciding what to attempt based on quantifying the numbers that go into that is a strategy I think most people ultimately fall back on. Sometimes you can't know the actual numbers, and you have to guess their relative weight based on in-character assessment of the situation, as per your examples; I've never disagreed with that. But when you
do know the numbers, or have the opportunity to learn them, I think people are likelier to decide by the numbers first -- what I've been calling "the tactical approach".
Conversely, what I've been calling "the dramatic approach" is the deliberate choice not to learn the numbers or think in their terms. This does not, as already acknowledged, mean that a "dramatic" approach will necessarily point to less effective options than the "tactical" one ... but it does open up room for that to happen sometimes.
QuoteYou should check out the prequel. It gets to a part where it just starts killing off all these Greek heroes, a lot of recognizable names. I was like, Holy shit!
Of course. But the
Iliad is clearly the endgame scenario for a very long campaign for most of those heroes. You wouldn't toss a bunch of 1st-level fighters, thieves and clerics into the front lines of a ten-year-old siege where the gods themselves are showing up and expect any of them to make it into Homer.
QuoteI ask players what it is they like most about playing RPGs and some of them answer, "It's all about a good story" ... These are normal gamers. ...And they experience stories in real time. Then I jump on line to read people insisting it's not a story, we've got some serious wires crossed somewhere.
Well, one of my criteria for calling a series of events a "story" (and I freely admit this is the perspective of an English major and occasionally published author, so not necessarily that of every gamer) is:
Are the situations of the plot specifically tailored to the protagonist to dramatize his intended arc of character growth?The Tomb of Horrors is the same dungeon for anybody who goes into it, barring excessive GM customization. If a player derives a meaningful character arc for his PC out of it, more power to him, but that's something he brought to the table, not something the dungeon as published was designed to provide him or facilitate for him.
So perhaps a better way to say it is, "Dungeon crawls are not stories until and unless the players choose to make them so."
Quote from: Stephen Tannhauser on October 13, 2022, 04:39:46 PM
Let me try a different way of phrasing it: The "tactical" player is playing with an eye to what will be likeliest to "beat" the situation as a structured encounter resolved by the mechanics -- to maximize his odds by the rules. The "dramatic" player is playing with an eye to what will be likeliest to "beat" the situation as a described narrative resolved by GM interpretation -- to obtain success or failure by going outside the rules entirely, or by taking an action to completely change the situation the rules need to cover, and appealing straight to the GM's common sense, logic, or sense of drama to gain referee approval for that action.
Obviously there is lots of overlap between these approaches in practice, and they don't have to disagree on what they find to be the optimal solution to any one encounter. But they are different. And they can produce such disagreements. Being aware of that potential is something to take into consideration when designing games or scenarios.
When I was out-tacticing the tactical player, the resolution was handled within the rules. It's not like it was a situation of a dramatic player winning at a drama-oriented game. However you try to define or distinguish what I was doing, the fact is I bested the tactical player at his own game. That doesn't suggest two different but equal approaches to playing the game. It suggests different echelons of play.
I never denied that playing badly can create problems. But bad play is something that can be corrected.
QuoteYou mentioned blackjack as an example of a game which still works despite regular, likely and immediate loss, but the catch is that in blackjack, you don't generally risk losing your pot for the entire evening on a single hand. And it takes seconds to reshuffle and deal a new hand, whereas it can take twenty to sixty minutes, sometimes much more, to create a new PC.
I assure you, I can afford to roll up more new characters than I can afford to lose hands of blackjack. It's a common but sad delusion shared by gamers that rolling up a new character is somehow costly. It's not. It's free. If taking an hour to do so is too much of a drag, that's a good reason not to play RPGs where character creation takes an hour.
QuoteThat is an interesting point which I didn't know, but doesn't that disqualify ToH as an example? All that shows is that typical PC rules-based strengths are irrelevant in an adventure which is deliberately designed to make them so, because it wants to subvert expectations created by typical play in that system. You can design one module, or module series, around that approach; you can't design an entire game system around it.
I think there's a difference between rules-based strengths are irrelevant and bloated stats won't save you. Playing characters on the lower end of the suggested range is definitely more challenging than playing one at the mid or high end. Stats matter in that sense. But you can't win without making wise choices. And bad stats won't kill you if you avoid the mistakes.
As to subverting expectations, I don't think that's a fair characterization of the module. Obviously to some degree traps need to subvert expectations. Tricking you is part of how they work. But no one would be able to reason their way through it if it was nothing but curveball after curveball. And that would undermine the point of it.
QuoteTo consider your magical tuning fork, if one player's curious strike of the fork against a wall to see what happened was all it took to cause a cave-in so immediate and complete that it killed the entire party, I would call that counterproductively dangerous -- but I'd be willing to bet that wasn't the actual consequence in play, was it?
Players didn't ding it except on the Bard. But indeed, one bad choice did have a small but not insignificant chance of a TPK, a few deaths at the very least. There was a good chance of it kicking off something of a mini-game of digging friends out while avoiding more falling rocks. And there was a slight chance of it amounting to nothing but a minor nuisance. A few areas in the dungeon were marked on my secret GM map as red zones, where dinging would have been especially disastrous and unforgiving. In one place, it would cause a collapse of the ceiling revealing a secret dungeon level that could easily be accessed by climbing up the rubble. The PCs never found that.
QuoteRather, I'd guess that any cave-in so caused would take the form of a series of saving throws which players could succeed at to escape, or to minimize damage such that those who did escape could save them. And if it did, then a player who correctly guessed there was a possibility of that outcome might decide whether to risk it or not based on his own knowledge of whether his saves gave him enough likelihood of surviving it -- and once again, knowledge of the rules becomes a critical part of the player decision process about what to risk.
The way it worked is if you dinged the tuning fork, there was a chance for either a total collapse (which would block the corridor) or a partial collapse. It's almost like the dungeon ceiling got to save for half. If it was a total collapse, everyone in the area would have to save or die. If successful, it still meant they were trapped. Trapped individuals could save themselves with a Bend Bars/Lift Gates roll (one chance only). If it was a partial collapse, a save indicated free and clear, a failure indicated trapped but alive. In all cases, of course, the rocks caused some damage, and all this is assuming you didn't die of falling rock damage.
So this player in your example would have been correct that a saving throw would save him from outright death in even the worst case scenario. But probably wouldn't anticipate that the severity hinged on the dungeon ceiling making an item save, and that in a worst-case scenario, if his Strength was too low to get a Bend Bars/Lift Gates chance, that there was no roll that would allow him to walk away without help.
QuoteSooner or later, in any RPG, success comes down to a die roll against a target number, affected by modifiers (yes, sometimes you can find another option that doesn't require a roll, but not always). Deciding what to attempt based on quantifying the numbers that go into that is a strategy I think most people ultimately fall back on. Sometimes you can't know the actual numbers, and you have to guess their relative weight based on in-character assessment of the situation, as per your examples; I've never disagreed with that. But when you do know the numbers, or have the opportunity to learn them, I think people are likelier to decide by the numbers first -- what I've been calling "the tactical approach".
Conversely, what I've been calling "the dramatic approach" is the deliberate choice not to learn the numbers or think in their terms. This does not, as already acknowledged, mean that a "dramatic" approach will necessarily point to less effective options than the "tactical" one ... but it does open up room for that to happen sometimes.
And I've never denied any of this. I just think it sounds better in theory than it works in practice. There's nothing assailable about your logic. No reason in principle you couldn't get some value out of partial information. In fact, I usually do it myself. But it didn't address the key issue I raised. That some people when faced with limited information over-emphasize the value of that information.
QuoteWell, one of my criteria for calling a series of events a "story" (and I freely admit this is the perspective of an English major and occasionally published author, so not necessarily that of every gamer) is: Are the situations of the plot specifically tailored to the protagonist to dramatize his intended arc of character growth?
The Tomb of Horrors is the same dungeon for anybody who goes into it, barring excessive GM customization. If a player derives a meaningful character arc for his PC out of it, more power to him, but that's something he brought to the table, not something the dungeon as published was designed to provide him or facilitate for him.
I'm a mathematician by education. But by vocation, I'm one of the top sales producers of one of the largest companies in the world. The secret to my sales success is to first understand the customer's perspective and what their motivation is, what problem they're trying to solve. And then to present my product to them in a way that demonstrates that it actually solves their problem.
The products I have to offer are the same for everyone. The needs of the customers are all unique. And my livelihood depends on the same product appealing to a unique motivation. And I'll be the first to admit. Not ever product is a fit for every person. But reaching an accommodation is a common enough thing that I have a job.
In sharing experiences about Tomb of Horrors, it comes through in spades. Sometimes someone says to me no way any party makes it through without losing a few members. And I'll say, "Really? I ran a group of newbs through it, and they did it without a problem." And they'll say, "There's no way they could have beaten Acererak!" And I say, "Beat him? You idiot. You don't have to fight him. He doesn't even do anything if you leave him alone." One of them hit me with, "Well, what if I'm playing a Paladin on a mission to destroy him."
Different motives. Different experiences. The module delivers.
QuoteSo perhaps a better way to say it is, "Dungeon crawls are not stories until and unless the players choose to make them so."
I forgot the main point of bringing up my sales background was that it's really, really important in my line of work to distinguish the difference between feature and benefit. Most people confuse the two. Gamers seem especially bad at it. Features are objective. Benefits are subjective. While the actual dungeon is a fixed, objective thing, the crawl is a subjective experience specific to the group. Why are you going into such a dangerous place? Motive. That's not a feature of the dungeon. And different motives generally imply different goals. Different win conditions. Different places within the dungeon you need to get to. What one group MUST accomplish by design of their own motives, another group has the option to bypass. The villain for one group might be the red herring for another.
I always thought one of the finest examples of a published dungeon ever, judged according to what I just laid out, was Keep on the Borderlands. By not having an overarching story, it stands aside allowing PCs to pursue their own goals. This makes the experience a lot more tailored to the PCs. And it's also got interesting bits for generating new story elements as you go. Like orcs try to capture PCs rather than kill. They let one go to fetch a ransom for the rest. So now you either have to raise the ransom money or plan a jailbreak.
In the TTRGP world it's regarded as perhaps one of the finest or at least most classic example of a sandbox. And I think sandbox is an apt term for it. But then the dictum gets handed down that sandbox and story are like oil and water. Why? There comes a point when it's fuck this shit. I experience what I experience and I know what I know.
Pluto got de-planeted. Pluto didn't change. What we know about Pluto didn't change. The definition of planet was arbitrarily changed. Word is, the vote that changed the definition was conducted improperly. It continues to be hotly contested. Years before it was taken, some people were already leaving Pluto off their models. Pluto didn't become any more or any less of a planet than it ever was. People just got pettier.
You can, in theory, reach zero health from maximum, depending on circumstances, but it's rare. Generally, you'd have to roll very poorly on defense, the enemy would need an excellent attack roll, and of course the lower your health total, the easier it will be. It's not that big of a deal though, since player characters don't permanently die, and there are plenty of ways to re-join the fight after being defeated.
Is there any meaningful difference between multiple consecutive rolls with no decisions in between and one roll with the same probability? I am not seeing the difference between roll to hit, roll for damage, save vs massive damage, and then save vs death compared to one roll with same probability of succeeding against some instant death effect. Unless there is a mechanic for modifying rolls in place I see no difference between one roll and many rolls to reach the same outcome without further player input.
Quote from: Wisithir on October 14, 2022, 07:35:28 PM
Is there any meaningful difference between multiple consecutive rolls with no decisions in between and one roll with the same probability? I am not seeing the difference between roll to hit, roll for damage, save vs massive damage, and then save vs death compared to one roll with same probability of succeeding against some instant death effect. Unless there is a mechanic for modifying rolls in place I see no difference between one roll and many rolls to reach the same outcome without further player input.
If there's no possibility of intervention or differentiation, then there is no difference. Presumably, however, the sequence should be couched in terms that make the latter rolls have some kind of difference. Bitten by poisonous spider, save or die immediately. Not great, but there's at least the chance to recognize that, "Hey, we are fighting spiders. Maybe we should run for it if we don't have any way to deal with poison ahead of time?" Better, is bitten by poisonous spider, save or die soon thereafter. Even better if the players were scouting and noticed the spiders before they had to run. Of course, it takes some time to learn that kind of play. Some people only learn it by strolling into a dark room whistling, when the spider drops off the ceiling and bites them, and usually in those cases dead now versus dead in 10 minutes is not going to make any material difference. :D
This is why, for example, when traps are sprung, unless the detection options are completely screwed up, I usually announce the results in two stages with a decision in between. "There's an ominous, sharp click and the rattle of gears, quick, what do you do?" Then depending on the reaction, there might be a different save or no save needed or no save even possible. Depending on exactly what the character was doing that started those events, some options might seem to the player to be a better choice. For me, that's a lot more fun than "Pit opens up beneath you impossibly fast, make Save X or take 4d6 damage to your 8 hit points."
Quote from: Wisithir on October 14, 2022, 07:35:28 PM
Is there any meaningful difference between multiple consecutive rolls with no decisions in between and one roll with the same probability? I am not seeing the difference between roll to hit, roll for damage, save vs massive damage, and then save vs death compared to one roll with same probability of succeeding against some instant death effect. Unless there is a mechanic for modifying rolls in place I see no difference between one roll and many rolls to reach the same outcome without further player input.
I asked this question earlier up thread, with an important twist. But I think too many words, too many topics at once led to the OP misinterpreted the question.
Here's the twist. Multiple enemies each making their own attack before you can react is also an example of multiple consecutive rolls with no decisions in between.
If the goal is to give PCs a fair chance to do something to change the outcome, you can't solve it just by reigning in the effects of a single deadly attack.
If the goal is just to eliminate one hit kills, then that's fine. It just leaves me a little curious why it's strength in numbers is fine but strength in strength is not. What is it we're really trying to accomplish?
Quote from: Lunamancer on October 14, 2022, 10:18:32 PMMultiple enemies each making their own attack before you can react is also an example of multiple consecutive rolls with no decisions in between.
If the goal is just to eliminate one hit kills, then that's fine. It just leaves me a little curious why it's strength in numbers is fine but strength in strength is not.
For two reasons: 1) Multiple foes almost always allow far more opportunity to foresee their danger and evade them ahead of time; 2) As shown by Luke Crane's "Let It Ride" rule in
Burning Wheel, the chance of a series of consecutive rolls all succeeding is far far lower than one roll at the same probability succeeding -- the "Let It Ride" rule is basically a statement that a player rolls
once for any given goal and then goes with that result, rather than the GM making him repeat a series of rolls where he only has to fail once to fail at his overall goal.
Quote from: Stephen Tannhauser on October 15, 2022, 02:28:25 AM
For two reasons: 1) Multiple foes almost always allow far more opportunity to foresee their danger and evade them ahead of time;
That's vague, generic, and not really true. It's clearly easier to see a giant coming than it is 5 elves.
Quote2) As shown by Luke Crane's "Let It Ride" rule in Burning Wheel, the chance of a series of consecutive rolls all succeeding is far far lower than one roll at the same probability succeeding
This evades the context. My comment was in response to a question that had a specific stipulation on the table. Which was, if I may rephrase it for clarity, what difference is there if it's a single roll, or multiple rolls whose cumulative probability is equal to the one roll. So for example, comparing something that takes one roll that needs to roll a 20 on d20 versus something that calls for 5 rolls, all of which must be successful, but only need a 10 or better on d20. The chance of either one happening is 5%.
Quotethe "Let It Ride" rule is basically a statement that a player rolls once for any given goal and then goes with that result, rather than the GM making him repeat a series of rolls where he only has to fail once to fail at his overall goal.
It's pretty basic math with no special GM insight. It's a generic statement, and I think GMs will always be better off using their own judgment as to when to call for a roll and when not to rather than following this rule.
I don't think there really is a difference between the one big roll and multiple smaller rolls, except maybe psychologically it might feel like the multiple smaller rolls are more fair, even though it's the same thing mathematically.
The answer should be that it takes multiple steps to reach that point. Multiple mistakes, errors of judgment, etc. Which, in a way, could be the same thing as the multiple die rolls. Let's do a thought experiment.
Suppose that there's a tomb, and the player enters, and there's multiple mistakes they need to make before they finally hit the final roll that kills them. Let's say there's a trap: the trap is hidden, the player needs to mess up several things, and the chance of them messing up each thing is the same as one of those aforementioned die rolls happening. Like they don't search for clues, they don't do anything when it activates, they fail the save to avoid the trap, they fail the save to avoid the save or die that comes from the poison, they die. Most of us would say that is fair.
Now suppose you take the probability of all those happening and compress it into 1 die and you make it so the PC has to make that save automatically the instant they just enter the tomb itself. Would that be fair? Just a 1% chance anyone who sets foot here dies on the spot.
Quote from: mAcular Chaotic on October 15, 2022, 07:11:31 PM
The answer should be that it takes multiple steps to reach that point. Multiple mistakes, errors of judgment, etc. Which, in a way, could be the same thing as the multiple die rolls. Let's do a thought experiment.
So this was more or less the point I was getting at. One die roll, many dice rolls, what really matters is whether or not there is the opportunity for an interposing decision. And if you want to ensure there is such an opportunity, nerfing one massive damage attack is not enough. There would also need to be some allowance for cases of multiple successive attacks.
Speaking for myself, I don't view multiple mistakes as being a must before a PC dies. I have no problem with there being a probability of death without further opportunity to make decisions when danger is clear and preset, up to and including automatic death in the case where the PC intentionally trips a clearly-baited death trap.
I also hold it's also kosher for one decision to lead to a chance for an instakill probability when the PC is already in a situation where there is a probability of death and the decision in question actually has the effect of reducing that probability.
Bear in mind death of the character due to old age is 100% in the cards. If the DM is calling for the periodic disease checks, as I do, a character of average CON has a life expectancy of under 35. Taking even very high risks going into the dungeon or other dangerous adventuring, if it comes with it the prospect of massive amounts of treasure of the kind that would enable sufficient "donation" to an NPC cleric who can perform a Cure Disease, is nonetheless trading up to better odds.
Every player character dies. Not every player character truly lives. I'd rather focus on making sure PCs have the opportunity to do something meaningful rather than merely the opportunity to escape something challenging or dangerous.
Wait, under 35? What do you mean? Most human age tables put characters dying at old age around 100 or so.
Quote from: mAcular Chaotic on October 15, 2022, 07:11:31 PM
Suppose that there's a tomb, and the player enters, and there's multiple mistakes they need to make before they finally hit the final roll that kills them. Let's say there's a trap: the trap is hidden, the player needs to mess up several things, and the chance of them messing up each thing is the same as one of those aforementioned die rolls happening. Like they don't search for clues, they don't do anything when it activates, they fail the save to avoid the trap, they fail the save to avoid the save or die that comes from the poison, they die. Most of us would say that is fair.
Now suppose you take the probability of all those happening and compress it into 1 die and you make it so the PC has to make that save automatically the instant they just enter the tomb itself. Would that be fair? Just a 1% chance anyone who sets foot here dies on the spot.
Does describing how or what clues one looks for still call for a test, or just consumes time and succeeds?
Is there a descriptive event when the trap activates and a chance to declare a reflexive actions like hit the deck, shield cover and direction, or leaping backwards or a straight save vs trap?
If other PCs avoided the trap can they intervene to affect the save vs death roll?
Is it mandatory to pass through the trap to complete the mission?
If no player actions could effect the rolls involved, I would far rather roll to save vs TPK and let the next batch of characters investigate how the first party perished on failure.
Quote from: mAcular Chaotic on October 15, 2022, 09:00:12 PM
Wait, under 35? What do you mean? Most human age tables put characters dying at old age around 100 or so.
That's maximum age. Life expectancy is a whole different thing. If you go through the disease table and calculate the probability that a character with 10 CON randomly contracts a terminal disease, and then take that small probability but compound it over 12 monthly checks per year, that will get you to somewhere in the early 30's. Which is historically accurate. But using these disease tables also captures an interesting and accurate nuance of life expectancy. The average number of years a 20 year old had left to live was the same as the average number of years a 40 year old had left to live. The idea being if you made it to 40 in the first place, you were probably healthier than average.
Characters with high CONs don't need to worry about it so much. The average length of time it will take to die of natural disease exceeds the max age of the human life span. Character's with very Low Con, as in 5 or less you can only be an Illusionist range, you've got less than 5 game years from the time of character creation.
Cautionary note for elves. If you don't have some means of dealing with disease, that 1200 year lifespan won't mean anything. The -1 to CON doesn't help you any either.
Quote from: Wisithir on October 14, 2022, 07:35:28 PM
Is there any meaningful difference between multiple consecutive rolls with no decisions in between and one roll with the same probability? I am not seeing the difference between roll to hit, roll for damage, save vs massive damage, and then save vs death compared to one roll with same probability of succeeding against some instant death effect. Unless there is a mechanic for modifying rolls in place I see no difference between one roll and many rolls to reach the same outcome without further player input.
If I have to roll four times, and failing any one roll results in death, my probability of survival is low.
If I have to roll four times, and I have to fail all of them to die, my probability of survival is high.
Basically, multiple rolls are an alternative method to alter probability distribution without having to introduce complicated resolution math. Each of these rolls, for example, could simply be "roll higher than 4 on a d6".
Obviously, we assume that the roll type and threshold are the same in each case; if all the rolls are different, we can say nothing about the probability generally, and the advantage of this method (simplicity, ease of resolution) is negated.
Quote from: allisonkaas on October 16, 2022, 10:56:20 AM
Quote from: Wisithir on October 14, 2022, 07:35:28 PM
Is there any meaningful difference between multiple consecutive rolls with no decisions in between and one roll with the same probability? I am not seeing the difference between roll to hit, roll for damage, save vs massive damage, and then save vs death compared to one roll with same probability of succeeding against some instant death effect. Unless there is a mechanic for modifying rolls in place I see no difference between one roll and many rolls to reach the same outcome without further player input.
If I have to roll four times, and failing any one roll results in death, my probability of survival is low.
If I have to roll four times, and I have to fail all of them to die, my probability of survival is high.
Basically, multiple rolls are an alternative method to alter probability distribution without having to introduce complicated resolution math. Each of these rolls, for example, could simply be "roll higher than 4 on a d6".
Obviously, we assume that the roll type and threshold are the same in each case; if all the rolls are different, we can say nothing about the probability generally, and the advantage of this method (simplicity, ease of resolution) is negated.
Yeah, but for those 4 rolls, you could just do a single d100 roll with the probability of failing all 4 rolls, or whatever your fail condition is. And that's much simple too. That's the question.
Quote from: mAcular Chaotic on October 16, 2022, 05:16:47 PM
Quote from: allisonkaas on October 16, 2022, 10:56:20 AM
Quote from: Wisithir on October 14, 2022, 07:35:28 PM
Is there any meaningful difference between multiple consecutive rolls with no decisions in between and one roll with the same probability? I am not seeing the difference between roll to hit, roll for damage, save vs massive damage, and then save vs death compared to one roll with same probability of succeeding against some instant death effect. Unless there is a mechanic for modifying rolls in place I see no difference between one roll and many rolls to reach the same outcome without further player input.
If I have to roll four times, and failing any one roll results in death, my probability of survival is low.
If I have to roll four times, and I have to fail all of them to die, my probability of survival is high.
Basically, multiple rolls are an alternative method to alter probability distribution without having to introduce complicated resolution math. Each of these rolls, for example, could simply be "roll higher than 4 on a d6".
Obviously, we assume that the roll type and threshold are the same in each case; if all the rolls are different, we can say nothing about the probability generally, and the advantage of this method (simplicity, ease of resolution) is negated.
Yeah, but for those 4 rolls, you could just do a single d100 roll with the probability of failing all 4 rolls, or whatever your fail condition is. And that's much simple too. That's the question.
I agree completely; personally, I would never use more than one roll to determine the outcome of an action if I could possibly avoid it.
I think some of it comes down to how easily the PCs can avoid combat altogether. In games where there are diplomatic, social or stealth options I am much more comfortable with one hit kills mechanics. But if the game is basically a combat game then one hit kills mechanics aren't so fun.
I feel like the main argument for a single roll is simplicity and ripping off the band-aid so to speak. That said, I feel like each action or response to say a trap may at times require a roll, cuz you might do something different depending on roll result. Kind of a necessary evil where player choice is concerned.
Like I wouldn't roll for if a trap kills somebody out of nowhere in the rare instances I get to DM. First there would be perception of the general area, where they might spot it and might decide just to turn back even without seeing it, then choices if they do see it to try to disarm it and if they don't and pass over it then their durability or reflexes or whatever makes sense might be tested. Basically, both for player choice and making each stat consideration count individually depending on whether or not it would actually apply I feel like multiple rolls can assist.
Also, sometimes I think players can better accept character death if they see it coming and get how they got there, rather than feeling like it was a bolt from the blue. With multiples rolls, you have the chance to see it coming and mentally prepare to some degree. I think it's a complex topic, though, and would vary a bit situationally both as regards in-game and out-of-game dynamics and considerations as well.
This is a thing in Albedo for example. DO NOT get into gunfights unless you are A: prepared, or B: have no other option. A single shot, depending on the weapon and range to a degree, and the location hit, can kill any character in one shot. The chance is low. But it is ever present. You can lower this chance by sticking to cover, wearing protective gear, and so on.
So a standard EDF issue 8mm Pistol has a base 2 in 2d6 chance of scoring catastrophic damage. About 8% chance. If that is a head or chest hit then that is instant death. If you had a helmet or kevlar vest on then its only a 1 in 2d6. About 3%. The base chance of getting a fatal location hit though is 40% if shooting normal, 66% if they were aiming high, and only a 10% chance if they were aiming low.
Luckily the bell curve means on average the damages will not be usually fatal under normal conditions. Usually. But you are likely still unconcious and bleeding out. And if that bleeding is not stopped very very fast, you still die even if it was not an instant kill.
Armour will likely reduce the damage depending on the armour and the damage factor.