Challenge the Player, not the Stat Block (D&D)
Callan S.:
Hi Landon,
I think I'm being indistinct when I talk about emotional investment. I'll put it this way - I myself think it's a bad thing to spend time and effort on something, only for it to be discarded. Perhaps if your mega dungeon had poofed and turned to ash, it would have had more emotional effect - while filing it away gave the (as it turned out), illusion that it'd get used again? As you say, you didn't use it again and its pretty clear you never will. But regardless, I think it's a practical life concern - you don't put effort into things that you then effectively discard.
And I mean jeez, you've never lost a post on the forge or some other forum, and growled at the server? Discarding a dungeon isn't much different.
I think it's a practical problem that needs to be solved, somehow. Off the cuff, rough ideas coming to mind is a board game structure that can be played instantly and if the GM is struck with inspiration during play, adding stuff thats off the boardgame path and into the imaginative. Once he runs out of inspiration, slip back onto the board game. That's a rough idea, to start with.
Hi Gareth,
I don't think modules are a terrible solution, either. But I've never seen an RPG that said it worked strictly from modules only? That gives the impression even the ones with modules you can functionally make material to play from. And by functionally I mean not go against the idea of 'if you put time and effort into something, discarding it is bad'.
contracycle:
Oh sure, no game has ever relied totally on modules, and I don't think it would be practical to do so exclusively. But D&D had, and I believe still does, whole series of linked modules, which ran on from one another. If you worked your way through the lot of them, there would be a substantial amount of play available. Running through most of the Giants/Drow/Slavers/Elemental Evil line of modules kept us happy for actual years - most of my highschool gaming. And really the only reason I wrote stuff myself was because I couldn't get them easily or cheaply, and that was more a function of the local exchange rate than anything else. Frankly in terms of start-to-finish playing, that was some of the best stuff we ever did, and I find it frustrating that the general climate is now to regard module play as inherently unsatisfactory or impractical.
Daniel B:
Quote from: JoyWriter on May 13, 2009, 11:45:46 AM
Do you think there is any way to make rules for this stuff? As in GM prep aids that help them to build internal logic to their dungeons so that people can work out puzzles from each other, or flag systems so that GMs can see what kind of puzzles they like defeating?
I started coming up with a possible "prep aid" for this when reaching the same conclusion as the OP: i.e. characters are just pieces of paper, and the real goal should be to engage the players. I did some research on puzzles and eventually found this article by Ron Gilbert (who was the guy behind the first few The Secret of Monkey Island computer adventure games.) I've chosen it as my puzzle-bible. I wasn't content to just have a The GM Should Design Puzzles Like This chapter in the manual, because I believe such chapters are just another way of saying "we couldn't figure out how to fit it into the game, so you'll have to do it". However, I desperately wanted to find a way to imbue my tabletop RPG with the design concepts presented in the article.
So I began with the following question: how does a GM determine the placement and behaviour of puzzles, as well as monsters and NPCs? The answer is that it depends upon context since, for example, a monster designed as part of a puzzle has a different meaning than a monster that doubles as a major obstacle in a dungeon, which too has a much different meaning that a monster doubling as a major NPC in the quest. In other words, you can't understand their appropriateness in any given place until you understand the dungeon itself. By extending this logic, you can’t understand the dungeon until you understand it’s place in the quest.
So why not design things this way? It occurred to me that quest and puzzle design concepts could be encapsulated into a collection of descriptions and possibly statistics, based on the nature of the quest. It next occurred to me that collection of descriptions and possibly statistics is simply another way to say character. I thought maybe I could imbue the puzzle design concepts into a "meta-character", a sort of narrator-ish thing that doesn't exist in the game world but influences it in a similar way that the GM does (though it's NOT a GM avatar; I'll repeat in saying that it has no actual in-game existence).
One could encapsulate content into several independent "quepie dolls" (as I've been calling them), each with it's own flavour and which hints at the ratio of combat-to-social-to-puzzles it contains so that the players can choose their own destiny instead of being railroaded into it. Furthermore, these don't have to be fleshed out entirely, but instead just given a little bit of personality until the players actively pursue one quest. By organizing things top-down like this, monsters, NPCs and puzzles start to fall into place and it becomes a lot easier to develop inter-relationships (which may help or hinder the PCs, or completely take them by surprise.) Furthermore, each doll starts to gain it's own quasi-personality, in exactly the same way that settings or events in a novel have a feel and taste to them. The "Quest to kill the Fire-dragon Lord" might have a violent feeling, generally. It's QP doll would put a lot of fiery dungeons and lava pits into the game and control them in the same way a GM would traditionally do it.
Here's what I've got so far for quepie doll structure, though it's been left undeveloped as I'm currently working on more core issues for our system at the moment. It's also OUT OF DATE, as I've seriously done some rethinking on rewards and character death. (However, I intend to fully flesh this out later.) Yes, despite my claims that it should have statistics in it, there aren't any yet. I'm getting around to that.
QPC (Quest Personification Character, or QP doll) Character Sheet
Context: the non quest-specific details, which are decided by the GM outside the quepie doll, and over which the doll has no control. What land/world is it set in? What’s the mood of the campaign? (e.g. fantasy-adventure, horror, western, etc.)Main Characters and their Abilities: important PCs and NPCs. The PCs are obviously main characters but it’s important to be aware of their abilities so that the subgoals can be defined appropriately.Main Goal: the ultimate purpose of the quest. The PCs should virtually always be aware of this goal when they begin the quest, although sometimes people lie.Hooks: How the PCs learn about the quest, and what may motivate them to follow it.Subgoals: the players must accomplish the ultimate goal by completing a series of smaller goals. These subgoals must be clearly connected to the main goal or the PCs will have no reason to pursue it. The subgoals (or at least the next few) should be obvious to the players, to maintain their motivation to continue. Obvious progress towards the main goal should be made whenever a subgoal is completed. The subgoals should probably not be entirely linear (e.g. you must reach A to open B, you must reach B to open C, etc.), because this makes for a boring story, although small linear subsets are fine. Subgoals have the following attributes:Puzzles: Each subgoal may include puzzles that need to be solved, in order to achieve the subgoalChallenges: Unlike puzzles, the challenges aren’t meant to be solved, really. Instead, they are just obstructions placed into the PCs’ path to stretch their abilities and make their lives just a tad more difficult but entertaining. Note the puzzles must never be used as obstructions; for example, figuring out that the pattern on the gem is actually the path through a maze is a hollow victory if there’s only regular +2 sword at the end of the maze and the sword is not important to the storyNPCs: Each subgoal will have a set of NPCs that are important along the players’ path to completing the subgoal. These may be long-running important NPCs, the same characters from other subgoals, or NPCs that are new altogetherMonsters: The monsters may technically be a category of “Challenge”. They make the PCs lives’ difficult and make sure the rewards are really earned. However, they are more flexible in that they CAN also take on the role of other NPCs. There may be a “meta-challenge” introduced by the monster, in that it can be more important to the story if the players don’t outright kill it. (However, hints should be given.) Furthermore, unlike D&D, monsters do not automatically grant treasure, since reward-granting is under the purview of the quest or subquestRewards: Rewards should be small and granted incrementally, during the players’ progress towards the subgoal. A given reward may be as simple as opening up a previously unexplored area in the game or revealing interesting information about the quest or game worldSubgoal Skeleton: the structure of the subgoals on the path towards the main goal. The PCs should not be forced down any one path towards a solution (i.e. railroaded). Instead, there should be a variety of ways that the main goal can be accomplished, and the players should be able to choose their own path towards it, or abandon it altogether. A DM can build a subgoal skeleton to try and anticipate those paths
Daniel
AzaLiN:
Player skill is good- imagine playing half-life with auto aim, a dice rolling method to solve puzzles, and way points to guide you through the mazes. Leveling up your auto aim and puzzle solving-
ok stop. that was painful!
What about real life boxing, you against your buddy... except where your to-hit is determined by a dice roll, and your dodging is represented by your AC.
stop again! ouch!
Not to forget that having to actually aim in a table top RPG would also be excruciating...
thus:
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A few years ago when we played roleplaying games we decided that the intelligence and charisma attributes a)replaced actual roleplaying, or b) tried to either force somebody to play a dumber character than themselves (lame), or a smarter one (impossible- gonna give the players clues or something? can you say 'railroading'?), or c) were extremely vague in implementation.
So we eliminated those attributes completely. Same thing for many skills. In the end, we mostly just had combat and magic mechanics left, and, frankly, I sort of liked it that way.
In a system I built up 2 years ago, again, those attributes/skills were completely absent, except for certain ones that roleplaying didn't represent properly, like determining whether a lie was delivered believably or not, or whether a character could spot the lie, since we were interacting with each other and everybody already knew whether it was a lie or not, especially the DM, and thus bypassing a great deal of player-player lying (entertaining, but weird too. too many notes/out of room discourses) and confusion/ pretending to not know/ trying to guess whether it was a lie while knowing what it actually was.
Basically, dice rolling only came in in situations that couldn't be handled well by... well, roleplaying.
In 4e, we've been using a lot more skills, especially conversation skills. In a way, I like them, but in a way, I strongly dislike them- I'd like to retool them to something closer to our old methods.
Callan S.:
I remember I think it was 2e D&D, saying if a player learnt a new skill in real life, they could bring it into the game - as if this was wonderful. It struck me as really bogus at the time - because in real life they learnt some skill, they get a range of new resources/opportunities in the game. Skillfully using resources and getting resources because of a real life skill you happen to have, are very different.
Don't get me wrong - if you want to have a minigame like throwing darts in RL to determine a hit, that's cool. But just because you have a RL skill, you just get X or Y? Actually I suppose I'm okay if a skill is demonstrated at play - but if someone just talks the talk about a skill and gets something without walking some walk, it's bullshit!
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