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Talakeal
2021-04-05, 11:20 AM
Its human nature that we want to be rewarded for success and punished for failure. But in an RPG, rewards and punishments almost always translate into player power. This means that taking an early lead will often result in a Monte Haul campaign where the players don't need to engage their brains to succeed, and a few early setbacks can lead into a death spiral where failure is the only possibility.

But what other system is there?

Do we need to implement some sort of metagame handicap system when designing adventures? Or would this make it feel even worse?

I have had some people tell me that it is a good idea to play the monsters smarter when the PCs are having an easy time and to play them dumber when the PCs struggle, but I have also had people tell me never to do this as it is tantamount to metagaming and punishes the players for their success.

Thoughts?

Xervous
2021-04-05, 11:52 AM
Monty Haul issues stem from sequential escalating challenges that are fixed in difficulty ahead of time. In other words a curve. You getting ahead of the curve yields better rewards that keep you well ahead of the curve. The recent XCOM was a prime example of this.

The solution is evident in other game genres. In an MMO if you get better X you move up to content you are equipped to handle. Getting a massive power spike could mean you skip intermediate steps. If the bandits are all pushovers you’re done with that plot, wrap it up with some vague RP hand waving and let the players set their sights on something appropriate for their capabilities. If they want challenge let them seek it out, if they want to bop bandits let them do that.

Anonymouswizard
2021-04-05, 12:23 PM
In general most games assume that an early or late acquisition of power doesn't matter, because the GM is supposed to be altering the adventure to be of a suitable level of challenge.

Other systems would be along the lines of Fate, where things like gear don't overly matter, and enhancements to things that do matter happen arbitrarily when you've hit a significant dramatic point. So in terms of a series you have minor milestones as the end of an episode, significant milestones at the end of a subplot, or a major milestone at the end of the series/season. But this only works because of the default rules on equipment, in that it doesn't provide a bonus and only counts as an inovkeable Aspect if it's narratively important.

Genre emulation also matters. In a fantasy story, for better or worse, we expect the hero(es) to get the magic sword, unlock their hidden potential, or learn the legendary strike at some point in the coming film/series/novel. Conversely in a science fiction or spy story we expect to meet the major gadgets at the start and only get any real upgrades near the end if at all, whereas in an 80s action movie we might expect the villain to pick up advantages but not the heroes (at least until the sequel with worse writing) except maybe for a utility item or two looted for it's explicit use. I am of course generalising like hell here.

Actually, in terms of D&D, an argument could be made for the designers makins an effort to solve this problem by trying to bring it's genre emulation closer in line with fantasy novels. It's still a long way off, especially with how spellcasting tends to be handled, but magic items have moved back to 'expected but not quantified', meaning that the players are still expected to end up with that +2 sword but unless an artificer is in the party you can't depend on them being able to produce one.

Although I still prefer the Fate model where everything is tied to the character, and a stunt that (for example) give me two Red Dice on shooting attacks could be fluffed as me being really good at hitting vitals, or me owning my grandfather's pistol which I have meticulously maintained for decades.

KineticDiplomat
2021-04-05, 12:28 PM
There is, of course, an entire class of RPGs where this is a non-issue. Low/no progression RPGs mostly avoid the issue because they aren’t bound to the D&D “zero to hero by dint of keep on killing slightly tougher things” core loop. When your entire gameplay doesn’t revolve around growing stronger at exponential rates, you can materially reward people without unbalancing the system (and non-material rewards are more palatable because you aren’t being screwed out of your ability to keep playing), and punish for failure without meaning all is lost. Farther along that spectrum, you can even get to the point where character death is just closing a story, not a mechanical forfeit of significance.

So, for a great many RPGs this isn’t an issue let alone a paradox.

MoiMagnus
2021-04-05, 01:15 PM
Combat as Sport answer:
Just ensure that every fight is balanced. Stronger PCs means more enemies, stronger enemies, etc. Weaker PCs means that you might need to remove one of two enemies from the following encounters.
=> Don't forget to include narrative rewards/punishments to you fight (that do not affect game balance, but might affect the trajectory of the campaign) otherwise winning/losing fight will feel pointless.

Combat as War answer:
Just give more agency to the players, so that they can better select the pacing and difficulty of their quests.
PCs that had early set backs might reevaluate their position and switch to an easier quest (like joining the other side, since they can't defeat it, they should ally to it).
PCs that had exceptional successes might use it to tackle challenges that were not expected to be of their level, and maybe finish the planed adventure few levels earlier than what the GM expected.
=> Don't forget to highlight to your player that the do have the agency to do those choices, and you might want to guide them on which spells/skills can be used to get an evaluation of the quest's difficulty level.
=> Make sure you have enough control of the pacing so that trivial fight don't take too long. Having the enemy surrender or flee is a good solution. On the other side, make sure that everybody is on the same page on character death or TPK.

icefractal
2021-04-05, 01:44 PM
I don't find this to be a problem in most D&D games, and usually when it is it's more from the optimization level being higher or lower than expected rather than early success/failure snowballing.

In a sandbox, if you're stronger you either go for more dangerous things, or you deal with the easy things very quickly. The only problem being if you become powerful enough that nothing in the setting is a challenge, but at that point you can probably achieve whatever goals you have and wrap up the campaign.

Even in a linear adventure, as long as it's possible to skip past things when applicable, it's a self-correcting problem.
Example: Normally, the fortress would be too heavily guarded to just walk into, and the PCs would have to do several things to weaken the defenses. But if they're relatively OP, they can just make a beeline for the warlord and defeat him. At which point they haven't leveled up much, so the next challenge will probably be relevant again.

Could players intentionally spend time going through all the easy parts for maximum faceroll? Sure - which would indicate that's the type of game they want to play.

Jason
2021-04-05, 02:30 PM
I'm with KinecticDiplomat in that not all RPGs have as quick character growth as D&D. Traveller, for instance, has next to zero character growth if you're talking about skills and attributes. Characters progress there by being able to afford better gear. Early Traveller adventures were seen as unique because they tended to reward the players with more knowledge of the universe rather than gold.

Also, all RPG campaigns do eventually end. They all get to the point where the player characters can overcome any reasonable obstacle and it's time to retire the PCs and start over.

farothel
2021-04-05, 03:36 PM
And there are also RPGs where the players can and do progress, but can still be taken down by lower level opponents. Alternity is such an example. No matter how good you are, a lvl1 character with a pistol can still one-shot you. L5R has this too, although to a lesser extend. You get better, can get more skills, but in the end you still have to be careful.

False God
2021-04-05, 08:25 PM
Thoughts?

Different strokes for different folks.

If you don't mind running it, just give your players what they want. If they want a gameworld that challenges them at every turn, give it to them, if they want to play a berr & pretzels monty haul game, give them that. If they want to play a punishing noir investigation game, give them that.

There is no onesie for every table.

Jay R
2021-04-05, 09:15 PM
One reasonable challenge, in any game, at any level, with any degree of power, is the Mirror of Opposition (or the equivalent).

An enemy party with the same powers, abilities, and equipment is always a fair challenge.

Yora
2021-04-06, 03:22 AM
I have had some people tell me that it is a good idea to play the monsters smarter when the PCs are having an easy time and to play them dumber when the PCs struggle, but I have also had people tell me never to do this as it is tantamount to metagaming and punishes the players for their success.

In what weitd bizarro-universe is GMs reacting to the players a bad thing?

That is the whole purpose of having GMs in the first place! Our job is to react to what the players are doing and adjust the way we run the game to suit the play style of the group.

If you want to play a game that is completely static and removes the social component, then board games or videogames are the game for you. Those don't have GMs that can react and adjust the game to make it more fun for the players.
A GM who ignores the metagame aspect of the game is a meat calculator.

Players having strong characters really is no reason to make the rest of the campaign easy. Just give them stronger opponents that are a match for them. There are no rules that say enemies have to match some equation based only on the character levels of the PCs. It's the GM's job to judge the power of the party and set up opponents that make for a fun game.

MoiMagnus
2021-04-06, 05:41 AM
In what weitd bizarro-universe is GMs reacting to the players a bad thing?

It depends a lot on the scale you're doing so.

You have to adapt the campaign to your player, but at a more local scale, if each time the PC gets a brilliant idea, the NPCs immediately one-up them with a better idea, but each time the PCs make a blunder, the NPCs immediately stop whatever clever stuff they were doing to act mindlessly, you will teach your players that "clever ideas gets punished by stronger enemies, mindless play gets rewarded by an easy victory".

Yora
2021-04-06, 06:24 AM
Well, that's just plain old railroading. The outcome is predetermined regardless of what the players do.

But the thought that the GM paying attention to the metagame being a bad thing is outright offensive to me. That's pure contempt for both players and GMs who take their task seriously, and roleplaying in general.

Batcathat
2021-04-06, 06:33 AM
That is the whole purpose of having GMs in the first place! Our job is to react to what the players are doing and adjust the way we run the game to suit the play style of the group.

If you want to play a game that is completely static and removes the social component, then board games or videogames are the game for you. Those don't have GMs that can react and adjust the game to make it more fun for the players.

That is true, but I don't think always altering the game based on the players/PCs performance makes for a more enjoyable game. As a player, I prefer it if a brilliant idea at the right time can make a situation a walk in the park and that screwing up can have dire consequences. As a GM, my philosophy is that I get to create the world, pretty much how I see fit, but I don't get to alter it without a good in-universe reason (so if the party win a battle they were "supposed" to lose, I can't just have reinforcements show up out of nowhere).

But of course there are exceptions and if the challenge level seemed off repeatedly, I would be okay with altering it, whether I was a player or the GM. It's hard to tell exactly where to draw the line, though.

Willie the Duck
2021-04-06, 08:42 AM
Thoughts?
In general, I think it is best to make a world, play it consistently, and let the players go pick their challenges. They (the players) will develop their skills in playing the game at their own pace, and learn what kind of challenges to attempt. What this requires (and certainly games both old and new do not actively facilitate this) is that you invest heavily in making determining said challenge a practical exercise with reproducible results (maybe the rumors about town can be used to gauge the difficulty of the dungeon to the North), make running away both rules-friendly and an obvious option (I've had two near-TPKs with my most recent group where I afterwards had to incredulously ask 'why didn't you run away?'), and make failing an attempted quest a non-campaign-ending event -- new PCs pre-rolled up (and your players prepared for actually losing characters) or enemies tend to stabilize and imprison (and ransom) fallen PCs rather than kill them.

Pertaining to early rewards skewing things -- this, I think, speaks to a need for not all rewards being things that directly feed back into the adventure-succeeding (to obtain power with which one gets better at adventuring) loop.

Early Traveller adventures were seen as unique because they tended to reward the players with more knowledge of the universe rather than gold.
Right, so pretty much this. A good portion of the reward should be knowledge, renown, contacts, mundane resources (if you have magic item shops, or the equivalent, this can be hard to separate), and similar items. Getting more of these early is still an advantage, but it is harder to turn them into a wildly increasing upward spiral of advancement or the like (having three noble houses who like the party and are willing to hire them frequently is nice, but it is hard to leverage all three at once).

Eldan
2021-04-06, 09:12 AM
There are games that work in entirely different ways. For example, in Unknown Armies, the main way to improve your skills is failing checks. They are percentage rolls and if you fail, you get a +1% on them at the end of the session. This goes so far that players have the option to voluntarily roll a lower skill instead of a higher one, if both apply to a check. Especially traumatic failures can also "harden" your character, so they are less likely to experience trauma in the future. That's not really a good thing, though and has plenty of drawbacks.

FATE is built around the idea that the players can ask the DM to please have a penalty on a check, with the option of gaining fate points for doing so. Because failing when appropriate is good for the story.

Morgaln
2021-04-06, 09:42 AM
Thoughts?

Reward the players, not the characters. My games, and also the games I prefer to play in, focus on story. The rewards I expect are, basically, having an impact on the story. I want to be able to put plans in motion and affect the outcome of plot elements. That doesn't necessarily mean my plans succeed, mind you. A failed plan can be just as fun. The important thing is, I want my actions to have consequences, for me and for the plot. That's more reward for me than gold or magic items.
So my advice is, make the players feel like what they are: protagonists in a story.

Admittedly, whether that works or not depends on the kind of game you're playing, the system you're using and the expectations of your players. If you have a standard D&D dungeon crawl that is primarily about killing monsters, finding loot and getting XP, it's pretty hard to do anything else. Also, D&D in particular is geared towards getting more powerful and gaining items, so it can't easily be divested of that; neither should it, it's an intrinsic part of the game and if you don't want it, you're better off finding a different system. But an unexpected spike in power of the players can easily be fixed by increasing the challenge rating of your encounters.

Talakeal
2021-04-06, 11:17 AM
Wow, I make a post and a bunch of people remind me there are games other than D&D 3.5. Is this really Giant in the Playground :smallbiggrin:?

I don't really understand or enjoy "story" games, so while I acknowledge they exist, its not really what I am talking about.

The problem exists in a lot of games, not just D&D style ones. Its especially bad in MMOs, where the hardest content rewards the most powerful gear, thus artificially inflating the skill gap, or in narrative skirmish games like Necromunda or Mordheim.

But any sort of RPG where you can buy power or where bad things can happen to you will suffer from this unless the DM puts their thumb on the scale. I mean, to go back to D&D 3.5, every time you need to pay to have a character raised from the dead (or otherwise decursed) you are permanently behind the power curve, and even drinking a single healing potion leaves you forever below your WBL.

Honestly, in any sort setting with any sort of verisimilitude you will run into this problem, because that's how economics work in real life. Not to get into politics here, but most every system is set up so that the rich get richer and the poor get poorer.


There is, of course, an entire class of RPGs where this is a non-issue. Low/no progression RPGs mostly avoid the issue because they aren’t bound to the D&D “zero to hero by dint of keep on killing slightly tougher things” core loop. When your entire gameplay doesn’t revolve around growing stronger at exponential rates, you can materially reward people without unbalancing the system (and non-material rewards are more palatable because you aren’t being screwed out of your ability to keep playing), and punish for failure without meaning all is lost. Farther along that spectrum, you can even get to the point where character death is just closing a story, not a mechanical forfeit of significance.

So, for a great many RPGs this isn’t an issue let alone a paradox.

While I would really enjoy playing a game without linear advancement, that is a super niche taste and I will never be able to find a group that would go along with it.


Different strokes for different folks.

If you don't mind running it, just give your players what they want. If they want a gameworld that challenges them at every turn, give it to them, if they want to play a berr & pretzels monty haul game, give them that. If they want to play a punishing noir investigation game, give them that.

There is no onesie for every table.

I am trying to do that. The problem is that players want fair challenges and also a world that doesn't appear tailored for them, which is really contradictory.

Also, I generally design my own games rather than play other people's games, so its not just my current table I need to worry about.


In what weitd bizarro-universe is GMs reacting to the players a bad thing?

That is the whole purpose of having GMs in the first place! Our job is to react to what the players are doing and adjust the way we run the game to suit the play style of the group.

If you want to play a game that is completely static and removes the social component, then board games or videogames are the game for you. Those don't have GMs that can react and adjust the game to make it more fun for the players.
A GM who ignores the metagame aspect of the game is a meat calculator.

Players having strong characters really is no reason to make the rest of the campaign easy. Just give them stronger opponents that are a match for them. There are no rules that say enemies have to match some equation based only on the character levels of the PCs. It's the GM's job to judge the power of the party and set up opponents that make for a fun game.

A lot of people see that are railroading or negating the players choices.

Let me also tell you the story of the "cycle of stupidity". Long ago, I would adjust the difficulty of the campaign world to match the power level of the players. The result was the players would optimize (or as we called it back then, min-maxxing) even harder. So I would up the difficulty, and the players would min-max even harder, and I would up the difficulty. Eventually it got to the point where the player characters were completely one dimensional builds and the campaign setting was optimized like a proto tippyverse.

Nobody was happy here.

Now I try very hard to stick to the challenge guidelines set out in the book and house-rule broken stuff before the game starts. It isn't perfect, but its a lot better.


Right, so pretty much this. A good portion of the reward should be knowledge, renown, contacts, mundane resources (if you have magic item shops, or the equivalent, this can be hard to separate), and similar items. Getting more of these early is still an advantage, but it is harder to turn them into a wildly increasing upward spiral of advancement or the like (having three noble houses who like the party and are willing to hire them frequently is nice, but it is hard to leverage all three at once).


How do you keep that from snow-balling into tangible power though?

Why don't allies help you out? Why don't rich patrons buy your way out of trouble?

I play a lot of White Wolf, and one of the problems with that game is that resources are way more useful than character power. For example, at character creation the freebie points required to increase an ability score by one point could also make someone a multi millionaire (in 90s money), and at that point they can afford their own highly trained squad of bodyguards with cutting edge gear.


Reward the players, not the characters. My games, and also the games I prefer to play in, focus on story. The rewards I expect are, basically, having an impact on the story. I want to be able to put plans in motion and affect the outcome of plot elements. That doesn't necessarily mean my plans succeed, mind you. A failed plan can be just as fun. The important thing is, I want my actions to have consequences, for me and for the plot. That's more reward for me than gold or magic items.
So my advice is, make the players feel like what they are: protagonists in a story.

Admittedly, whether that works or not depends on the kind of game you're playing, the system you're using and the expectations of your players. If you have a standard D&D dungeon crawl that is primarily about killing monsters, finding loot and getting XP, it's pretty hard to do anything else. Also, D&D in particular is geared towards getting more powerful and gaining items, so it can't easily be divested of that; neither should it, it's an intrinsic part of the game and if you don't want it, you're better off finding a different system. But an unexpected spike in power of the players can easily be fixed by increasing the challenge rating of your encounters.

I try that. But I tend to play with pretty immature people, and I have had several meltdowns caused by my trying to emphasize the consequences of success or failure because the players read it as "rubbing their failures in their face" or just flat out making fun of them.

Xervous
2021-04-06, 11:28 AM
The problem exists in a lot of games, not just D&D style ones. Its especially bad in MMOs, where the hardest content rewards the most powerful gear, thus artificially inflating the skill gap, or in narrative skirmish games like Necromunda or Mordheim.

As I detailed above MMOs generally do not experience the problem of characters being set against a standard difficulty curve while their power grows based on performance (recent XCOM). You’re free to loiter on a lower difficulty boss until you have the gear. You’re also free to skip intermediate gearing pursuits if you can handle the challenges a few tiers up.

PvP free for alls have always been first come first served and their meta revolves around this or they’ve explicitly chosen to not care about that balance as a central part of the experience.

Willie the Duck
2021-04-06, 11:47 AM
How do you keep that from snow-balling into tangible power though?

Why don't allies help you out? Why don't rich patrons buy your way out of trouble?

I play a lot of White Wolf, and one of the problems with that game is that resources are way more useful than character power. For example, at character creation the freebie points required to increase an ability score by one point could also make someone a multi millionaire (in 90s money), and at that point they can afford their own highly trained squad of bodyguards with cutting edge gear.

It's going to be genre- and game- specific. Some games (D&D* in particular) a huge amount of power is in XP or magic items. In that case, getting contacts and patrons can help you, but potentially less than a flametongue or robe of the archmage. Particularly because 'favored of a particular rich patron' likely just means 'some rich person would like to hire your band of murderhobosproblem-solvers again, will give you lots of information to help you solve said problems, and possibly would be willing to help you with a few unrelated-to-them problems from time to time.'
*3e, with WBL and a little more assumption of magic item purchases, complicates this model.

In Traveller, money is the primary tool for advancement -- in terms of equipment, paying the ship's mortgage (perhaps the dominant goal of the game), and eventually buying the anti-agathics that will keep you in the money-making game. In some ways, the favor of someone powerful is the best avenue to this. On the other hand, contacts and patrons again will mostly mean that they will choose your name for more service-to-them next time, along with some helpful hints along the way.

White Wolf is an odd bird, in that it depends so wildly on how people play it (Superheroes with fangs/spells, political intrigue with superpowers, personal horror, etc.). As originally envisioned, I think wealth and contacts were intended to be on par with the abilities which granted you extra blood pool, werewolf powers, or magical negative space wedgies. That said, I think the intent was that you needed more than money to hire supernatural mercenaries (someone with just 5 dots in resources would be like, well, you but with lots of money. Without supernatural underworld contacts and negotiating skills that gives you stuff the guy who put their points into abilities can steal from you, not ways you can hire people to go stomp them). Regardless of the specifics, I think the idea that Brujah and Gangrel could curb stomp a Ventrue, but don't because the Ventrue can hire quite the hefty revenge squad is part of the game. Anyways, sorry for the tangent. What to do in that game -- honestly, in that one, I think the script is flipped: the toys can be handed out with relative frequency, but the gathering of contacts and partons has to be limited (by world design, if you are playing as a sandbox) to keep the game from spiraling out of control.


But any sort of RPG where you can buy power or where bad things can happen to you will suffer from this unless the DM puts their thumb on the scale. I mean, to go back to D&D 3.5, every time you need to pay to have a character raised from the dead (or otherwise decursed) you are permanently behind the power curve, and even drinking a single healing potion leaves you forever below your WBL.
Here's the thing. I actually like 3e, despite perhaps not showing it enough (every time I dip into the 3e section here and elsewhere, I run into someone with something to prove being absolutely horrid, so I’ve stopped trying). It has some issues, some insurmountable at certain points, but if you are aware of them, it is an imminently playable game. That said, I think a lot of people have taken some components of them and put them on a pedestal on which they do not deserve to rest. WBL is one of them – it is a shorthand guestimate of how much value of gear (most of which is put through a series of cost-formulas which don’t actually indicate their relative power) it would be advisable to start with if starting a character above level 1. That. Is. All. If you start with less than the listed amount, or reach level X with a smaller total because you spent some on expendables or resurrections, it isn’t inherently that big a deal. Oftentimes it is within the variance that the formula-derived value of ones gear is relative to actual-play value (certainly within the variance of inter-class and inter-build power levels).

Honestly, in any sort setting with any sort of verisimilitude you will run into this problem, because that's how economics work in real life. Not to get into politics here, but most every system is set up so that the rich get richer and the poor get poorer.
Well, here we have the difference between realism and verisimilitude. Realistically, yes money can actually buy you power almost as well as just being powerful (and sometimes more), and both money and power beget themselves (and each other). Within a given setting, assuming that genre conceits[i] are considered part of the verisimilitude, it can vary. If power comes from being an ascetic hermit out in the wilderness who knows the ways of the not-force, or from some magical rocks kept by the peoples surrounding the Temple of not-Doom, perhaps this setting has power that is orthogonal to, or even in conflict with, economic power.

While I would really enjoy playing a game without linear advancement, that is a super niche taste and I will never be able to find a group that would go along with it.
Ugh. I have shelves of games I’d love to play if I could find a group interested.

I am trying to do that. The problem is that players want fair challenges and also a world that doesn't appear tailored for them, which is really contradictory.

Let me also tell you the story of the "cycle of stupidity". Long ago, I would adjust the difficulty of the campaign world to match the power level of the players. The result was the players would optimize (or as we called it back then, min-maxxing) even harder. So I would up the difficulty, and the players would min-max even harder, and I would up the difficulty. Eventually it got to the point where the player characters were completely one dimensional builds and the campaign setting was optimized like a proto tippyverse.
Nobody was happy here.
This is a real conundrum. For this problem, my advise is this: I agree, [i]do not change the challenge to match the player optimization. However, perhaps do alter the reward total. I know games from oD&D to 3e/4e/5e weight the xp dished out based on level of PC compared to challenge. This could be increased, and caveats put in to account for optimization. Make clear that this is not a punishment, but an adjustment (and incentive for those who want to play something unoptimized).

I try that. But I tend to play with pretty immature people, and I have had several meltdowns caused by my trying to emphasize the consequences of success or failure because the players read it as "rubbing their failures in their face" or just flat out making fun of them.
This is actually a huge complaint at my office’s after-hours game. People apparently complain about consequences or restraints or ways to curtail their power growth, but then get frustrated that they zoom to the power levels where the game starts flying out of control. It’s fascinating because almost all the people who play in it have taken turn at DMing (and complaining about this problem), but then turn it over to someone else and then do the exact thing of which they complained. It may very well be a case of self-contradictory preferences.

Anonymouswizard
2021-04-06, 01:27 PM
Wow, I make a post and a bunch of people remind me there are games other than D&D 3.5. Is this really Giant in the Playground :smallbiggrin:?

You never encountered Mode B before?


I don't really understand or enjoy "story" games, so while I acknowledge they exist, its not really what I am talking about.

Unfortunately as it's the second common model after world simulation it's going to come up a lot.

But ignoring equipment and looking just at instead power, it's not a terrible model for even hard simulations. Instead of 'you only advance after a big enough plot event' it becomes 'after a big enough challenge'. It doesn't solve your problem, but that's only really solved by moving into an RPG that used slow advancement, no advancement, it advances primarily by breadth rather then depth. The last is maybe closest to what you want, set a hard or soft cap easily achievable at character generation so whenever doesn't let you clear harder challenges, just a wider variety.

Lord Torath
2021-04-06, 03:15 PM
This is actually a huge complaint at my office’s after-hours game. People apparently complain about consequences or restraints or ways to curtail their power growth, but then get frustrated that they zoom to the power levels where the game starts flying out of control. It’s fascinating because almost all the people who play in it have taken turn at DMing (and complaining about this problem), but then turn it over to someone else and then do the exact thing of which they complained. It may very well be a case of self-contradictory preferences.Paraphrased from JayR's rules: What players want today is an easy encounter where everything goes their way, and they breeze through it. What they will want tomorrow is to have had an extrememly difficult encounter they only survived by the skin of their teeth, and the trick their thief pulled by dropping the chandelier onto the edge of the bench that flipped up, banging the bottom of the table, which tipped the lit candle over into the thingamabob that burned the McGuffin.

From D+1's Manifesto:
7. Combat is most exciting when it’s dangerous.
8. DM should not deliberately try to kill PCs, but PCs will probably die occasionally.
9. It’s good to have places/things too powerful for the PCs to defeat.
10. DM needs to communicate when things are too powerful for the PCs to defeat.
7. Danger levels: The most satisfying combats are usually the ones that take characters right to the edge of death, with the very real danger of death being present, yet without actually crossing that threshold unnecessarily. But not only is the game designed to randomize events but even small differences in so many areas combine to make it impossible to plan perfectly. Combat encounters are never a sure thing regardless of how meticulously designed they are. So, while the edge of disaster is the most exciting place to be it is also is the most likely way for events to slip out of control. This is just something that needs to be kept in mind by everyone.
8. A DM who truly sets out to deliberately kill the PCs has no business being a DM. The DM has at all times and in all ways the ability to kill the PCs whenever he bloody well feels like it, so if the DM's does intend to kill the characters what kind of fun is that for anybody? A DM who gets his jollies by thoughtlessly causing players to lose favorite characters and create new ones which they know will stand no better chance of long-term survival doesn't deserve the patience his players undoubtedly have to give him. If the DM is running combats at the edge of danger where the fun is (see #7) then PCs will occasionally die anyway. See also # 17.
9. Even given #’s 7 and 8 above it is still in everybody's interest for a campaign to have places, creatures, or encounters that the PCs are not actually able to defeat. It gives a campaign world a needed aura that it does not exist purely for the benefit of the PCs but has a life of its own. Without it the world becomes a place where the dangers within it always scale precisely - and therefore unrealistically - to the PCs’ capabilities. There is never anything like a real "Canyon of Doom" or legendarily undefeatable monster if its power is always adjusted to what the PCs can immediately handle.
10. Given #9 (that there are people and places that the PCs cannot and should not face) part of the DM's job is to make sure that the players and their characters are suitably warned about lethal dangers. That goes back to #8 – that it is never the DM's job to set out to kill the characters. It is the players’ responsibility to pay attention to those warnings without anyone needing to break character. But if the characters ignore warnings (for whatever reason) the DM is then justified in applying what he actually knows to be lethal force in an encounter. Still doesn't mean he should, just that it can’t really be held against him if he does. What this means for players is that the bull-headed notion of always fighting to the death, never retreating, and never surrendering will ultimately lead only to a TPK (total party kill) which is no fun for anyone.

icefractal
2021-04-06, 03:57 PM
I don't want everything to be a cake walk, but I do want the abilities of the PCs to matter. And if everything is auto-scaled to the PCs, their abilities don't really matter.

Personally speaking, I think people take "challenge" as too much of a hard rule. Not every fight needs to be equally challenging! If some of them are easy and others are various degrees of challenging/deadly, that's fine. So the PCs found out they were facing magma trolls, prepared accordingly, and now they're facerolling them? Yes, that is ok, that's not a problem you need to solve - or should solve - by a retroactive "and the trolls had an ice drake in reserve!" Let them take the easy win, aim a bit tougher for the next arc, done.

The one case that becomes a problem is when a foe is supposed to have particular significance in the world and they blatantly don't live up to it. Like, "Grath the Executioner is the lone guardian of the gate to the netherworld - the last time someone got past him was a century ago" - and then it turns out that Grath goes down like a chump and everyone's wondering "how the hell did this guy survive a century of battles?" For that I'd recommend not introducing such setting-critical characters immediately, wait until you have a better idea what the right optimization level is.

False God
2021-04-06, 07:16 PM
I am trying to do that. The problem is that players want fair challenges and also a world that doesn't appear tailored for them, which is really contradictory.

Also, I generally design my own games rather than play other people's games, so its not just my current table I need to worry about.

Then tell them that. "Hey guys, it feels like you're asking for a world that always provides fair challenges, but also one that doesn't seem to be constantly keeping pace with you."

But the game doesn't need to be one fixed way. It can have some set challenges for folks who like a world that appears realistic and doesn't scale with them. But you can leave it flexible enough that you could tailor the challenges to a group that wants that kind of game. Assuming of course you only have one world.

Cluedrew
2021-04-06, 07:57 PM
Wow, I make a post and a bunch of people remind me there are games other than D&D 3.5. Is this really Giant in the Playground :smallbiggrin:?You never encountered Mode B before?I was going to mention the Playground's Fallacy, is Mode B like that?


I don't really understand or enjoy "story" games, so while I acknowledge they exist, its not really what I am talking about. I don't think you have to be playing a narrative system to give (/ask player to give their) characters goals beyond kill things and getting stronger. Making progress in those goals could be rewards that don't create a positive feedback loop.

KineticDiplomat
2021-04-06, 11:00 PM
Not so niche I think.

Traveller (mongoose or other) has very low progression and characters who are mostly “professional, not heroes”.

Shadowrun takes far more runs than most tables will complete to buy advancement in any quantity that is going to be a major shift from where you start.

Blades in the Dark has progression, but that generally moves you into “less likely to fail” rather than “curb stomp”.

Cyberpunk was/is not known for rapid progression.

The old world of darkness games had rules for progression, but it was usually pretty incremental in practice.

There’s a slew of Star Wars games that don’t follow the D&D model.

There’s assorted Powered by The Apocalypse modules where advancement provides minor improvements, not geometric powers increases.

———

And then there are niche games (as always, I’ll plug blade of the the iron throne here as my personal favorite fantasy system), but in the above you should be able to see that there are several reasonably common steam systems support a low enough rate of advancement to make this a non issue.

Plus, every player you move away from D&D is a victory for the hobby’s creativity and range as a whole (and frankly, for everyone involved who isn’t stuck playing D&D), so you get karmic benefits in real life as well!

Anonymouswizard
2021-04-07, 02:21 AM
I was going to mention the Playground's Fallacy, is Mode B like that?

I'm joking that it's the second most common easy this forum operates. Assume that people here only talk about D&D (mainly 3.5) and jump in to defend other systems.

Aliess
2021-04-07, 05:16 AM
Or Cthulhu where you rarely progress abilities in any meaningful way, other than maybe picking up the odd spell that drives you closer to madness and retiring the character each time you use it.

HouseRules
2021-04-07, 09:28 AM
The solution to Monty Hall issue is the trope Level Scaling, experience is a river, &c. names.

3E experience system started by calculating XP for every level of participant, and divide by contribution by level; your level divide by sum of level.

a level 2 character contributes twice as much as a level 1 character
a level 3 character contributes thrice as much as a level 1 character

The "river" formula defines contribution by the raw number of survivors of an encounter; your character divide by number of survivor.

MoiMagnus
2021-04-07, 09:37 AM
The solution to Monty Hall issue is the trope Level Scaling, experience is a river, &c. names.

3E experience system started by calculating XP for every level of participant, and divide by contribution by level; your level divide by sum of level.

a level 2 character contributes twice as much as a level 1 character
a level 3 character contributes thrice as much as a level 1 character

The "river" formula defines contribution by the raw number of survivors of an encounter; your character divide by number of survivor.

I might be missing something, but I don't really see the relation with the question here.
You seems to try to solve difference between players, and how to reward specific players more than others.

OP is asking about how to deal when the whole group of players is taking an early lead or and early set back compared to what was expected, and that encounters after encounters this early lead of set back is amplified to the point of the PCs being significantly stronger or weaker than expected, meaning that the whole group is either rolling over encounters that were supposed to be difficult, or being forced to retreat in encounters that were supposed to be easy. Both of them leading to potentially boring gameplay.

HouseRules
2021-04-07, 11:45 AM
I might be missing something, but I don't really see the relation with the question here.
You seems to try to solve difference between players, and how to reward specific players more than others.

OP is asking about how to deal when the whole group of players is taking an early lead or and early set back compared to what was expected, and that encounters after encounters this early lead of set back is amplified to the point of the PCs being significantly stronger or weaker than expected, meaning that the whole group is either rolling over encounters that were supposed to be difficult, or being forced to retreat in encounters that were supposed to be easy. Both of them leading to potentially boring gameplay.

Encounters could change.

If they are stronger

Spread the monsters so they are less susceptible to aoe spells.
Focus fire on certain characters in the party: arcane -> divine -> skills -> combat.
Use more lower CR monsters to decrease wealth by level, spell accumulation, &c. if that is a source of problem.
example: 16 CR 1 monsters give no xp to ECL 9 characters

If they are weaker

Group the monsters so they are more susceptible to aoe spells.
Spread fire, try not to attack the same character in the same round.
Use less higher CR monsters in bad terrain to increase wealth by level, spell accumulation, &c. if that is the source of problem.

HumanFighter
2021-04-07, 05:48 PM
My philosophy when it comes to running game difficulty is being brutal, yet fair. I don't pull punches, and I don't fudge dice rolls. A dead character is a dead character, so what? You can roll up a new one, I don't care how attached you got. Resurrection is sometimes possible, but it is expensive.
I care more about the integrity of the game and the world than an individual's feelings, even my own. If I start twisting things and showing too much favor to a character or group, even if it is someone I like, then the world falls apart, the game falls apart. Consistency and long-term integrity is more important than emotions, which are fickle anyways.
Some of my favorite characters have died by bullsh*t before, and I may have felt disappointed, frustrated, etc. at first, but in time I come to accept it. The world stays believable as a result.

Man_Over_Game
2021-04-07, 06:54 PM
I have had some people tell me that it is a good idea to play the monsters smarter when the PCs are having an easy time and to play them dumber when the PCs struggle, but I have also had people tell me never to do this as it is tantamount to metagaming and punishes the players for their success.

Thoughts?

You're talking about a negative feedback loop. The best example of a negative feedback loop that everyone is experienced with is Mario Kart. The more you lose, the better powerups you get, and vice-versa.

There is game development talk about the frustrations of NFLs, with the reduction of a player's "Value of Effort" (how much winning actually feels rewarding). But there's a threshold. If Mario Kart made it too hard for good players to consistently win, then they'd no longer want to play, yet players still want to play Mario Kart, so it's not actually a problem.

Saying that it's an extreme is wrong. Extremes are made, not inherent things. What you're describing, and similar solutions (adding buffs or extra exp for added difficulty), are valid. It's no different than having to fight an entire army...while you have one of your own. As long as everything is a roughly equal threat relative to the circumstance, you're doing great.

What those nay-sayers are talking about is sacrificing realism, yet you don't hear game developers say realism made a better game.

Tanarii
2021-04-07, 07:00 PM
In what weitd bizarro-universe is GMs reacting to the players a bad thing?
Some players want to handle the world on their own skills, not have it handed to them by a DM.

Salmon343
2021-04-07, 08:15 PM
I'm not sure I agree with player power needing to be a reward for success. But first I'm gonna assume that it is. I see two main ways of approaching it, guided by two example styles of DMing.

Style 1: Dramatic. This is my preferred style, where drama is favoured over simulation. Player backstories will always find a way of being worked into the plot, player death is infrequent unless its at a dramatic moment (a key villain fight, or a sacrifice) (note, this isn't forcing death at those moments, but guiding away from it at non dramatic moments) or the players were being silly, etc. In this style, the players are always suitably challenged, even when they gain power. This breaks verisimilitude, like in RPGs where random encounters are always tough, even when you dethroned god 5 levels ago. But the drama is always kept hot, due to that constant challenge. When players buy in to this style of DMing, adjusting enemy strength to account for their increase in power works quite well, as they agree on being entertained by the drama of the moment, and pushing any realism issues aside.

Style 2: Simulationist. Realism is favoured over drama. Its not my preferred focus, but it is just as legitimate as Dramatic. Adjusting enemy strength under the hood is rightly seen as problematic, as its unrealistic - the world is reacting to the meta knowledge of the party power, when it shouldn't - the game is about the players reacting and adapting to the world, not the other way around. Here, the power issue can be turned on its head - its not that gaining power makes the fights easier, its that not doing so makes them harder. The DM should aim to make the boss' approximate power and themes known, so that the players can prepare and strategise. Power rewards make the fight easier but that's not a bug, its a feature. If the players know as such, then it still feels like a reward - it got them through that fight without critical injury.

Now, power isn't the only reward that can be given. Progress of the state of affairs in the world works too. Perhaps a reward for success is not having the nearby town razed to the ground. Maybe by going against all odds, you can save the captive from the bandits. Variable success allows for a better result to be its own reward, essentially. Likewise, failure isn't just death. Failing your goal can lead to negative consequences in the world. With strong player engagement with the world and story - this can be its own reward and punishment.

Man_Over_Game
2021-04-07, 08:16 PM
Some players want to handle the world on their own skills, not have it handed to them by a DM.

The classic battle: The Roleplaying vs. The Game.

Tanarii
2021-04-07, 10:54 PM
The classic battle: The Roleplaying vs. The Game.
What I said was about players who want both. :smalltongue:

Roleplaying is making (meaningful) decisions for your character in the fictional environment. IMO that works better if the DM doesn't shut down a bunch of meaningful choices for you in advance.

And of course, for many people, 'challenging how good I am' makes for a fun game.

Man_Over_Game
2021-04-08, 12:27 AM
What I said was about players who want both. :smalltongue:

Roleplaying is making (meaningful) decisions for your character in the fictional environment. IMO that works better if the DM doesn't shut down a bunch of meaningful choices for you in advance.

And of course, for many people, 'challenging how good I am' makes for a fun game.

Sure, but I know my wife wouldn't find that fun. Your suggestion would make my game worse. It, objectively, is a bad suggestion, since the only thing that matters is how the player's react.

(It's not a bad suggestion, just trying to give perspective.)

The point I was trying to make is that you need both, yet they're sometimes they're mutually exclusive. So it just boils down to priorities, aka opinions.

We've nitpicked the current topic to the point where there's not much room for improvement, since any addition just removes something else.

Not trying to stifle conversation, but I think a good discussion point is that almost any RPG should do is figuring out how to bridge those two sides of the same coin.

I'd say 5e doesn't know how to do it, while something like FATE does. What other RPGs pull it off well?

Tanarii
2021-04-08, 12:49 AM
Sure, but I know my wife wouldn't find that fun. Your suggestion would make my game worse. It, objectively, is a bad suggestion, since the only thing that matters is how the player's react.

(It's not a bad suggestion, just trying to give perspective.)I understand the perspective. But the comment I was responding too was they couldn't understand why a GM tailoring to their players & PCs might be a bad thing for anyone.

icefractal
2021-04-08, 03:53 AM
I'd say 5e doesn't know how to do it, while something like FATE does. What other RPGs pull it off well?Does Fate do it? The system supports either (although dramatic to a greater extent than simulation, IMO), but in a given campaign it's going to be run a particular way.

I don't think I'd call this "Roleplaying vs Game" though - it's more like "World vs Game"; you can roleplay either way.

Quertus
2021-04-08, 06:23 AM
What those nay-sayers are talking about is sacrificing realism, yet you don't hear game developers say realism made a better game.

Because absolutely no effort was made to make the acceleration, turning, braking, or other performance characteristics of the carts intuitive to the players' expectations, or to have different vehicles or add-ons affect those performance characteristics, and do so in an intuitive way.

Clearly, you've never heard of a flight simulator. Or heard developers (or marketing thereof) brag about their game's physics. Or heard players complain about how unrealistic certain parts of a game were. Or heard players complain about how the AI "cheats". Or…

Nope, game developers never care about realism. :smallamused:

Man_Over_Game
2021-04-08, 07:42 AM
I understand the perspective. But the comment I was responding too was they couldn't understand why a GM tailoring to their players & PCs might be a bad thing for anyone.

On the contrary, giving your players realism when they want it IS tailoring to the players.


Because absolutely no effort was made to make the acceleration, turning, braking, or other performance characteristics of the carts intuitive to the players' expectations, or to have different vehicles or add-ons affect those performance characteristics, and do so in an intuitive way.

Clearly, you've never heard of a flight simulator. Or heard developers (or marketing thereof) brag about their game's physics. Or heard players complain about how unrealistic certain parts of a game were. Or heard players complain about how the AI "cheats". Or…

Nope, game developers never care about realism. :smallamused:

Same thing. Realism is a lever, like difficulty. If the player feels its a priority, it's a priority. It's not an inherently useful thing to prioritize.

But the reason we keep running into Guy At The Gym problems is because some guy made it a priority when his players didn't.

And considering you're already working in fantasy, it's important to remember that fewer people complain about a DM being too unrealistic.

Tanarii
2021-04-08, 09:28 AM
On the contrary, giving your players realism when they want it IS tailoring to the players.
Who said anything about giving players realism?

Changing or designing a campaign, module, adventure, or encounter, including "playing monsters smarter or dumber", to accommodate or oppose your players is tailoring. Letting it stand or doing it agnostically is not.

The latter isn't automatically a bad thing. Some players don't want hand-holding, in either direction. They want to trust that the GM is a neutral referee.

Morgaln
2021-04-08, 10:44 AM
Who said anything about giving players realism?

Changing or designing a campaign, module, adventure, or encounter, including "playing monsters smarter or dumber", to accommodate or oppose your players is tailoring. Letting it stand or doing it agnostically is not.

The latter isn't automatically a bad thing. Some players don't want hand-holding, in either direction. They want to trust that the GM is a neutral referee.

But the GM isn't purely a neutral referee. If the challenges in a certain adventure are too tough for a group, the GM can't just say "tough luck, this is how this was designed," mainly because the GM is the person who designed the challenges in the first place. If the players can't handle a challenge, the GM is partly responsible. The players not only have to trust that the GM is a neutral referee during the game, they also have to trust that the GM is a fair judge of what is doable during design. But the GM is human and can make mistakes. Is it fair to have a TPK because the GM completely misjudged the danger of a challenge? Will that help or destroy trust? On the reverse, if all challenges are too easy and the players just breeze through them, how much fun is that? Will the kind of player who doesn't want any hand-holding enjoy ripping through everything with no challenge at all for multiple sessions? Or would they prefer to feel like they actually accomplished something? So the players also have to trust that the GM is trying to create a fun experience (the whole point of the game, after all).

Also, who's to say that all monsters always take the most effective action? Sometimes humans make dumb decisions. Why shouldn't monsters do the same thing? It actually adds to the realism of the scene if the monster sometimes acts irrationally or emotionally (where appropriate, of course) and thus makes suboptimal choices.

Man_Over_Game
2021-04-08, 10:47 AM
The latter isn't automatically a bad thing. Some players don't want hand-holding, in either direction. They want to trust that the GM is a neutral referee.

And sometimes they don't. As long as you give your players what they want and don't assume for them, there isn't a wrong answer.

To me, being a "fair and impartial judge" is a definition of realism. That's how real life works, Randomness is the fairest judge.

But not everyone wants to play a game that's challenging all the time. Sometimes, randomness is cruel, and cruelty isn't always fun. Having a human in control of the universe means that you are in a unique position to trade fairness for fun.

Telok
2021-04-08, 12:49 PM
I try to deal with about factors when DMing.

1. I like to run an open world sandbox. I think it gives verisimilitude to the setting and lets players pick their game difficulty level. Of course the area threat rating has to be communicated effectively.

2. I try to lean into the major tropes of the genera. In supers games saving bystanders is more important than capping the villian, high body counts and collateral damage are bad things. In D&Ds zero to superhero, trapped evil wizard lairs, and genocide of unpopular sapients are goals.

3. Not boring. The party shouldn't just roflstomp stuff or be a no-choice-tpk, and nobody should be completely useless except by choice*. This is both combat & noncombat situations, not individual actions or turns but a whole situation. Some systems/adventures encourage it or make it easy to do by accident but I don't like running those. Even "easy" needs enough complication/threat to be able to turn into disaster and "tpk" needs at least two obvious exits (players may not take them, but at least two need to be honestly presented).

They can all conflict in a game, the goal is fun. Too easy/hard fights are fine as long everyone has fun. But yeah, most people get annoyed with them. Also that easy/hard can be choices to be made, not a hp/resource thing. A well planned ambush that goes perfectly is a "easy" fight but not easy prep work, the fight is the reward for the prep challenge. For me D&D 4e was boring because each combat turn was seconds to run a simple 6 step decision tree, seconds to roll dice, wait 3 to 5 minutes for next turn maybe mark off some hp. The fights were mechanically balanced and not too easy/hard from the hp/resource angle, but game play was basically mental repetitive motion injury & boredom for me.

I think maybe I got past the too easy/hard thing by sorting fights into two categories and sticking to games with higher options & dangers. Fights are either something that's in the way of the party blocking them from a goal, or they're there to give the players information (meta and/or in-game). So evading a fight, having a plan that makes it trivial, or running away is ok because the fight isn't the point of it. Also I try to avoid running systems that feel like "padded boffer" combat. If a fight gets to people standing in the open trading hits to run down hp I feel like I've failed**.

* I've seen "useless by choice" characters. Usually from players who tend to tune out everything noncombat or play by character "roles" in games that don't force character roles on you.

** I've face-palmed when players went to stupid melee fight an immobile golem in a room where they could have walked past before it finished animating.

Tanarii
2021-04-08, 01:33 PM
But the GM isn't purely a neutral referee. If the challenges in a certain adventure are too tough for a group, the GM can't just say "tough luck, this is how this was designed," mainly because the GM is the person who designed the challenges in the first place. If the players can't handle a challenge, the GM is partly responsible. The players not only have to trust that the GM is a neutral referee during the game, they also have to trust that the GM is a fair judge of what is doable during design. But the GM is human and can make mistakes. Is it fair to have a TPK because the GM completely misjudged the danger of a challenge? Will that help or destroy trust? On the reverse, if all challenges are too easy and the players just breeze through them, how much fun is that? Will the kind of player who doesn't want any hand-holding enjoy ripping through everything with no challenge at all for multiple sessions? Or would they prefer to feel like they actually accomplished something? So the players also have to trust that the GM is trying to create a fun experience (the whole point of the game, after all).You seem to assuming the GM only has one group of players for the content, that they are creating it themselves, and the players don't get to choose what content they will face or not face.


Also, who's to say that all monsters always take the most effective action? Sometimes humans make dumb decisions. Why shouldn't monsters do the same thing? It actually adds to the realism of the scene if the monster sometimes acts irrationally or emotionally (where appropriate, of course) and thus makes suboptimal choices.Whats that got to do with the price of milk?

We're talking about the DM changing the way monsters act based on the players skill level or build level. Not on having the monsters always behaving optimally.


And sometimes they don't. As long as you give your players what they want and don't assume for them, there isn't a wrong answer.Yup. Which is why I was providing an alternate perspective.

King of Nowhere
2021-04-08, 02:32 PM
Let me also tell you the story of the "cycle of stupidity". Long ago, I would adjust the difficulty of the campaign world to match the power level of the players. The result was the players would optimize (or as we called it back then, min-maxxing) even harder. So I would up the difficulty, and the players would min-max even harder, and I would up the difficulty. Eventually it got to the point where the player characters were completely one dimensional builds and the campaign setting was optimized like a proto tippyverse.

Nobody was happy here.

The problem is that players want fair challenges and also a world that doesn't appear tailored for them, which is really contradictory.


there is no contradiction, unless your world consists of nothing but a hex crawl of predetermined content.
A world has diffrent challenges of different level. while they are weak, they take low level challenges, like clearing out basements from dire rats. As they grow in power, they move to influence the world. They do completely different things.
And that's fundamental. They are more powerful, so they do something different. They do not do "the same things, with higher number". And the way I see it, you can only have your apparent contradiction if in your campaign leveling up entails doing the same things, with higher numbers. And that's horrible.
... ok. I am aware there are many people who like that. there are many successful games based on that paradigm, you have a bunch of abilities and you keep those abilities all game, just with higher numbers. Personally, I never saw one that could hook me up more than a few hours. I don't see the point in the whole leveling system if you keep doing the same things.

And so, as the party grows in power, the problem of them being ahead or behind the curve never applies; they simply undertake different quests. They can spend longer clearing basements or they can rise quickly to be champions of their nations, in all cases they will find appropriate challenges.



Right, so pretty much this. A good portion of the reward should be knowledge, renown, contacts, mundane resources (if you have magic item shops, or the equivalent, this can be hard to separate), and similar items. Getting more of these early is still an advantage, but it is harder to turn them into a wildly increasing upward spiral of advancement or the like (having three noble houses who like the party and are willing to hire them frequently is nice, but it is hard to leverage all three at once).
How do you keep that from snow-balling into tangible power though?

Why don't allies help you out? Why don't rich patrons buy your way out of trouble?


Some of that is supposed to snowball into tangible power. I consider connections an important part of a party's power; in fact, my campaign world is ruled by people with connection, not necessarily people with many pc class levels.
As for the rest, your allies are a very good way to make the party invested in the campaign world, and they can be used sparingly. The party has some problem they cannot solve? they are about to be defeated? you can send an ally to help them. As long as it doesn't happen often - and especially that their loss was not prearranged by you just to save them - they will be happy to have invested time to get allies.
But you can't get helped every time. Those people who see you as an asset, if you call on them too often, will see you as a liability. be a drain on their resources, and your allies will turn away from you. ask a favor once, all is good, but ask a favor every session, it won't end well.

Furthermore, many of those allies will not provide much combat power, but they will provide other kinds of power that the party may lack.
In my campaign, the party accepted to work for a powerful nation. Now they have a powerful sponsor. And they get benefits. They can stay at the safehouse, without worrying about the assassin killing them in their sleep. They can access the nation's spy network, finding information that they'd have no way of uncovering otherwise. If they need a specific service, they ask and they are sent to the right person - they don't need to climb the mountain to find the old wise man to who will answer their questions, they will be given the address of a specialist of the specific field in which they need questions. They get legal protection from minor crimes committed during adventuring - they were likely going to infiltrate the home of the bad guy in search for evidence anyway, but now they won't get in trouble with the authorities, they are the authorities.
Those are all things that cost little to a nation, whose apparatus will have many people whose job is to know other people and make things happen, but they are very convenient to adventurers, that would have to go through a lot of trouble, expences, and sidequests to achieve the same results.
And the nation also offered to help with the aforementioned assassin, though if they ask help too often without providing things of value, they will fall out of favor eventually.
In exchange, the nation asks them for their combat prowess. Clearing out the wandering monsters around the road is, for them, a job of a normal afternoon. The nation, if it couldn't ask them, would have to hire adventurers and pay them dearly, or to send a regular army detachment and lose many men.
So it's a good exchange; the nation provides something they would have a hard time getting otherwise, and they provide something the nation would have a hard time getting otherwise. Being sponsored by the nation increases their power, but in ways that advances the story, not in ways that help them in a dungeon crawl.

And sometimes the plot will expect them to use their connections for power. In the previous campaign, the big bad showed up with a massive army, including a few hundred liches and a handful of 20th level npcs that were capable of going toe to toe with the party - and of mopping the floor with pretty much anyone else that would oppose them.
and the party was never expected to face this on their own; although they did repeatedly face the enemy elite on the battlefield, a lot of their effort was spent with their allies, bringing as many as possible to fight against the big bad. And it was awesome. Every good choice they took in the two-years campaign came back to help them. Much better than solving everything with a few rolls of dice.

Morgaln
2021-04-09, 03:36 AM
You seem to assuming the GM only has one group of players for the content, that they are creating it themselves, and the players don't get to choose what content they will face or not face.


I'm certainly assuming we're talking about content the GM created themselves, since the OP heavily implies that. Whether there are other groups using the content only matters if those groups interact somehow, otherwise they are completely independent instances. Players can only choose content they view through the lens of the GM's description. It's the job of the GM to convey somehow whether specific content is doable for the party or not. If the GM mistakenly portrays a challenge as appropriate, it's on the GM's head if the players engage that challenge in good faith.



Whats that got to do with the price of milk?

We're talking about the DM changing the way monsters act based on the players skill level or build level. Not on having the monsters always behaving optimally.


What else is "playing a monster dumber" supposed to mean? Having it talk like Ralph Wiggum? Playing it dumber means not always choosing the optimal tactic or ability for a given situation, i. e. having it play suboptimally, in order to account for the players also having suboptimal skills and/or builds. I can't think of any other interpretation of that. Maybe you'd like to explain the difference?

Talakeal
2021-04-09, 12:31 PM
Sorry I haven't been around to reply much, busy week.


As I detailed above MMOs generally do not experience the problem of characters being set against a standard difficulty curve while their power grows based on performance (recent XCOM). You’re free to loiter on a lower difficulty boss until you have the gear. You’re also free to skip intermediate gearing pursuits if you can handle the challenges a few tiers up.

PvP free for alls have always been first come first served and their meta revolves around this or they’ve explicitly chosen to not care about that balance as a central part of the experience.

Depends on the MMO I guess. It has been a constant complain about PvP in World of Warcraft, for example, that gear is designed to amplify skill gaps rather than minimize it.


Good Stuff

I just wanted to say, excellent post.


Paraphrased from JayR's rules: What players want today is an easy encounter where everything goes their way, and they breeze through it. What they will want tomorrow is to have had an extremely difficult encounter they only survived by the skin of their teeth, and the trick their thief pulled by dropping the chandelier onto the edge of the bench that flipped up, banging the bottom of the table, which tipped the lit candle over into the thingamabob that burned the McGuffin.

I kind of live by that, but I don't think my players do. They constantly bitch and whine, and even bring up decades old "DM screwjobs." Heck, one of my players always make extreme "glass-cannon" builds and shields his character with out of character bitching.

I don't consider myself very hard (80% daily resource expenditure, 7% of sessions have some sort of set back like the players being forced to retreat, failing a time sensitive goal, or a player character death), certainly not compared to an old school gamer, but my players sure do.



I don't want everything to be a cake walk, but I do want the abilities of the PCs to matter. And if everything is auto-scaled to the PCs, their abilities don't really matter.

Personally speaking, I think people take "challenge" as too much of a hard rule. Not every fight needs to be equally challenging! If some of them are easy and others are various degrees of challenging/deadly, that's fine. So the PCs found out they were facing magma trolls, prepared accordingly, and now they're facerolling them? Yes, that is ok, that's not a problem you need to solve - or should solve - by a retroactive "and the trolls had an ice drake in reserve!" Let them take the easy win, aim a bit tougher for the next arc, done.

The one case that becomes a problem is when a foe is supposed to have particular significance in the world and they blatantly don't live up to it. Like, "Grath the Executioner is the lone guardian of the gate to the netherworld - the last time someone got past him was a century ago" - and then it turns out that Grath goes down like a chump and everyone's wondering "how the hell did this guy survive a century of battles?" For that I'd recommend not introducing such setting-critical characters immediately, wait until you have a better idea what the right optimization level is.

Agreed.


I might be missing something, but I don't really see the relation with the question here.
You seems to try to solve difference between players, and how to reward specific players more than others.

OP is asking about how to deal when the whole group of players is taking an early lead or and early set back compared to what was expected, and that encounters after encounters this early lead of set back is amplified to the point of the PCs being significantly stronger or weaker than expected, meaning that the whole group is either rolling over encounters that were supposed to be difficult, or being forced to retreat in encounters that were supposed to be easy. Both of them leading to potentially boring gameplay.

Excellent summation of my point, you said it better than I did.


I don't think you have to be playing a narrative system to give (/ask player to give their) characters goals beyond kill things and getting stronger. Making progress in those goals could be rewards that don't create a positive feedback loop.

Neither do I.

I usually run "Dragonlance" style games where killing and getting stronger are just stepping stones to goals both epic and personal, like saving the world and finding true love. I normally play World of Darkness, where combat is only an every few sessions thing and killing someone is treated with the gravity of comiting murder.

But, most games, even narrative games, are definitely part of the action / adventure genre and involve overcoming challenges, where "power" helps you overcome conflict and where "combat" is a viable solution to many problems.

Do note that when I talk about narrative I am talking about the rules, but the game style. I am talking about something where the game is trying to tell a good story and replicate narrative tropes rather than logic or simulation; where an (american) character can't just stroll into Walmart and buy a gun because he didn't spend points on having one.


What I said was about players who want both. :smalltongue:

Roleplaying is making (meaningful) decisions for your character in the fictional environment. IMO that works better if the DM doesn't shut down a bunch of meaningful choices for you in advance.

And of course, for many people, 'challenging how good I am' makes for a fun game.

Agreed.


But the GM isn't purely a neutral referee. If the challenges in a certain adventure are too tough for a group, the GM can't just say "tough luck, this is how this was designed," mainly because the GM is the person who designed the challenges in the first place. If the players can't handle a challenge, the GM is partly responsible. The players not only have to trust that the GM is a neutral referee during the game, they also have to trust that the GM is a fair judge of what is doable during design. But the GM is human and can make mistakes. Is it fair to have a TPK because the GM completely misjudged the danger of a challenge? Will that help or destroy trust? On the reverse, if all challenges are too easy and the players just breeze through them, how much fun is that? Will the kind of player who doesn't want any hand-holding enjoy ripping through everything with no challenge at all for multiple sessions? Or would they prefer to feel like they actually accomplished something? So the players also have to trust that the GM is trying to create a fun experience (the whole point of the game, after all).

Also, who's to say that all monsters always take the most effective action? Sometimes humans make dumb decisions. Why shouldn't monsters do the same thing? It actually adds to the realism of the scene if the monster sometimes acts irrationally or emotionally (where appropriate, of course) and thus makes suboptimal choices.

Question, what about an encounter where the players own choices lead to their own demise?

Should the GM save them from the consequences of their decisions?

Like, for example, if the wizard chooses nothing but fire spells, and then the party gets wrecked by a fire immune monster, who is to blame here?


there is no contradiction, unless your world consists of nothing but a hex crawl of predetermined content.
A world has diffrent challenges of different level. while they are weak, they take low level challenges, like clearing out basements from dire rats. As they grow in power, they move to influence the world. They do completely different things.
And that's fundamental. They are more powerful, so they do something different. They do not do "the same things, with higher number". And the way I see it, you can only have your apparent contradiction if in your campaign leveling up entails doing the same things, with higher numbers. And that's horrible.
... ok. I am aware there are many people who like that. there are many successful games based on that paradigm, you have a bunch of abilities and you keep those abilities all game, just with higher numbers. Personally, I never saw one that could hook me up more than a few hours. I don't see the point in the whole leveling system if you keep doing the same things.

I am the complete opposite.

If I like the game, I want to keep playing it, I don't want it to fundamentally change on me.

I hate D&Ds game where you have to wait for months to get the abilities that define your character (assuming the game lasts that long), which is only balanced at a few levels at mid game, and where the campaign ends shortly after you get your awesome capstone ability. Or where if you decide to go to Epic, you find yourself in another world where which completely and utterly trivializes everything you did before.


And sometimes the plot will expect them to use their connections for power. In the previous campaign, the big bad showed up with a massive army, including a few hundred liches and a handful of 20th level npcs that were capable of going toe to toe with the party - and of mopping the floor with pretty much anyone else that would oppose them.
and the party was never expected to face this on their own; although they did repeatedly face the enemy elite on the battlefield, a lot of their effort was spent with their allies, bringing as many as possible to fight against the big bad. And it was awesome. Every good choice they took in the two-years campaign came back to help them. Much better than solving everything with a few rolls of dice.

Ok, and what you have done if the players hadn't made those good choices? Just keep playing for two years and then shrug and tell them, sorry, tough luck?


Personally, I never saw one that could hook me up more than a few hours.

Every good choice they took in the two-years campaign came back to help them. Much better than solving everything with a few rolls of dice.

I assume I am reading too much into this, but how do you play a two year campaign where you need fundamental change every few hours?

Quertus
2021-04-09, 03:41 PM
But the GM isn't purely a neutral referee. If the challenges in a certain adventure are too tough for a group, the GM can't just say "tough luck, this is how this was designed," mainly because the GM is the person who designed the challenges in the first place. If the players can't handle a challenge, the GM is partly responsible. The players not only have to trust that the GM is a neutral referee during the game, they also have to trust that the GM is a fair judge of what is doable during design. But the GM is human and can make mistakes. Is it fair to have a TPK because the GM completely misjudged the danger of a challenge? Will that help or destroy trust? On the reverse, if all challenges are too easy and the players just breeze through them, how much fun is that? Will the kind of player who doesn't want any hand-holding enjoy ripping through everything with no challenge at all for multiple sessions? Or would they prefer to feel like they actually accomplished something? So the players also have to trust that the GM is trying to create a fun experience (the whole point of the game, after all).

Also, who's to say that all monsters always take the most effective action? Sometimes humans make dumb decisions. Why shouldn't monsters do the same thing? It actually adds to the realism of the scene if the monster sometimes acts irrationally or emotionally (where appropriate, of course) and thus makes suboptimal choices.


I'm certainly assuming we're talking about content the GM created themselves, since the OP heavily implies that. Whether there are other groups using the content only matters if those groups interact somehow, otherwise they are completely independent instances. Players can only choose content they view through the lens of the GM's description. It's the job of the GM to convey somehow whether specific content is doable for the party or not. If the GM mistakenly portrays a challenge as appropriate, it's on the GM's head if the players engage that challenge in good faith.



What else is "playing a monster dumber" supposed to mean? Having it talk like Ralph Wiggum? Playing it dumber means not always choosing the optimal tactic or ability for a given situation, i. e. having it play suboptimally, in order to account for the players also having suboptimal skills and/or builds. I can't think of any other interpretation of that. Maybe you'd like to explain the difference?

I may be able to help clear this up.

So, the theory is, you've got monsters, that you are intending to play a certain way. Probably not as a perfect Determinator would, because, as you say, "It actually adds to the realism of the scene if the monster sometimes acts irrationally or emotionally (where appropriate, of course) and thus makes suboptimal choices."

The theory is, a GM can attempt to rectify balance errors (or changes to redirected balance to do player tactics, or (un)lucky dice by sliding that slider of "monster competence" in reaction.

So, the GM can *choose* that the monster gets irrationally angry, and does something dumb, *because* the party needs a break.

-----

Also, even with the GM creating the content, I have advised¹ this particular OP to create their content as a written module *before* they know what the PCs are, and save this module in a way that the players can know that the GM is playing fair, rather than making things up specifically to **** their characters. (Encrypted files, one for each encounter, where I tell the players the password to decrypt *that specific file* when this comes up is how I might implement this; sealed envelopes held by a neutral third party is another valid implementation of "GM's content as static module".

¹ in response to "how do I get my players to stop complaining that I'm being unfair".

King of Nowhere
2021-04-09, 05:18 PM
I am the complete opposite.

If I like the game, I want to keep playing it, I don't want it to fundamentally change on me.

I hate D&Ds game where you have to wait for months to get the abilities that define your character (assuming the game lasts that long), which is only balanced at a few levels at mid game, and where the campaign ends shortly after you get your awesome capstone ability. Or where if you decide to go to Epic, you find yourself in another world where which completely and utterly trivializes everything you did before.
...

I assume I am reading too much into this, but how do you play a two year campaign where you need fundamental change every few hours?


well, i wouldn't say that the game fundamentally changes. Like, I hate when they make a rebalance and change gameplay, it's part of the reason i stopped playing magic the gathering (have to chnge deck every time a new set of cards come out) or leage of legends (have to change strategy at every season). But this is not that kind of change. D&D is still D&D, it still has the same mechanics and the same setting. but there is a definite sense of progression and story advancing when your party goes from clearing pests to squabbling with a local crime lord to being involved in international spy business to eventually be the strongest people on the side of good and the only ones that can stand in front of the bbeg.
The point is that playing at high levels must feel different than playing at low levels. if at level 1 you clear rats out of the basement and at level 5 you clear dire infernal half-dragon rats out of basements and at level 20 you clear tarrasque out of basements, then i feel there's no point to leveling up in the first place. just give me static numbers, don't have to worry about balance either.

and yes, you raise good points for the problems there. i prefer to start the campaign with a few levels so that people already start with the abilities that define them (well, mostly). as for capstones, they are boosts but rarely game-changing. As for epics, half of my dislike for that is the "same thing, only with higher numbers" factor, the other half is the "now you go in another place where everything is epic too" and yes, this also sucks.
In my campaign world, at levels 5-10 you are a big guy in your city/region, at level 11-15 you are a big guy in your nation, at level 16-20 you are important worldwide; the most powerful people in the world are level 20 with some extra cheese. at no point you ever "utterly trivialize what you did before". if you optimize well or get much wealth or get too powerful for any other reason, you simply can join the bigger league sooner than you would have otherwise.



Ok, and what you have done if the players hadn't made those good choices? Just keep playing for two years and then shrug and tell them, sorry, tough luck?


No, that's the part I like more about the thing. Of course the players succeed in the end. the game is set to make them win. but they can get various degrees of success.

In my case they got the golden ending. They defeated the big bad and his army at every encounter. They built up a coalition as big as they could. And when a faction of dragons tried to use the humanoid war as an opening to exterminate humans and resume being the dominant species on the planet, the players defeated the dragon leader and impressed enough the other dragons that they joined them against the big bad.
This ended the campaign with the big bad army annihilated by a huge coalition made of all the free nations of the world, a lot of nations that were not free but that the players could persuade anyway, and dragons. the big bad was defeated with little (for the scale of a world war) collateral damage, the dragons and humans made peaceful treaties, orcs got rights as regular people (important because one of the players was an orc) and a new era of peace and prosperity started.

If the players had been less skilled, i still would have given them ways to win in the form of more quests to weaken the big bad power base, but it would have been worse. Maybe the dragon leader would have been successful in leading dragons against humanoids, turning the war into a prolonged three-faction standoff. In fact, the dragon leader had agents on both sides of the conflict, and he was using those to ensure the conflict would be balanced; obviously he wanted as many humanoids to kill each other as possible. And this gave me a perfect excuse to "adjust" the difficulty according to the player's success: it's not metagaming, it's the agents from the dragon leader. Of course the players didn't knew at first, but the moment of the big reveal was worth it.
Maybe the big bad would have been successful in getting the orcs to join him; this would have likely resulted in orcish extermination.
Maybe the factions would have been more evenly balanced, so that the war would not be won quickly but would be protracted and destructive.
Maybe they could not persuade the dragons (which, by the way, was done by forgiving the party dragon cohort for having been a mole and having sabotaged them; this persuaded the more uncertain dragons that peaceful coexhistance was possible; I wasn't expecting it, it impressed me, and i figured it would impress the dragons too), and relationships between dragons and humanoids would have remained strained.
If the party had been mostly unsuccessful in those objectives, instead of ushering in a new era of peace and prosperity, they'd have defeated the big bad(s) and ushered in a new era where the immediate threats were dealt with, but none of the underlying problems was fixed. or, they could have inherited a broken world, recovering with difficulty from a devastating war. All those scenarios would have been pc victories, just not as complete.
only by being utter morons they could have actually lost the war.

And i'm proud of having come up with that story because it gave the party something to strive for. Everyone knows the party is going to win unless they do something real stupid. there is no suspence in that. knowing that there was a golden ending to strive for means they knew their actions would have consequences, that failure was a possibility. They got some real sense of accomplishment. Their actions made a difference. At the same time, i could give them many chances to lose without being a harsh dm; i was going to give them many chances to win in any case, it's just that victory would have been less complete.

Of course, it helps if you can get your players to trust you that the stuff you do makes sense and is not done to spite them.
When i announced my players that their most safe unbreachable stronghold was breached by the big bad, it could have seemed like i was randomly throwing obstacles at them because they were being successful. But i got them to trust me that i wouldn't just do that for no reason. in fact, when they investigated they eventually discovered that someone sabotaged the defences from the inside, and that their dragon cohort was responsible. which led them to discover all the plot with dragons, and eventually ushered in the end of the campaign. In fact, they started to investigate (instead of buying the apparent explanation that the big bad just researched a new ritual to break the defences) exactly because they trusted me to not resort to ass pulls just to screw them up because they were winning.
And it helps that the world was well characterized and established, too.

I hope my explanation was clear enough. And most of it was specific to my campaign; but the point is, the paradox of challenge doesn't have to be a dicotomy. You can reward your players for good ideas while at the same time ramping up the difficulty in ways that the players will perceive as justified and not punitive. And you can punish them for failure without it derailing the whole campaing, and give them some easier path afterwards.

quinron
2021-04-11, 01:37 AM
well, i wouldn't say that the game fundamentally changes. Like, I hate when they make a rebalance and change gameplay, it's part of the reason i stopped playing magic the gathering (have to chnge deck every time a new set of cards come out) or leage of legends (have to change strategy at every season). But this is not that kind of change. D&D is still D&D, it still has the same mechanics and the same setting. but there is a definite sense of progression and story advancing when your party goes from clearing pests to squabbling with a local crime lord to being involved in international spy business to eventually be the strongest people on the side of good and the only ones that can stand in front of the bbeg.
The point is that playing at high levels must feel different than playing at low levels. if at level 1 you clear rats out of the basement and at level 5 you clear dire infernal half-dragon rats out of basements and at level 20 you clear tarrasque out of basements, then i feel there's no point to leveling up in the first place. just give me static numbers, don't have to worry about balance either.

This is becoming a complaint for me in TTRPGs: enemies' defense/offense scale pretty much 1:1 with your offense/defense, respectively, so it's hard to see the point at which the game really changes unless the GM decides to throw in some weaklings for you to stomp - in which case that fight probably nets you next to nothing in terms of experience, so you'd have been better off saving your resources for a real challenge.

My immediate solution is to raise the floor and lower the ceiling. 1st-level challenges should be a bit tougher and should also be worth confronting throughout the low levels, so that you can feel that sense of accomplishment that comes from easily overcoming something that used to be a challenge while still getting something for your effort. Past a certain point, high-level challenges should increase in variety without necessarily increasing in difficulty outside a few major threats - that way, once you've reached top level, you're walking around feeling like a god among men most of the time until you encounter one of the few creatures that still pose a threat. The easiest way to accommodate this, or at least the first that comes to mind, is to have a more robust and well-defined system for awarding experience outside combat - that way, once you've reached level 20, you aren't having to plow through hundreds of level-16 monsters to level up; you just plow through dozens of them and get a big (maybe level-scaled?) reward for clearing out the dungeon.

To borrow your framework: at level 1 you're clearing rats out of one basement, at level 5 you're clearing rats out of every basement in town in the same timeframe, at level 10 you're clearing demons out of the dungeon, at level 15 you're clearing all the demons out of every dungeon in the kingdom in the same timeframe, and at level 20 you're clearing out all of Hell until Satan shows up to fight you.

MoiMagnus
2021-04-11, 04:43 AM
This is becoming a complaint for me in TTRPGs: enemies' defense/offense scale pretty much 1:1 with your offense/defense, respectively, so it's hard to see the point at which the game really changes unless the GM decides to throw in some weaklings for you to stomp - in which case that fight probably nets you next to nothing in terms of experience, so you'd have been better off saving your resources for a real challenge

Statistics scale in 1:1 because you only have a small margin in which the math actually works well enough for the game to be pleasant. Having played a long campaign in a homebrew where we experimented a lot with scaling, the main thing that cause problems are hitting rate:
+Since failing at your attack (or the enemy saving against your single target spell) means your turn was useless, you have a floor of how often failing is acceptable before the game becomes frustrating to play.
+On the other side, if attack bonuses are so high that success is the norm, occasional failure becomes even more frustrating.

However, what you have much more freedom is:
(1) Hit points and lethality of combat.
(2) Action economy, and reaction economy (how many effects can be inserted as an interruption of a turn). In general, technical complexity of a fight and the involved rules can scale.
(3) Diversity and "weird effects" that fundamentally shape the combat (like flight allowing aerial battles).


My immediate solution is to raise the floor and lower the ceiling. 1st-level challenges should be a bit tougher and should also be worth confronting throughout the low levels, so that you can feel that sense of accomplishment that comes from easily overcoming something that used to be a challenge while still getting something for your effort.

From my understanding, the way modern TTRPGs are designed, this is handled at meta level. 1st-level challenges are tougher because it is assumed the players are new to the system, so if you keep the same mathematical balance, the game will become easier as the players are becoming better at playing.

Mrark
2021-04-11, 05:06 AM
I agree with King of Nowhere: being one of his players I found more enjoyable changing the "playstyle" during the campaign, and I think that's what would likely happen in a "real world". I mean, you don't always wanna stick rats, bigger rats, or demons or tarrasques: when you become powerful you might be tempted to change the whole world dinamics, and if your DM isn't a railroad berserker, you should be able to try doing that at least. You might get involved into politics, you won't fight just monsters but fight against other NPC parties might become daily routine: and sometimes the fights might be just diplomatic conversation or resource management in order to get the job done. The point is that the more you advance into the game, the more complex it should get. Of course at level one you won't be considered by anyone, nor have any resources, so you go and take whatever quest you get clearing rat in the basement. But raising up with power the situation changes: you create connections, changes in the world are determined not just with sticks and rocks but with words and alliances, and consequently the gameplay has to evolve.

Talakeal
2021-04-11, 01:08 PM
I agree with King of Nowhere: being one of his players I found more enjoyable changing the "playstyle" during the campaign, and I think that's what would likely happen in a "real world". I mean, you don't always wanna stick rats, bigger rats, or demons or tarrasques: when you become powerful you might be tempted to change the whole world dinamics, and if your DM isn't a railroad berserker, you should be able to try doing that at least. You might get involved into politics, you won't fight just monsters but fight against other NPC parties might become daily routine: and sometimes the fights might be just diplomatic conversation or resource management in order to get the job done. The point is that the more you advance into the game, the more complex it should get. Of course at level one you won't be considered by anyone, nor have any resources, so you go and take whatever quest you get clearing rat in the basement. But raising up with power the situation changes: you create connections, changes in the world are determined not just with sticks and rocks but with words and alliances, and consequently the gameplay has to evolve.

Ok, maybe I am actually not reading enough into it.

When you say "bigger numbers" do you literally mean bigger numbers?

Because it seems to me that I could tell that same story at low levels.

Say, replace world with town, replace nations with business owners, replace dragons with ogre tribes living in the nearby wilderness, replace villain with crime boss, replace liches with goons, replace orcs with poor youth gangs, and replace 20th level NPCs with hired guns from out of town.

Nothing about these scenarios really screams fundamentally different to me, its just a matter of scale.

But admittedly I don't know all the details.


What else is "playing a monster dumber" supposed to mean? Having it talk like Ralph Wiggum? Playing it dumber means not always choosing the optimal tactic or ability for a given situation, i. e. having it play suboptimally, in order to account for the players also having suboptimal skills and/or builds. I can't think of any other interpretation of that. Maybe you'd like to explain the difference?

Generally its about trying harder. Much like any game, when I am losing I focus more and think through my actions, while when I am winning I just charge in and have fun.

In the specific example that was brought up previously, the party put a wall of fire down on top of a blind monster (who could still smell them). On its turn, the monster moved out of the wall of fire toward the party. The party complained, saying that since it was blind, I should have rolled randomly for which direction it moved, possibly trapping it in a corner and allowing them a free round of missile fire and another move through the wall of fire, and I told them that I probably would have had it make the poor decision if they were losing, but as it was they were wiping the floor with the monster so I didn't think it necessary.

Another time I had a hydra split its attacks evenly between all melee characters rather than focus fire on one at a time because they were having a tough go of it and I didn't want to TPK the party.

That sort of thing.

King of Nowhere
2021-04-11, 03:19 PM
Ok, maybe I am actually not reading enough into it.

When you say "bigger numbers" do you literally mean bigger numbers?

Because it seems to me that I could tell that same story at low levels.

Say, replace world with town, replace nations with business owners, replace dragons with ogre tribes living in the nearby wilderness, replace villain with crime boss, replace liches with goons, replace orcs with poor youth gangs, and replace 20th level NPCs with hired guns from out of town.

Nothing about these scenarios really screams fundamentally different to me, its just a matter of scale.

But admittedly I don't know all the details.


:smallconfused: You know, i never considered it this way, but you have a point...
then again, while engaging with the chieftains to shape the fate of conflicting tribes and engaging with kings and high priests to shape the fate of conflicting nations has some similarities - if nothing else, shows that i like some political dealings in my games - the things are different enough to not qualify as "same, but with bigger numbers". You get very different problems, and very different resources - both magic and people.
or perhaps we are really just fooling ourselves and we do the same things with different fluff.

but i think we had a misunderstanding when i say i want things to be different. it's not like i want a first person shooter gradually become a game of chess. but leveling must give a sense of growth beyond higher numbers. in most cases, just having new magic toys does the trick. i did play a few games where you start with a bunch of skills and fight some monsters, and then you level up and those skills deal more damage and you have more hit points but the monsters also have more hit points and deal more damage so that leveling up felt pointless. and the situation you were initially describing gave me the idea of just that, a game that was a mere exercice in rolling dice and calculating probability, without any of the trappings that make the thing actually engaging.

Telok
2021-04-11, 04:20 PM
This is becoming a complaint for me in TTRPGs: enemies' defense/offense scale pretty much 1:1 with your offense/defense, respectively, so it's hard to see the point at which the game really changes unless the GM decides to throw in some weaklings for you to stomp - in which case that fight probably nets you next to nothing in terms of experience, so you'd have been better off saving your resources for a real challenge.

My immediate solution is

My solution has been to move to systems that don't scale offense/defense in that manner. And by that I mostly mean the current D&D style games that scale attack from +x to +x+20, and scale ac from 10+x to 10+x+20, and scale damage from 1d+y to 20d+y or 1d+(20*y), and scale hit points from 10+1d to 10+20d. I feel that those systems have started to spend so much design space on the offense/defense progression, and on making cosmetic differences between character types, that they use up almost all the word count and game space just on that progression. Which I think is why they don't seem to do much else and so often start breaking at the introduction of abilities that aren't hit point based.

It depends on the genera of the game, but I don't believe that combat ability advancement, or the lack there of, needs to be a given. Call of Cthulhu isn't reliant on combat at all, most supers systems don't care if heroes can beat infinite mooks from day one (assuming you aren't doing the gritty streel level stuff), Shadowrun dosen't require any combat advancement since characters can start high on that ladder if they want to, Paranoia is happy to keep everyone subject to the whims of the dice.


Another time I had a hydra split its attacks evenly between all melee characters rather than focus fire on one at a time because they were having a tough go of it and I didn't want to TPK the party.

Once in d&d I had a custom dragon power attack a 10th level pc for 22 points. That was fine as it was going to need a 18+ to hit (pc didn't know that) and the pc had a reroll ability. It was a way to telegraph the danger level of the encounter. After some cat-and-mouse stuff through a cave maze the party lured it into a small tunnel, blocked it in, and kept it busy with summoned creatures while they got free access to it's flanks. In fact several times in that campaign there were very large monsters in areas with tight spaces for the pcs to use.

Still didn't stop them from trying to fight the giant gelatenous cube out in the open though. I was amazed that a non-intelligent, 10'/round speed, 3 ac monster, stuck in one room could kill 3 pcs over a 12 round fight during which it moved less than 30 feet. And they'd spotted it before starting the combat too. Sometimes it isn't the dice and no amount of believable fudging will help the pcs.

icefractal
2021-04-11, 08:26 PM
While there's nothing wrong with systems that have flat power curves, I'm sort of confused why multiple people are posting them as the answer to progression feeling fake and high-level quests being too much a reskin of low-level ones.

"Clear out quasi-Tarrasque clones from the archmage's subterranean storage area? Isn't this just killing rats in the basement with bigger numbers?"
"I hear you, that sounds dumb. Let's ditch the bigger numbers so you can just stick to killing rats in basements."

Like - changing the scope of gameplay, having a wider variety of challenge types, giving connections and social matters a larger role - all good things. None of which are dependent on whether the power curve is flat or steep.

Personally, I actually feel like the "GM bar" is a little higher with systems that don't have mechanical progression, because it means having any sense of achievement is dependent on the GM creating the opportunity and presenting it in a way that feels meaningful. With D&D, you can at least have some feeling of change when the GM isn't doing that.

kyoryu
2021-04-11, 09:21 PM
It shouldn't just be bigger numbers - it should be more and more complex options.

At level 1 (metaphorically) you're hitting things with a sword.

At level 20 you're looking at positioning, and selecting between a number of maneuvers based on the situation, applying effects and utilizing others, etc.

Telok
2021-04-11, 11:05 PM
Personally, I actually feel like the "GM bar" is a little higher with systems that don't have mechanical progression, because it means having any sense of achievement is dependent on the GM creating the opportunity and presenting it in a way that feels meaningful. With D&D, you can at least have some feeling of change when the GM isn't doing that.

I think my issue with the current state of D&D is more that "advancement" is just bigger combat numbers unless you're casting spells. With the focus on the concepts of fair or level appropriate fights the combat number inflation has the feeling of a weak illusion of improvement. I've come to prefer systems that offers all characters options and advancement beyond combat.

King of Nowhere
2021-04-12, 05:20 AM
While there's nothing wrong with systems that have flat power curves, I'm sort of confused why multiple people are posting them as the answer to progression feeling fake and high-level quests being too much a reskin of low-level ones.

"Clear out quasi-Tarrasque clones from the archmage's subterranean storage area? Isn't this just killing rats in the basement with bigger numbers?"
"I hear you, that sounds dumb. Let's ditch the bigger numbers so you can just stick to killing rats in basements."

Like - changing the scope of gameplay, having a wider variety of challenge types, giving connections and social matters a larger role - all good things. None of which are dependent on whether the power curve is flat or steep.

yeah, removing the power curve is not going to help with anything.
On the other hand, if there is no power curve, then there is no expectation of progression. people may be happy sticking to rats in basements forever.
A game with leveling up gives the idea that there will be progress, if then the game fails to meet this expectation it's bad. whether it actually meets the expectation of progress depends mostly on the judgment of the guy playing it.


Personally, I actually feel like the "GM bar" is a little higher with systems that don't have mechanical progression, because it means having any sense of achievement is dependent on the GM creating the opportunity and presenting it in a way that feels meaningful. With D&D, you can at least have some feeling of change when the GM isn't doing that.

personally, i think the reverse holds. a mechanical progression means that setting up an encounter for level 1 or for level 10 or for level 20 are entirely different things and you have to know them all. you also have to make a world where a single level 20 guy can destroy a whole army of mooks without effort, and you have to figure out a way to make it consistent.
Don't get me wrong, i like mechanical progression, but it makes my job more difficult

Tanarii
2021-04-12, 09:50 AM
On the other hand, if there is no power curve, then there is no expectation of progression. people may be happy sticking to rats in basements forever. Thats not how games without power curves work.

Telok
2021-04-12, 10:02 AM
Thats not how games without power curves work.

Paranoia dosen't have power curves but I've been thinking about pucking up the splats that support the party being green IntSec goons or ultraviolet High Programmers. Champions dosen't have a power curve, your superhero characters just buy up whatever stats/abilities. Pendragon campaigns can easily be multi-generational, an effect of the one big adventure a year with court & romance stuff in the off season, and I don't even know how you'd map that to a power curve. Anyone want to chime in on stuff like Fate or BitD?

kyoryu
2021-04-12, 10:19 AM
Thats not how games without power curves work.

Right.

Specifically:

1) Most games without that level of advancement start you at a "heroic" point fairly quickly
2) Most games have some advancement, it's just not as severe.

Think most TV shows or movies. The characters start out competent, and might get slightly more competent over time but not drastically so. They don't start out killing rats and end up killing Gods.

Talakeal
2021-04-12, 10:26 AM
My system has a much flatter power curve than D&D, and if anything I think that actually makes the problem worse, not better, as things you do remain relevant for far longer.

For example, missing out on a treasure hoard means a lot less if the character's expected wealth doubles every session.


It shouldn't just be bigger numbers - it should be more and more complex options.

At level 1 (metaphorically) you're hitting things with a sword.

At level 20 you're looking at positioning, and selecting between a number of maneuvers based on the situation, applying effects and utilizing others, etc.

This is kind of what I hate, games which don't let lower level characters have choices and which gate all the cool stuff behind tons of playtime that may never even pay off.

kyoryu
2021-04-12, 10:58 AM
This is kind of what I hate, games which don't let lower level characters have choices and which gate all the cool stuff behind tons of playtime that may never even pay off.

You can definitely take it too far!

Morgaln
2021-04-12, 02:18 PM
Question, what about an encounter where the players own choices lead to their own demise?

Should the GM save them from the consequences of their decisions?

Like, for example, if the wizard chooses nothing but fire spells, and then the party gets wrecked by a fire immune monster, who is to blame here?



I still owe you an answer to this. My incredibly helpful answer is. it depends :P

1. Was the player aware fire immunity is a thing? A new player might well have picked just fire spells because they thought that sounded cool. They might not be aware that their choices might make them useless in a given situation. In that case, I would give part of the blame to the GM for not helping that player understand the consequences beforehand. If it is a seasoned player who is aware their one trick can be shut down, it's on their own head when they run into trouble.

2. Did the players have a choice in facing the enounter or was it sprung on them? If they didn't have the choice, the GM did make the decision of forcing an encounter where they know the wizard would be useless. Then the GM does share blame; otherwise, see point 3.

3. Was it telegraphed somehow that this creature might be immune to fire? If for example it's made from fire, living in an active volcano or breathing fire, that could be seen as ample warning that fire might not be the best choice in fighting that particular monster. However, how clear the warning is might vary from player to player, and again, experience plays a big role here. But if the players went into that encounter knowing full well that their wizard would likely be useless (I assume everyone knows they only have fire spells available), then again, the GM did what they could to warn them.

In general, however, the question is whether the whole party should be punished because one player chose poorly in designing their character. Again, experience is a big factor here. If it is an inexperienced group that has a hard time judging what's an appropriate encounter and what isn't, I as a GM would give them the opportunity to escape from that encounter instead of wrecking them completely. I'll also throw in a few hints that they are outclassed during the encounter if I couldn't deter them from going there in the first place. For an experienced group that knew what they were getting into, suffer the consequences of your actions and learn from them. Either way, I would likely talk to the group afterwards to find out whether they just didn't get my hints (blame partly on me for being too subtle) or whether they chose to just ignore them (not my fault, then).

Talakeal
2021-04-12, 03:59 PM
I still owe you an answer to this. My incredibly helpful answer is. it depends :P

1. Was the player aware fire immunity is a thing? A new player might well have picked just fire spells because they thought that sounded cool. They might not be aware that their choices might make them useless in a given situation. In that case, I would give part of the blame to the GM for not helping that player understand the consequences beforehand. If it is a seasoned player who is aware their one trick can be shut down, it's on their own head when they run into trouble.

2. Did the players have a choice in facing the enounter or was it sprung on them? If they didn't have the choice, the GM did make the decision of forcing an encounter where they know the wizard would be useless. Then the GM does share blame; otherwise, see point 3.

3. Was it telegraphed somehow that this creature might be immune to fire? If for example it's made from fire, living in an active volcano or breathing fire, that could be seen as ample warning that fire might not be the best choice in fighting that particular monster. However, how clear the warning is might vary from player to player, and again, experience plays a big role here. But if the players went into that encounter knowing full well that their wizard would likely be useless (I assume everyone knows they only have fire spells available), then again, the GM did what they could to warn them.

In general, however, the question is whether the whole party should be punished because one player chose poorly in designing their character. Again, experience is a big factor here. If it is an inexperienced group that has a hard time judging what's an appropriate encounter and what isn't, I as a GM would give them the opportunity to escape from that encounter instead of wrecking them completely. I'll also throw in a few hints that they are outclassed during the encounter if I couldn't deter them from going there in the first place. For an experienced group that knew what they were getting into, suffer the consequences of your actions and learn from them. Either way, I would likely talk to the group afterwards to find out whether they just didn't get my hints (blame partly on me for being too subtle) or whether they chose to just ignore them (not my fault, then).

Thank you for the detailed response, but I think we kind of talked past one another. I wasn’t really talking about blame, or punishment, or one player screwing lver the group.

I was asking if the DM should balance the encounters with PCs builds in mind to preserve “combat as sport,” or whether they should be build neutral in order to preserve verisimilitude.

The former creates a more balanced game, but imo also deprives the players of some agency.

Morgaln
2021-04-12, 04:25 PM
Thank you for the detailed response, but I think we kind of talked past one another. I wasn’t really talking about blame, or punishment, or one player screwing lver the group.

I was asking if the DM should balance the encounters with PCs builds in mind to preserve “combat as sport,” or whether they should be build neutral in order to preserve verisimilitude.

The former creates a more balanced game, but imo also deprives the players of some agency.

Ah, I see. Since I was talking about responsibilities of the GM before, I thought you were referring to that, my bad.

I think the answer, again, depends. If you're playing more of a sandbox game, where the players can pick and choose what to engage, I think you should build neutral. Make sure the player have some idea of what a certain challenge entails so they can make an informed guess whether they can deal with it. It's also advisable to tell your players that you are doing this and that not every challenge might be designed specifically so they can overcome it.
However, if you have more of a linear game where the players have to engage specific threats, I'd tailor those towards the group to some extent. In that case, I wouldn't pick a fire immune monster since it takes one character completely out of the game, and that wouldn't be enjoyable. I might use a fire resistant monster, however, in order to encourage that player to broaden their build and maybe give some other characters more opportunity to shine.

Mrark
2021-04-12, 06:11 PM
It shouldn't just be bigger numbers - it should be more and more complex options.


That's exactly what I meant.

Xervous
2021-04-13, 08:21 AM
I don’t know if the options themselves need to be more complex. If you’re adding simple new mechanics you already have potential geometric game complexity growth due to interacting mechanics. Even something as simple as “these rats explode on death” changes the way a party might interact with the scenario. While it is true that MMOs and something like Monster Hunter make heavy use of numeric progression they also feature layers of added mechanics between the tiers that composes the actual difficulty players have to overcome.

D&D has little in the way of mechanical interaction, tending to focus on narrow counters prepared in advance or universally applicable beating with stick. And that’s fine, mechanical interactions take time to resolve, not everyone has the time, aptitude and/or patience to manage something like Shadowrun 3e dicepools. In the end the game has to be playable, and D&D has demonstrated that the high end complexity of 3.5e is simply beyond the time investment that most potential players are willing to give.

If the main thing changing about the PCs is that their numbers grow it comes down to a matter of framing and presentation. If most other fixtures of the world remain static and the players get a chance to revisit, they’ll find the goblins pushovers when they were a threat before, the mafia will have a harder time undermining the party’s public speaking attempts, the hazardous river they swam across will be as much worry as a puddle. Short of being replaced for good setting or plot related reasons these obstacles should persist at their initial power level while the players progress. The bandits don’t suddenly all walk around in mithril, a river doesn’t grow deeper and wider just like that, and the mafia instigators in the crowd don’t magically find themselves highly proficient at scholarly debate. Numbers that were too big for the players to challenge before now become options. Of course it remains up to the GM to use the escalating numbers to frame something more entertaining than slaying 5 mountain rats.

kyoryu
2021-04-13, 09:30 AM
I don’t know if the options themselves need to be more complex.

True to an extent, though I do think some complexity can be added over time. The situations and other effects can be more complex instead, which also avoids some of the risk of combinatorial explosion.


I don’t know if the options themselves need to be more complex.something like Monster Hunter make heavy use of numeric progression they also feature layers of added mechanics between the tiers that composes the actual difficulty players have to overcome. [/quote]

Agreed 100%, and yay MH.


I don’t know if the options themselves need to be more complex.D&D has little in the way of mechanical interaction, tending to focus on narrow counters prepared in advance or universally applicable beating with stick. And that’s fine, mechanical interactions take time to resolve, not everyone has the time, aptitude and/or patience to manage something like Shadowrun 3e dicepools. In the end the game has to be playable, and D&D has demonstrated that the high end complexity of 3.5e is simply beyond the time investment that most potential players are willing to give. [/quote]

There's also things like trolls and other monsters that have other mechanical effects on them.

Xervous
2021-04-13, 10:04 AM
There's also things like trolls and other monsters that have other mechanical effects on them.

I’d lump trolls in with D&Ds other checkbox preparation. You either have acid and fire or you don’t (like bringing the correct element for Monster Hunter). If trolls only could regenerate the first N hits each round that invites some basic strategy adaptations, if not interactions. The wizard casts magic missile to produce multiple hits, the fighter goes TWF to push past the threshold, the cleric drops an effect to help single out the trolls one at a time (everyone focuses the suboptimal monster hit zone to get a part break for loot or disabling an annoying attack).

kyoryu
2021-04-13, 10:35 AM
I’d lump trolls in with D&Ds other checkbox preparation. You either have acid and fire or you don’t (like bringing the correct element for Monster Hunter). If trolls only could regenerate the first N hits each round that invites some basic strategy adaptations, if not interactions. The wizard casts magic missile to produce multiple hits, the fighter goes TWF to push past the threshold, the cleric drops an effect to help single out the trolls one at a time (everyone focuses the suboptimal monster hit zone to get a part break for loot or disabling an annoying attack).

Fair enough.

You could make a Better Troll by allowing it to be hit, but hitting it with fire would, at that point, cause its HP regen level to be set at that level.

Like, a troll has 40 hp. You do 10 hp, and it heals 5 a round. Yay, it heals! But if you hit it with fire when it's at 30hp, it's max regen will be 30hp.

Now you've got some strategy, switching between damage and preventing healing, which mixes up what you need to do.

Stuff like that.

And physical damage works for everything in MH :)

Xervous
2021-04-13, 01:52 PM
And physical damage works for everything in MH :)

World’s alatreon begs to differ, plus the scattered elemental-only part breaks across games. But yeah, mostly the modern elementally unstable dps check.

kyoryu
2021-04-13, 02:24 PM
World’s alatreon begs to differ, plus the scattered elemental-only part breaks across games. But yeah, mostly the modern elementally unstable dps check.

Yeah, fair 'nuff.

I need to play some more MH now. Stupid work!

Cluedrew
2021-04-13, 08:16 PM
To quote 2D8HP who was paraphrasing someone else: "Work is the scourge of the gaming class."

On topic... my main reword in my games for doing well is better narrative outcomes which can lead to snowballing success but much less often than just getting stronger.

Oh and someone asked how progression works in Blades in the Dark. Blades in the Dark has two main types of progression, character progression and gang progression (you play thieves). New characters always start at "level 1" but gang bonuses account for some of your power, likely enough they aren't completely left behind. Also, characters are forced to retire eventually and giving them happy endings do take resources so that reduces the power feedback loop a bit. Plus you can pick your targets because it is all one city so getting powerful faster isn't an issue.

KineticDiplomat
2021-04-18, 07:02 PM
Re: flat curves. I believe there is a misunderstanding going on here based on D&Disms. D&D is some mediocre mechanics tied to a Punch Things so You May Graduate to Punching Bigger Things Harder game. A looter shooter if you will. Take away the loot and the bigger numbers from a looter shooter and you don’t have much left. When people hear flat curve and only know D&D they just imagine D&Ds boring mechanics used in rats ad infinity.
We’ve had posters in this thread say as much.

But that’s not how flat curve games work. They generally create challenges independent of the loot-shoot cycle. Let’s look at a few examples:

1. Traveller. You usually come out of chargen as a reasonably competent professional whatever. Very much firefly scaled. Growth is slow and geometrically harder for advancing each skill. But the game isn’t about that: it’s about solving problems, so many different problems, as reasonably human scaled power. You may need to figure out a way to take an aging holo star on a publicity tour without a single firefight, you may have to decide how far you’ll go if being asked to heave to for inspection by what you expect are corrupt local forces where a fight will be a Pyrrhic victory at best, you might need to negotiate the big trade, or show up as big damn heroes for an orbital in distress. The challenge and the fun are based on the situation, not the punch ever harder cycle.

2. Blade of the Iron Throne. You start at the level of most sword and sorcery or low fantasy protagonists. You improve very slowly if you even remember to do so. But the challenge comes form the fact that while you’re almost always better than one mook, you aren’t better than ten of them, and when you get into duels with names NPCs it’s always a dramatic game where player decisions matter. The combat challenge comes from fighting smart, whether it’s in a barroom brawl, a mad dash to kill the senator before his guards can arrive, or a formal duel at dawn. T he story fun comes from each character’s personal story and wants driving the plot, not “and eventually you must fight god!”

3. Shadow run. You start as pretty much elite. There’s a good chance you will never fight someone as good as you pound for pound. The challenge is how do you use your elite status to win in a system where the masses belong to the other side and no matter how much you want to wage a war, shooting your way out of the problem is mostly just a way to buy time or open opportunities. The fun is putting together the run to get away with it.

None of those follow the DND model. They all possess challenge. They all possess fun. But that’s because they aren’t D&D with the serial numbers filed off; they typically have better systems, wider options, more nuanced and personalized stories. All the areas d&d passes on to create its looter shooter mechanic. So don’t think “the worst parts of D&D” when you hear flat curve, think “probably better than d&d at everything other than zero to demigod”

icefractal
2021-04-19, 01:48 AM
So I've only played Traveler a bit (in one shots, so the progression curve or lack thereof was irrelevant), and I haven't played Blade of the Iron Throne, but I have played Shadowrun.

An it can be fun, it certainly does something different than D&D, but it's not the flatter progression that makes it fun. Never have I thought, when playing: "Wow, the fact that our characters are relatively similar in power to when we started the campaign is really what made this session awesome. It would have sucked if we'd been significantly stronger."

So while - again - I don't see flatter progression as a bad thing, I don't see it as a good thing either. It's just ... a thing. It's better suited for some premises and worse for others. And I don't think it's immune to the issue in the OP either.

Heck, I've been in Shadowrun sessions that turned somewhat acrimonious, because of the "scale / don't scale" question the OP brings up. In one case, after some actions that put us significantly ahead of schedule, the GM felt like having the rest of the run be too easy would be dull and escalated the threat. Some of the players felt like that change negated our previous actions and there wasn't any point in preparation / plans if it was going to end up the same difficulty anyway. Result: discord.

KineticDiplomat
2021-04-22, 04:54 PM
That’s some pink Mohawk magic-run...generally I’ve found in Shadowrun the goal is to keep it out of situations that might turn into a situation where power is involved. If the PCs have bypassed that, that’s a good thing.

It’s not that a flatter power curve is 105% immune to power issues, but it does generally avoid a whole series of precision balancing acts required by D&D and geometric curves. You don’t need carefully calculated challenge ratings and exp per encounter and wealth per level and all the rest of it with just one level here or one over/under reward there possibly having game breaking consequences. You can still break the game, but generally not in a recursive loop ala D&D.

As for better...I tend to think games that know what they want to feel like and calibrate their power accordingly become far, far more enjoyable than D&D’s need to try to rationalize and balance everything into a system where you start as a turnip farmer and end killing gods. Some of that is subjective, some of it is an objective fact that by narrowing the scope designers have the potential (which they don’t always use) to build mechanics appropriate to that specific scope.

Tanarii
2021-04-22, 09:53 PM
It’s not that a flatter power curve is 105% immune to power issues, but it does generally avoid a whole series of precision balancing acts required by D&D and geometric curves. You don’t need carefully calculated challenge ratings and exp per encounter and wealth per level and all the rest of it with just one level here or one over/under reward there possibly having game breaking consequences. You can still break the game, but generally not in a recursive loop ala D&D.
I mean, D&D doesn't generally require those things either. The closest it's ever come was in 4e. You can have a wide variety of levels in a party without breaking the game.

Squire Doodad
2021-04-22, 10:22 PM
Its human nature that we want to be rewarded for success and punished for failure. But in an RPG, rewards and punishments almost always translate into player power. This means that taking an early lead will often result in a Monte Haul campaign where the players don't need to engage their brains to succeed, and a few early setbacks can lead into a death spiral where failure is the only possibility.

But what other system is there?

Do we need to implement some sort of metagame handicap system when designing adventures? Or would this make it feel even worse?

I have had some people tell me that it is a good idea to play the monsters smarter when the PCs are having an easy time and to play them dumber when the PCs struggle, but I have also had people tell me never to do this as it is tantamount to metagaming and punishes the players for their success.

Thoughts?

Now, is this for a video game, or for a tabletop game? In a tabletop game with you at the helm, you can always design a new situation that challenges players, or scale up one that already exists.


For a video game, the main problem revolves around that if someone grinds, they will eventually have too much power. That said, if level costs and boosts go up seemingly exponentially, then the player is obligated to fight everything, which can be tiring. This is especially true of repeat playthroughs.
I have found that for games, the best way to do this is to
a) make levels relatively unimportant; numbers go up but stats boosts are slow. A level 20 character is a monster compared to a level 1, but a level 17 player in a level 25 fight has a fighting chance.
b) make an easily achievable level cap so the player both has legitimate challenges at max level and will get there easy, so they don't need to grind.
Or, if you want something completely different:
Do away with levels wholesale. Foes drop loot, gold, and other such things that the player isn't obligated to collect X of to level up. Meanwhile, upgrades are achieved after story events. Your stats go up thanks to armor dropped by the Commissioner of Lies, and completing a quest gives you skill points to bump up your gear.
I find this last one to be the most effective in designing a new game; the player gets their upgrades based on story, so you have gameplay and story integration driving your legendary hero instead of having slain enough metal slimes. This also allows for more ways to play, with low level runs and even "pacifist" runs being doable with minimum kills since you still get the same amount and loose placing of boosts.

If you do want to make a traditional level up system, a low impact one is probably best, and probably one where all foes give points which add up to a low number instead of a curve. Think of Paper Mario and The Thousand Year Door.

King of Nowhere
2021-04-23, 08:27 AM
Re: flat curves. I believe there is a misunderstanding going on here based on D&Disms. D&D is some mediocre mechanics tied to a Punch Things so You May Graduate to Punching Bigger Things Harder game. A looter shooter if you will. Take away the loot and the bigger numbers from a looter shooter and you don’t have much left. When people hear flat curve and only know D&D they just imagine D&Ds boring mechanics used in rats ad infinity.
We’ve had posters in this thread say as much.
But that’s not how flat curve games work.

that's not how d&d works either. at least, that's not how i play it at my table, and that's not how most people play them at their table



They generally create challenges independent of the loot-shoot cycle. Let’s look at a few examples:

1. Traveller. You usually come out of chargen as a reasonably competent professional whatever. [...] But the game isn’t about that: it’s about solving problems, so many different problems, as reasonably human scaled power.
so is a d&d campaign, only you have different resources


2. Blade of the Iron Throne. [...]the challenge comes form the fact that while you’re almost always better than one mook, you aren’t better than ten of them, and when you get into duels with names NPCs it’s always a dramatic game where player decisions matter. The combat challenge comes from fighting smart, whether it’s in a barroom brawl, a mad dash to kill the senator before his guards can arrive, or a formal duel at dawn. The story fun comes from each character’s personal story and wants driving the plot, not “and eventually you must fight god!”

this also fits the description of my campaigns. except that one player decided he wants to overthrow the gods, but while that will certainly require many levels, it's not just a matter of "keep grinding until you get past level 80"



3. Shadow run. You start as pretty much elite. There’s a good chance you will never fight someone as good as you pound for pound. The challenge is how do you use your elite status to win in a system where the masses belong to the other side and no matter how much you want to wage a war, shooting your way out of the problem is mostly just a way to buy time or open opportunities.
this also describes very well my normal d&d experience.


None of those follow the DND model. They all possess challenge. They all possess fun. But that’s because they aren’t D&D with the serial numbers filed off; they typically have better systems, wider options, more nuanced and personalized stories. All the areas d&d passes on to create its looter shooter mechanic. So don’t think “the worst parts of D&D” when you hear flat curve, think “probably better than d&d at everything other than zero to demigod”
I don't know those systems, but I am having a hard time accepting that. "wider options"? "more nuanced and personalized stories"? you already can do anything you want with a d&d story. how can you have more option than literal infinity? sure, the rule set of d&d supports mostly the looter shooter approach, but that doesn't have to be a limitation.

In fact, it is a fallacy i often see in this section of the forum, the idea that to do something well you need the right system to support it. Which is not completely wrong, but it is vastly overstated. If you want to tell a creative story, you don't need good rules; you need a creative group and an open-minded dm, and then you can rule 0 any problem. Also, you learn to do more things with a system if you have system mastery; which you won't get if you change a new system for every campaign as a prerequisite for trying new things.

Batcathat
2021-04-23, 08:56 AM
In fact, it is a fallacy i often see in this section of the forum, the idea that to do something well you need the right system to support it. Which is not completely wrong, but it is vastly overstated. If you want to tell a creative story, you don't need good rules; you need a creative group and an open-minded dm, and then you can rule 0 any problem. Also, you learn to do more things with a system if you have system mastery; which you won't get if you change a new system for every campaign as a prerequisite for trying new things.

Sure, you can probably tell (almost) any kind of story with D&D, but at some point you're trying to fit a triangular piece in a square hole. If you try hard enough it might sort of work, but it's probably easier to just find a square piece. Different systems are good at different things, so why not use them for different things?

kyoryu
2021-04-23, 10:36 AM
Sure, you can probably tell (almost) any kind of story with D&D, but at some point you're trying to fit a triangular piece in a square hole. If you try hard enough it might sort of work, but it's probably easier to just find a square piece. Different systems are good at different things, so why not use them for different things?

This is just a restatement of the Oberoni Fallacy, really.

KineticDiplomat
2021-04-23, 10:27 PM
Given OPs specific opening post involves the issue of “if players do well they outpower D&D quickly, if not they death spiral” I think that combined with a long history of levels, CRs, level-appropriate encounters, XP per day/encounter charts, level appropriate wealth guides, level appropriate magic items...we can say that yes, D&D revolves far more around needing to accurately balance progression than most.

Can you screw up other games that way? I’m sure you can. But neither the extremely rapid progress of D&D nor the near exponential returns on “leveling” are in flatter systems, so the propensity for the original issue is far less.

As to people who say they don’t play D&D as a looter-shooter that scales up in power rapidly...what D&D could you possibly be playing that still looks anything like the original? You level in 2-4 sessions, primarily by killing things. Upon leveling you are roughly twice as powerful as you were before. To stay competitive and not die, you typically need loot supporting that progression. The scale perforce changes very rapidly. It is nearly mathematically impossible for you to play D&D “at so-and-so’s table” in such a manner as to not cause substantial shifts in the power context.

As to “I can use d&d for ANY story!”, I can use an axe as a hammer, screwdriver, knife, measuring stick, and marking device - I have in fact used one as all of those at some point or another - but this does not make it a very good solution for hanging pictures on my walls. It has objectively poor social rules. It has objectively mediocre combat for anything not magic. It’s magic is a subject of much debate, but is rigid and deterministic. If it’s not stealth, perception, or trap related there isn’t much happening for other actions. What it does better than anyone else is take you from peasant to demigod as fast as practical. Is it really surprising that it isn’t very good outside that context?

Tanarii
2021-04-24, 09:33 AM
Given OPs specific opening post involves the issue of “if players do well they outpower D&D quickly, if not they death spiral” I think that combined with a long history of levels, CRs, level-appropriate encounters, XP per day/encounter charts, level appropriate wealth guides, level appropriate magic items...we can say that yes, D&D revolves far more around needing to accurately balance progression than most.
No, it doesn't. Even 4e has considerable latitude in level range of a party.

And that's before we even get into discussion about the wide variety in builds, Magic items, etc.

Don't mix up rough guidelines for DMs with requirements for progression.

KineticDiplomat
2021-04-24, 10:43 PM
“No it doesn’t?” To be clear you’re saying “D&D does not need to balance progression more than most RPGs” since the back half of that is the statement you’re refuting. So, in a short list of other common RPGs where progression causes much less inherent change in the power dynamic per session:

-World of Darkness. All of them.
-Traveller
-Savage Worlds
-Any PbtA modules
-Blades in the Dark
-Cyberpunk
-Shadowrun
-Mouseguard
-WHFRP, DH, etc (this one is closest)
-Call of Cthulhu
-Delta Green
-Twilight 2000
-Flashing Blades
-Riddle of Steel/BoiT
-Eclipse Phase (the setting allows for absurd power, but not as a matter of leveling)
-Nobilis

As far as I know, none of those systems proceed to double your power every two to four sessions, or have one two session burst substantially alter the relative power balance of opposition. None of them need to give the DM a “if you don’t give this, or give too much of that, you’ll break the finally balanced system” guides. They don’t come with “this adventure segment is only really good for levels 4-6” as warning labels.

Can someone min-max ad absurdum to fight a level 10 with a level 8 in D&D? Yeah, someone can. Someone is cack-handed enough to lose the reverse as well. But assuming reasonable in tolerance player and GM actions? Not bloody likely. So a few mistakes and then you’re in OPs problem.

Tanarii
2021-04-24, 11:54 PM
As far as I know, none of those systems proceed to double your power every two to four sessions, or have one two session burst substantially alter the relative power balance of opposition. None of them need to give the DM a “if you don’t give this, or give too much of that, you’ll break the finally balanced system” guides. They don’t come with “this adventure segment is only really good for levels 4-6” as warning labels.
D&D doesnt do the first two of those either. What they have is some recommendations. And the last is that too, although it also comes with "if your party size is a to b characters".

None of it is "or the finely balanced game breaks'

That said, there are things you can do to break balance in each edition. For example some parts of 5e kinda breaks if you do a single battle per long rest with no short rests. And I wouldnt want to put level 2s with level 18s in any edition. But heck, most games you wouldnt want to put characters with dozens of sessions of power gains woth ones just starting.

PhoenixPhyre
2021-04-25, 12:21 AM
And neither 4e nor 5e doubles power per level. Heck, not even 3e does unless you're at the far end of optimization. And then you have pun-pun from level 1? 2?

Doubling power per level is insane. A level 20 character is more powerful than a level 1, but not 2^20 (roughly 1 million times). Not even 2^10 (1024x). At least in 5e.

And with a little experience you can run a game where you almost entirely ignore CR, adventuring day budgets, and only ever have mundane gear. Other than the last, that's generally what I do. I glance at cr as a very rough first step in narrowing down the set of possible monsters, but only that. And some days I have 1 big encounter, others 6-8.

icefractal
2021-04-25, 02:53 AM
Given OPs specific opening post involves the issue of “if players do well they outpower D&D quickly, if not they death spiral” I think that combined with a long history of levels, CRs, level-appropriate encounters, XP per day/encounter charts, level appropriate wealth guides, level appropriate magic items...we can say that yes, D&D revolves far more around needing to accurately balance progression than most.
So IMO, these are not universal issues. I've not found D&D to require any more careful calibration than other non-rules-light systems.

In fact, in the one case posited in the OP - early success or failure snowballing to an unwanted extent - a steeper power curve makes the effect less lasting.

For example, a Shadowrun character who gets an extra 1M nuyen will become a lot more powerful, and will continue to be a lot more powerful. A PF1 character who gets +10k gp at 1st level will have vastly more wealth than normal ... but by 7th they're merely ahead a bit, and by 12th it may go unnoticed. Even +100k would eventually not be a big deal.

Quertus
2021-04-25, 09:49 AM
In fact, in the one case posited in the OP - early success or failure snowballing to an unwanted extent - a steeper power curve makes the effect less lasting.

For example, a Shadowrun character who gets an extra 1M nuyen will become a lot more powerful, and will continue to be a lot more powerful. A PF1 character who gets +10k gp at 1st level will have vastly more wealth than normal ... but by 7th they're merely ahead a bit, and by 12th it may go unnoticed. Even +100k would eventually not be a big deal.

Yup. A slight increase in power, in a system where power grows exponentially, is quickly hardly noticeable. Whereas a miscalibration in a slow-moving game is felt for a long time.

Talakeal
2021-04-25, 11:30 AM
So IMO, these are not universal issues. I've not found D&D to require any more careful calibration than other non-rules-light systems.

In fact, in the one case posited in the OP - early success or failure snowballing to an unwanted extent - a steeper power curve makes the effect less lasting.

For example, a Shadowrun character who gets an extra 1M nuyen will become a lot more powerful, and will continue to be a lot more powerful. A PF1 character who gets +10k gp at 1st level will have vastly more wealth than normal ... but by 7th they're merely ahead a bit, and by 12th it may go unnoticed. Even +100k would eventually not be a big deal.


Yup. A slight increase in power, in a system where power grows exponentially, is quickly hardly noticeable. Whereas a miscalibration in a slow-moving game is felt for a long time.

So much this.

Telok
2021-04-25, 08:07 PM
Yup. A slight increase in power, in a system where power grows exponentially, is quickly hardly noticeable. Whereas a miscalibration in a slow-moving game is felt for a long time.

IF everything goes back to the assumed baseline for the rest of the game.

As an example I played in a StarFinder game (exponential wealth by level) where the "hardly noticable" blip was the DM not realizing the implicit importance of the wealth by level chart and missing or forgetting one line in the intro of the first book of an adventure path that said to add random encounters as needed to keep the pcs "on level". That's a game where 4th level AC costs around 2000 and 8th level AC around 10000. The DM didn't understand why our 8th level pcs were having such a hard time and we were cheesing op stuff so much for a couple months. It was because the adventure path assumed he'd drop extra money on us when we missed the spot checks for loot or didn't say random magic words to npcs for extra quest rewards.

Under WBL and over WBL have different effects in game, but they're both the same sort of miscalibration. If everything went back to normal after level 3 the pcs would barely notice a missing 2k in loot by 8th level. When that sort of miscalculation continues it keeps getting worse, and worse, and worse.

For another example, a Champions game I was in had a character manage to snag an enemy ray gun. A nasty and seriously op ray gun (for pcs at least). With Champions being a game with pretty slow xp & character growth this is, according to the above quote, a problem. Well the character had about two sessions of gleefully blasting holes in stuff until we encountered an enemy mentalist. Facing the possibility of mind control the ray gun was tossed at the enemy and shot in midair, making both the gun and the mentalist non-issues.

Notably both these issues were essentially gear or money based and potentially easily corrected. A system that makes everything inherent to the character and irreversable could have a worse time of it. Even the 'exponential' type system, if it presumes that character abilities grow with the character, that problem ability can continue to be an issue as it grows with the character.

icefractal
2021-04-25, 10:51 PM
Starfinder is aggressively level-scaled, more so than any other d20 game I've played. For example, starship maneuver checks scale directly by the PCs' level even if nothing else changed - doing the same maneuver in the same ship is harder.

They also scale the NPCs in a way I rather dislike - they automatically get numbers similar to what a specialized and fully-geared PC could manage, except with no need for gear and they're this good in every skill they have. Makes the PCs look like chumps, IMO, especially for any secondary capabilities. You're not the main pilot but you did put some effort into it and have a decent score? Haha no, every NPC pilot will be better than you, the party is still screwed if the specialist pilot isn't there.

So I would say Starfinder is less tolerant of power variance than most systems.

Telok
2021-04-26, 11:31 AM
Starfinder is aggressively level-scaled, more so than any other d20 game I've played. For example, starship maneuver checks scale directly by the PCs' level even if nothing else changed - doing the same maneuver in the same ship is harder.

They also scale the NPCs in a way I rather dislike -

I'm not a fan either, but as long as the party is kept on-level with gear and all the game's numbers work (as long as you're playing as intended). It really is a D&D-in-space reskin, with ray guns/laser swords as damage cantrips bought with money. Oh, and the space DCs scale with ship level. The PC's ship is always supposed to be on-level too, up to and including it being so divorced from the wbl and other systems that the DM has to story-fiat the upgrades, and the PC's have to use the same "pool" of spaceship points to buy door locks or a better kitchen as shields or weapons.

But it is a good example of how a continuing imbalance in an exponential system just keeps getting worse. In every case, exponential and slow growth models, if the game is moved back to the assumed baseline it goes back to working just fine. If the source of the imbalance continues it continues to be a problem.

Frankbit
2021-05-10, 03:59 AM
Oh cool! I had no idea about this, thanks so much for the info!

Leonard Robel
2021-06-08, 04:06 AM
This is a long thread and I'm sure some of this has been said, but the easiest solution to power creep is to destroy the gear and treasure. Everything wears out. Hitting an armored foe will destroy weapons. Getting hit will destroy armor. Gear can be stolen. A character might fall into slick pond or the sea and need to take off his armor or drown.

I tend to make magic items that are really powerful but there's a pretty strong hint that it won't last, or I make durable magic items that are more mysterious than strong at first, because they take a long time to reveal all their powers.