Challenge the Player, not the Stat Block (D&D)
contracycle:
Quote from: ShallowThoughts on May 21, 2009, 01:45:49 PM
Here's my point of view: it's impossible to challenge a stat-block.
I disagree. The bit I think you are missing is that the stat block can be so weighty, so significant, that player decisions matter very little. If you do something that gains a +1 in D&D, this only a 5% change in the odds, almost all of which are determined pre-play. Even with an active player making decisions, the sheer mass of the system calculations takes much of the outcome out of the players hands.
Many other systems are not so weighty, have more decisive and less attritional exchanges, and are more sympathetic to situational modifiers, which allows in-game events, player description and decision, to be much more significant. That, IMO, really can be a challenge to the player in a way in which two stat blocks whittling each other down can not.
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I guess I've GMed too many games that eventually turned gamist despite their promising beginnings.
And that's a Bad Thing, is it?
otspiii:
This is actually something I've been struggling with, myself. A problem I've had with a lot of my RP experiences is that the challenge is all at the start, during character creation. Game-play turns into me watching the stat-robot I created make it's way through the challenge the GM has created. Success or failure becomes a die roll, not a choice backed up by a die roll. Obviously this isn't how the whole session goes, usually, but it can be a problem with the stat-heavy bits, like combat. Non-magical fighters are especially vulnerable to this, as a lot of the time combat just turns into parking your character next to your opponent and seeing who runs out of HP first. Even worse, these combats can take hours to resolve under some systems, during which the players really don't have any meaningful input.
I've come up with a few ways around this, but they're all risky in their own ways. Giving the players multiple 'balanced' options can bring more of the challenge to the gameplay, rather than the character creation. I think this is what 4th ed D&D is all about, and I think it succeeds fairly well. The danger to this is that it only adds a bit of extra player-challenge. A lot of the time the best choice is still obvious, and the player's input goes from strategy to 'not picking the obviously inferior choice'.
Re-enforcing cleverness with stat bonuses can work, but is tricky. Let's say a character has a +6 to persuasion. Giving the character another +2 on top of that +6 if the player himself gives a persuasive argument brings the strategic wiggle room into the present fairly well, but it's really difficult keeping this sort of judgment from being arbitrary. Accusations of GM favoritism and other inter-player problems flow easy from this solution. Over long periods of time, especially, it can be hard to be consistent with player rewards.
The type of 'old school' puzzle you guys have been talking about is another solution, where the challenge is a riddle or non-stat-based trap or even a physical puzzle to put together. I feel like this solution, done badly, can be super dangerous. Gameplay can easily degenerate into games of "read the GM's mind to figure out the solution to this puzzle he decided on or watch your character die". I've heard horror story after horror story of games just completely derailed due to the players not being able to figure out a 'clever' riddle or puzzle.
The way I usually run my games is actually somewhat like Vulpinoid said earlier. Throw some moral or non-stat-based strategic choices at the players, then make them back up their choice with some stat-rolling. If they fail the stat-rolling it doesn't negate their choice, it just accentuates the potential negatives their choice entails. The danger of this method is when the choices take 5 minutes and the rolling takes 3 hours. The more stat-heavy the game is the grimmer this method works out to be.
AzaLiN:
I agree a lot with Otspiii here: I want the challenge to occur during play. Otherwise, actual game-play is lacking one of the most important elements, and becomes more of a testing ground in a battle-of-the-builds scenario- suitable for MTG, but not for most RPGs.
greyorm:
Quote from: LandonSuffered on May 13, 2009, 10:55:01 AM
Heh…don’t get me wrong. I’m not saying JM’s blog is THE way to play. I’m just saying I think some of his observations are right on…and I don’t think he’s presenting something as THE way to play...
That may be, I was just responding to the quotes provided which come off (to me) as sounding like "Back in the old days, we ALL did it THIS way..." And I distrust his observations on those grounds, though I think there is something to them in terms of reporting a particular style of game you've identified here as "player challenge", which I recall received a great deal of air time back in the day. However...
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When I say challenge the player, I’m talking intellectual challenge…I mean, it’s an intellectual game right? Hitting monsters isn’t based on your ability to do push-ups and a bard’s charming ability isn’t based on YOUR ability to sing!
That's the question, though, isn't it? Is it really an intellectual game? Why is my character's puzzle-solving ability dependent on my puzzle-solving ability?
Truth-be-told, I hated puzzle-solving in our OD&D games. Every game I can recall that had any aspect of puzzle-solving to it, either as a player or as a GM, failed miserably, either in grumbled frustration or even where we lost players (I was rather quickly cured of trying to "intellectually challenge the players with cunning stuff" because it kept seriously back-firing in our groups. No one wanted it, no one enjoyed it particularly much).
Which has led me to think that what we're looking at here is a GNS sort-of thing: a different strokes situation. Yes, some people liked the puzzle aspect, the intellectual aspect of figuring out what you could do with that ten-foot pole and a few iron spikes. But some people didn't, and were there to role-play -- damn the puzzles, damn the combats, damn it all -- it wasn't about whether you could "think" your way cleverly through the dungeon, it was about "playing make-believe".
It seems we're looking at the different ways in which different groups used, abandoned, or otherwise altered the rules to provide for differing ways to play and achieve various goals. Historically, I'm thinking the style you're talking about is firmly a descendant of the war-gaming ancestor of RPGs -- which is all about the personal, intellectual challenge to the player, pushing little men around on a board, making tactical decisions, trying to figure out how to win the engagement.
Later, people said "Hey, let's pretend we are these minis running about and have personalities and everything" -- ie: role-playing the invented characters, because that was what they wanted out of the game, and changing its nature significantly from its war-gaming roots (there was significant flak spewed over this as I recall, with war-gamers calling role-players various icky names for polluting their hobby with nonsense and playing pretend when the point was pushing armies around and either beating the other guy or just seeing how things turned out on the board).
To me, it seems you want more of a war-game feel than an RP feel to play: sure, there are some stats, but they don't matter as much as the tactics the player is using in the engagement.
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You can stat up your character to the Nth degree, but I’m not sure it’s going to improve the “fun” quotient. Or to be perfectly blunt, I’ve found in my DND3+ games that it doesn’t.
See, now, I've had exactly the opposite experience. While there is such a thing as too much detail, too little detail reduces the fun quotient, leads to arguments, and lets DMs run wild with fiat. And it did.
Meaning the "fun" quotient you bring up is definitely a GNS issue: what part of the game do you find the most enjoyable. What are you sitting at the table to do? Clearly, you found that personal challenge bit the most enjoyable part.
So we have situations where Int or Wis or similar intellectual/social scores and associated challenges were discarded or devalued so the situational content could be dealt with by the player rather than the character, while in other groups, those scores were emphasized with added rules to fairly adjudicate those situations so people could get through them and into doing what they wanted to do with play (some loose kind of story creation, level grinding and looting, or whatnot), etc.
Daniel B:
Quote from: contracycle on May 22, 2009, 01:05:37 AM
Quote from: ShallowThoughts on May 21, 2009, 01:45:49 PM
Here's my point of view: it's impossible to challenge a stat-block.
I disagree. The bit I think you are missing is that the stat block can be so weighty, so significant, that player decisions matter very little.
<snip>
Hmm, true
Quote from: contracycle on May 22, 2009, 01:05:37 AM
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I guess I've GMed too many games that eventually turned gamist despite their promising beginnings.
And that's a Bad Thing, is it?
Not in principle. But when "gamist" = "the stat block can be so weighty, so significant, that player decisions matter very little", then most definitely yes.
On another note, I think part of the problem is that the same set of rules becomes different games for different people. (What's that called? Ephemera?) For some, it's a stat-block-sport, for others it's something entirely different.
Dan
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