Dragon Age RPG: musings on a once-off.
Alfryd:
This session was actually preparation for a con demo that the GM hoped to run at WarpCon (read all about it,) but I don't want to give real names here, so you'll forgive me if the proceedings all sound a little anonymous. The GM was honest enough about what the basic play style would most likely be- mostly hack n' slash, with maybe a few moments of role-play interspersed here and there- which I appreciated. Play, in the event, largely revolved around combat, fair and square.
The problem I saw with the system was that, well... as far as I could tell, combat was not particularly interesting for anyone except a primary caster (which I had the good fortune to be.) We had two other melee characters, and two rangers, but their viable combat options were essentially limited to: roll to hit, pass/fail, roll for damage, over and over again. There were little or no actual tactical tradeoffs or decision-making to be made there- a calculator could have done the same thing with less hassle for everyone.
This might just be a symptom of restriction to low-level characters for the session- maybe more experienced characters get reliable access to more varied combat options- but then again, why should the player have to wait for access to actual game?
That said, there was some variation to be found in battlefield deployment- i.e, deciding which PCs would tackle what mooks at different times, including one battle where we had the complication of protecting a civilian against wolves from several directions, and another where we tried to creep behind buildings to gain the element of surprise and form a 'hot gates' defence between two walls to protect the glass cannon (I, me) and archers. Miniatures would have been helpful for the purpose, though.
Again, I was lucky enough to play a mage, so I was able to choose between a couple of spells, ranged and melee attacks that were useful under different circumstances- one to buff myself with armour, one to heal, one to damage/stun, and one to buff allies (though not very economically,) plus my staff and arcane missile, and the added concern of having to conserve spell points correctly over time. So, it did give me some pros and cons to weigh, and I even managed to squeeze in a little role-play: healing up some refugees in camp before heading off on the main plotline, giving my staff to the unarmed civilian, etc. So that was fun.
One saving grace of standard combat was the option to perform 'stunts' whenever you rolled a double on the dice, which did afford players some opportunity to trade off between different effects: e.g, attacking twice vs. extra damage vs. stun, IIRC. I just didn't see why players shouldn't have access to that kind of tactical diversity the rest of the time.
One other interesting feature of note: No resurrection mechanics in the case of character death. My experience is limited here, but this struck me as a very risky feature if your campaign is heavily combat-centric and largely gamist in emphasis. Then again, it's possible the designers actually wanted the game to be about something else (see below.)
Combat aside, the main hitch, as I saw it, arose when our party was journeying from our command centre to a village that had been largely razed, in order to rescue a few captives holed up in the local church, merrily dispatching enemy redshirts on the way. Part of the plan of infiltration was sneaking across a stream at the base of a cliff in order to get into the town's sewer system. There were darkspawn (read: Orcs) on guard up on the cliffs above, and we were all making some kind of stealth vs. perception test to get across unseen and unheard.
Of course, since the sewer entrance was the only way in without making an infeasibly roundabout detour, failure was not really an option- so when my character repeatedly failed his stealth tests, thereby alerting the guards, what should logically have called down a major shitstorm on our heads appears to have had no actual effect on events, so far as I could tell. I can understand the necessity after a fashion, but in that case, why have us roll dice in the first place? Why couldn't the GM just allow us to get into the sewers unhindered, and proceed to some point where we can make decisions or roll dice in a way that has some impact?
One other thing I noticed- though this may or may not have anything in particular to do with the system- was that one of the other players had this interesting habit of stopping at regular intervals- basically whenever a new stretch of corridor or floor of a building came in sight- and asking to make a perception check. It's possible this was some kind of 'defence mechanism' against nasty surprises, but I eventually came out and asked if we could just "assume we proceed along the route until we encounter some kind of problem", which the GM, again, was perfectly happy to do. Is this is a frequent habit among gamers, in your experience?
I should mention that system did include sections for defining 'character concept' and relationships, but the GM had deliberately left them blank for purposes of the demo, given that he thought it would take a couple of sessions to explore them fully, and because he felt a con demo needed to have a fairly definite plot structure in order to conclude productively. I found this interesting, because it gave me impression that the game's designers, and the GM, were interested in playing something more narrativist in emphasis- Bioware certainly has pretensions to that effect, (though for reasons that are probably a tad too tangential to delve into, I'm skeptical of how well they live up their rep.)
Anyways. I'll leave it there. Does any of this sound novel or interesting, or is it just a recapitulation of defects from other RPGs?
Callan S.:
Hi Morgan,
I'm kind of interested in the subject related to your quote here, at the moment
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We had two other melee characters, and two rangers, but their viable combat options were essentially limited to: roll to hit, pass/fail, roll for damage, over and over again. There were little or no actual tactical tradeoffs or decision-making to be made there- a calculator could have done the same thing with less hassle for everyone.
I have enjoyed largely random roll fights, imagining the blows once I get one in. Certainly old adventure movies often had some rapier fight which in the end is just trading strikes, with the question of how much fanfare is involved. I'd ask, was the outcome of the fight by and large predictable (you'd win) and so the rolling was pretty much busy work?
Just musing on solutions without having to invent a whole new lunch money like game - one simple solution is to have a round countdown, and at a certain count (which the players know, so they are in on the tension, of course), the bad guys get majorly beefed up. Now a few failed rolls could mean death instead of just losing a few more HP before predictably winning. However this ties into Natespank's question on how to fail without everyone dying/tossing all the invented fiction of each character out the window. You said your game has no ressurection stuff - so by necessity the fights become push overs, which bones gamism.
Anyway, did it seem like by and large you were going to win and it was just a matter of how much HP you'd lose? Which no doubt would be healed by a sleep at the inn or some friendly cleric anyway, so in win/lose terms, meaningless?
For my own design concerns at the moment, I'm working off the hypothesis that random rolls by themselves are not actually boring. This is despite some hang ups of my own that they are. Instead its that pure random dice rolls are boring when the outcome is pretty much certain.
Oh, another idea to add a failure sting is like the idea above, but at round number X, the monsters sneak away a significant part of the treasure. That way you don't have the TPK problem from above, as the sting is simply missing out on phat loot/cash-o-la! Nooooo!
On topic enough?
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Of course, since the sewer entrance was the only way in without making an infeasibly roundabout detour, failure was not really an option- so when my character repeatedly failed his stealth tests, thereby alerting the guards, what should logically have called down a major shitstorm on our heads appears to have had no actual effect on events, so far as I could tell. I can understand the necessity after a fashion, but in that case, why have us roll dice in the first place?
Hooo boy! Because the dice are just deployed to fabricate a sense of tension based on the idea events are uncertain, when really the GM is utterly, utterly deciding them (and probably terrorfied of being a bad GM if he doesn't!). But c'mon, you knew that, right? Even as your seeing straight through the illusion?
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One other thing I noticed- though this may or may not have anything in particular to do with the system- was that one of the other players had this interesting habit of stopping at regular intervals- basically whenever a new stretch of corridor or floor of a building came in sight- and asking to make a perception check. It's possible this was some kind of 'defence mechanism' against nasty surprises, but I eventually came out and asked if we could just "assume we proceed along the route until we encounter some kind of problem", which the GM, again, was perfectly happy to do. Is this is a frequent habit among gamers, in your experience?
Well this all hinges on what sort of thing the GM is hanging out for. Imagine you said what you said, the GM nods and then a few corridors latter the GM goes "Ha, you didn't look around and a XXX wacks you!". Under the usual traditional RPG rules, that's valid GM stuff. Taking it as valid, well then the 'defensive' player would actually have been, gamism wise, right and you, gamism wise, wrong in your approach.
On the other hand, trying to second guess the GM every few minutes gets pretty tiresome.
Devon Oratz:
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Hooo boy! Because the dice are just deployed to fabricate a sense of tension based on the idea events are uncertain, when really the GM is utterly, utterly deciding them (and probably terrorfied of being a bad GM if he doesn't!). But c'mon, you knew that, right? Even as your seeing straight through the illusion?
As a GM, I decide events by fiat really, really, really sparingly. At the very least, if I do fudge at this point none of my players are going to expect it, because numerous times I've let PCs die anticlimactic, story breaking deaths because the dice say so. As a matter of fact at this point, I can "cheat" occasionally without my players have no idea I'm doing so, I'm pretty sure I've deeply instilled the terror in them that they will die or fail just because of bad luck/poor planning. I have GM'd a whole lot of systems over the years, but probably more Shadowrun than anything else. If you're at all familiar with the game, you're in a better position to understand what I'm talking about in the above paragraph, as SR is a game where planning almost always matters more than luck.
As a matter of fact, I deeply, deeply struggle with going against "what the dice say" sometimes as much as I hate how it impacts the story. I suppose you could call that hardline simulationism. I try to adjust the story to roll with it though, and it usually leads to some very interesting twists and turns that are much more unpredictable than your standard Hollywood plotline, rather than just flat anticlimax and dissapointment.
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Of course, since the sewer entrance was the only way in without making an infeasibly roundabout detour, failure was not really an option- so when my character repeatedly failed his stealth tests, thereby alerting the guards, what should logically have called down a major shitstorm on our heads appears to have had no actual effect on events, so far as I could tell. I can understand the necessity after a fashion, but in that case, why have us roll dice in the first place?
Speaking personally, I think I would have fucked your party without hesitation if you had REPEATEDLY failed stealth tests. It's certainly what I've done to my own players, time and time again. Of course, I generally run games where there is almost ALWAYS some resource the PCs can expend to survive such slip-ups. If the game/module was designed as "succeed stealth test or die" and was a demo game, I can understand the GM going with the "not really" option. Probably at least half the adventure's fault.
Callan S.:
Hi Devon,
I'd actually submit that your using fiat nigh constantly. Every time you look at a dice roll, your deciding whether you let it pass or not. Regardless of whether you let it pass mostly, that's still an act of fiat in itself. And as to when a skill roll or such is called, that's fiat too. No, the fiction didn't decide a roll would happen. If I was in a court room and tried to say "Your honour, the fiction decided I should do 'er in!" it wouldn't go very far (or I hope so, anyway). Same with saying "Your honour, the fiction decided I should make a skill roll!".
Slighly off topic post, but it's at these points a missplaced understanding is reinforced and continued if met with no question.
Devon Oratz:
Okay Callan, let's get into it. My understanding is not misplaced nor do I personally appreciate you characterizing it in such a way.
How would you feel about the possibility that the dice and I have equal authority? For instance: I have never looked at a result and decided to ignore it. If anything, I reroll, which runs what happens through the RNG AGAIN. If the die comes up the same, I almost always use the outcome indicated on the dice in game. My thinking (mystical, I know) is: "the dice really mean it". Maybe that's not what every GM does, but it's what I do. Perhaps it's just because I'm not "terrorfied of being a bad GM" but I tend to have a healthy respect for the authority of the RNG. Giving it ABSOLUTE AUTHORITY would be madness, just like giving the GM ABSOLUTE AUTHORITY would be.
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And as to when a skill roll or such is called, that's fiat too.
You're being preposterous and I think you're doing so knowingly.
Fiat means:
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an arbitrary decree or pronouncement, especially by a person or group of persons having absolute authority to enforce it
Besides the important but difficult to prove distinction that calling for a roll of the dice is not ever an ARBITRARY decision for a remotely competent GM, there are several things that can dictate a roll of the dice besides a GM's "fiat". These include:
* A player actively choosing to use a skill or ability that calls for dice to be rolled. Obviously not fiat.
* A pre-written adventure (canned, or constructed by the GM, it doesn't actually matter because "GM Writing" and "GM Running" aren't the same individual) calling for a skill roll. In this case, a GM is following written orders, not making a judgment by fiat.
* Consensus. If when a situation is described, everyone at the table is reaching for their Agility + Infiltration dice to sneak inside the compound, that's hardly fiat, is it? The players are in agreement with the GM that a skill-roll is appropriate.
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