What are things a system should not do?

[Anymage]

I was looking at game recently that looked alright, except that it's character generation system had two massive flaws I'd thought the community had long ago realized we're bad ideas. It was built with the expectation that players would take flaws to complete their builds, but mental/social flaws with no mechanical effect (and worse, the implication that you could get extra bennies for roleplaying those flaws) were included, and a few of those involved antisocial personality traits that can easily make the table unpleasant for other players. "Don't allow players to pay for mechanical bonuses with roleplaying penalties" and "don't encourage antisocial play" should be common knowledge by now.

So to throw the question out there, what else are things that all devs should know not to include in their systems? Or at least are incredibly prone to damaging play experience and should be approached with extreme caution.

[Telok]

It'll vary by system. Even

"Don't allow players to pay for mechanical bonuses with roleplaying penalties"
Isn't universally true as there are systems where mechanics and ropleplaying aren't as divorced as they are in modern D&D*. Even "encouraging antisocial behavior" is iffy as I've seen basically the entire premise of Paranoia categorized as that, and Paranoia is a really fun game.

I think the biggest sin is to fail to explain how things are intended to work. It can be a sin of omission if the designers are insular and think everyone already knows what they mean and how to run something. But I think its often a sin of commission as they don't want to tell people that their stuff needs to be run a specific way in order to work, that the customer might be playing the game wrong, and that might not be what a potential customer or some executive manager wants to hear.

My second would be not doing your homework. Don't publish a RPG system with **** math and an pathetic excuse of "i'm a writer not a statistics PHD". Getting professional math people to run through your system looking for flaws is a cost measured in the low tens of cheap pizzas. Likewise historical games with hideous research holes, claiming its impossible to model things like stealth or spotting when there's perfectly good research that does so, and idiocy like giant monsters made of styrofoam that can't lift the weapons or armor they're statted with.

* really for D&D it should be "Don't allow players to pay for large mechanical combat bonuses which apply to 70% of the game with roleplaying penalties that have no enforceable effects for the other 30% of the game". Nobody would complain if you gave an option to take -5 attack & damage in exchange for never lacking for a witty retort, but turn it around and never being able to make a retort in exchange for +5 attack & damage makes people on the internet scream bloody murder. Yet there are games where a "fights like crap but can always engage socially" would be the number one best option for some characters.

[Kurald Galain]

It was built with the expectation that players would take flaws to complete their builds, but mental/social flaws with no mechanical effect

I'd say the lesson is that character flaws should give bonus points not when you take them, but when they actually apply in gameplay.

So instead of giving (e.g.) a free feat to any character who takes a flaw, give them bonus XP or a Hero Point or whatnot each time the flaw seriously hinders them in gameplay. If the flaw never comes up in practice, well they don't get any benefit from taking it either. Among others, new World of Darkness uses this mechanic.

Alternatively, just don't have a mechanic for character flaws, as (in my experience) they encourage players to make annoying characters (not in the anti-social sense, but in the slapstick sense).

[Kurald Galain]

My second would be not doing your homework. Don't publish a RPG system with **** math and an pathetic excuse of "i'm a writer not a statistics PHD". Getting professional math people to run through your system looking for flaws is a cost measured in the low tens of cheap pizzas. Likewise historical games with hideous research holes, claiming its impossible to model things like stealth or spotting when there's perfectly good research that does so, and idiocy like giant monsters made of styrofoam that can't lift the weapons or armor they're statted with.

I completely agree.

Among others, don't write that "stats of ## are olympic-level and are RARE" (ETA: as in, "RARE for player characters") if the standard character creation makes it highly likely that most characters will have a stat this high.
Don't write "this class is great at becoming invisible" unless you actually give it an easy-to-get invisibility spell/power/talent.
Don't write "this setting is so harsh that characters are likely to die from starvation" unless you actually have starvation mechanics and they actually are fairly dangerous to at least low-level characters.

See also, this TVtropes page (https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/WritersCannotDoMath/TabletopGames) :smallbiggrin:

[EggKookoo]

One of my pet peeves are designs that seem like they give you flexibility but actually don't. The old WoD system (from the 90s) used a dice pool mechanic. You got a number of d10s to roll based on your PC's stats, and the GM would set a Difficulty, which I think defaulted to 6 (or 7?). You'd roll all the d10s, and any result equal to or higher than the Difficulty counted as a "success." Any result of 1 would negate a "success." If you got a 10, you got that "success" and had the option to reroll it for another one. But after all that, it's still just a binary pass/fail system. The task you're rolling for only needs one "success" to succeed itself. You got no special benefit out of obtaining multiple "successes." There was almost never a reason to reroll a 10 because that counted as the one necessary "success," and the reroll could come up a 1, canceling it out.

Every time a roll was made, the players would get psyched by a large number of "successes," only to be mildly let down that only one was needed. It made a weird emotional obstacle that the players had to get over each time.

I think the newer WoD rules are better, where the Difficulty is always set at something like 6 and the functional difficulty of the task manifests in how many "successes" you need to succeed in the task itself.

[Unoriginal]

I think a system should deliberately include bad options just to make the players "figure out the good ones". And should strives to not accidentally include them either.

Like sure, having options that are less good but cost less has its place, but if two options have the same cost they should be equally desireable, in a vacuum, and choosing one or the other should come down to personal preference or due to the kind of plot the PC is likely to be involved with (like if the DM proposes a campaign where you have to fight a lot of robots, robot-killing powers may be more useful than undead-killing monsters, even if they cost the same and would be worth the same in a campaign where you fight both at the same frequency).



Among others, don't write that "stats of ## are olympic-level and are RARE" if the standard character creation makes it highly likely that most characters will have a stat this high.

I don't see the problem, unless the game is about playing average people or mooks. Rarity is a question of context, after all.

Some games, like M&M, are about playing characters far above the norm for the world they live in. Any PC made is by definition a rare example of powerful individual.

It's just that those settings assume that exceptionally powerful individuals tend to work or clash with other exceptionally powerful individuals rather than spend their time bullying Average Joe.

[Kurald Galain]

One of my pet peeves are designs that seem like they give you flexibility but actually don't. The old WoD system (from the 90s) used a dice pool mechanic. ... But after all that, it's still just a binary pass/fail system. The task you're rolling for only needs one "success" to succeed itself.
While I have no doubt that some GMs played it as binary pass/fail, by the oWOD rulebooks it is not binary and you do get a benefit out of multiple successes.

For instance, werewolves can enter the spirit world (basically, Plane Shift) with a "gnosis" roll. One success gets them there in several minutes, each additional success makes the process faster, and rolling five successes makes it instantaneous.
Or for another example, extra successes on an attack roll will add to damage.

My main problem with the WOD system is that it's extremely slow to resolve, especially for opposed rolls (which, IMHO, is something a system should not do).


I think a system should deliberately include bad options just to make the players "figure out the good ones".
When designers say they have deliberately included bad options to teach people, they are basically saying "yeeaaaah, that was totally on purpose" instead of admitting they made a mistake :smallbiggrin:


I don't see the problem, unless the game is about playing average people or mooks. Rarity is a question of context, after all.
Fine. Don't say something is rare for player characters when it is not in fact rare for player characters. Like, a system shouldn't claim that only one-in-a-million PCs has a charisma of 18 if the math shows that one-in-216 PCs gets that.

Related: a system shouldn't claim that PCs are "far above the norm for the world" when the dice math doesn't bear that out. If a so-called-Olympic PC in his area of expertise has, say, a 20% chance of losing to a rookie, then that is not "olympic" at all.

[EggKookoo]

Or for another example, extra successes on an attack roll will add to damage.

Back in the day we scoured the rulebook for where it said something like that and we could never find it. I ended up houseruling that, or so I thought. I'm talking about (I think) 2nd edition, which came out maybe 1996 or so? Did it add extra damage dice or just damage points?

[Khedrac]

One of my pet peeves are designs that seem like they give you flexibility but actually don't. The old WoD system (from the 90s) used a dice pool mechanic. You got a number of d10s to roll based on your PC's stats, and the GM would set a Difficulty, which I think defaulted to 6 (or 7?). You'd roll all the d10s, and any result equal to or higher than the Difficulty counted as a "success." Any result of 1 would negate a "success." If you got a 10, you got that "success" and had the option to reroll it for another one. But after all that, it's still just a binary pass/fail system. The task you're rolling for only needs one "success" to succeed itself. You got no special benefit out of obtaining multiple "successes." There was almost never a reason to reroll a 10 because that counted as the one necessary "success," and the reroll could come up a 1, canceling it out.

I have the reverse problem with this system - Don't make a system where the more skilled a character is, the worse they can fail (except in special cases).

It's understood that the expert can attempt something a rookie would never try, and if they get it wrong fail spectacularly, but the OWoD system meant that a rookie could only fail while an expert could make a complete mess of a simple task.

One instance was when my stealth specialist vampire was trying to be stealthy while scouting a graveyard. I think the target was 3 successes difficulty 7. Now the more 1s you rolled the worse your failure was so on seven dice I promptly rolled a net result of 4 1s (I think I had one success which negated a fifth 1) - thus failing impossibly badly for anyone unskilled (I tripped over a werewolf).

[Kurald Galain]

Back in the day we scoured the rulebook for where it said something like that and we could never find it. I ended up houseruling that, or so I thought. I'm talking about (I think) 2nd edition, which came out maybe 1996 or so? Did it add extra damage dice or just damage points?

Ok, to be fair, oWOD had quite a number of iterations :smallbiggrin: It's quite possible that I'm talking about Revised, or that it's a werewolf-only rule, or something like that.
I'm pretty sure it's from the first edition that one success is "marginal success" and five successes is "phenomenal success" or something like that (although in many cases it's entirely up to the GM what this distinction means).

[EggKookoo]

Ok, to be fair, oWOD had quite a number of iterations :smallbiggrin: It's quite possible that I'm talking about Revised, or that it's a werewolf-only rule, or something like that.

My memory of these things is hazy, but I do remember it being a discussion at our table at the time. I could be misremembering or conflating.


I'm pretty sure it's from the first edition that one success is "marginal success" and five successes is "phenomenal success" or something like that (although in many cases it's entirely up to the GM what this distinction means).

That might have been the crux of it. I do recall some language about degrees of success, but no explanation for what that meant in general. I think the thing we were trying to find was a specific reference to how it worked in combat.

[Anonymouswizard]

So instead of giving (e.g.) a free feat to any character who takes a flaw, give them bonus XP or a Hero Point or whatnot each time the flaw seriously hinders them in gameplay. If the flaw never comes up in practice, well they don't get any benefit from taking it either. Among others, new World of Darkness uses this mechanic.

2e IIRC actually mostly ditches systemised character flaws, although there are optional rules in some supplements where they basically work the same (they're persistent Conditions now, but that saves on book space). It's weird because as presented they fit in MUCH better with 2,e's systems, it's probably to drive away the misery munchkins.

I also like the Burning Wheel method of charging for flaws, it makes you weirdly attached to it. Yes you could have been ambidextrous, but you decided you really wanted that missing eye, disorganised life, or negative reputation.


While I have no doubt that some GMs played it as binary pass/fail, by the oWOD rulebooks it is not binary and you do get a benefit out of multiple successes.

For instance, werewolves can enter the spirit world (basically, Plane Shift) with a "gnosis" roll. One success gets them there in several minutes, each additional success makes the process faster, and rolling five successes makes it instantaneous.
Or for another example, extra successes on an attack roll will add to damage.

My main problem with the WOD system is that it's extremely slow to resolve, especially for opposed rolls (which, IMHO, is something a system should not do).

Tbf Storyteller and it's derivatives have been trying to make 'more successes=better result' more systematic, with Storypath probably being the best but slowest. Sadly this has also generally involved shifting to one difficulty axis, generally successes required, but Storytelling and Storypath are mostly better (my main dislike is Backgrounds being folded into Merits).

My personal house rules for WoD20 mostly pull from Revised Storyteller, but I'm considering changing things around a bit so that difficulty doesn't adjust dice pool size and bringing in something like Storypath's Complications and Stunts (particularly combat stunts, so you can roll a hit and then decide on extra Cool Stuff).


Honestly apart from stuff like 'get your maths right' there's nothing that doesn't work in the right game, even rolls for body parts you really shouldn't need to the issue is more particular games using stuff they shouldn't.

[Deepbluediver]

One design philosophy I think more people need to keep in mind is that some things make for a good story, but those things don't necessarily make for good gameplay. Inspiration does not mean you're trying to make a direct copy or straight-up mechanical conversion.

When an author is telling a story, they have complete control over the entire setting and characters can make mistakes, act sub-optimally, carry the idiot ball, forget things, or just have emotional reasons for acting or not-acting a certain way. But when you turn those story elements into gameplay tools and hand them over to other people you lose control of them, and players will rapidly maximize their effectiveness and break your gameworld in half like dry kindling.

I'm reminded of two examples- first was when someone on this forum wanted to recreate a version of spell they seen used in an episode of Buffy (I think) that gave the character a kind of semi-omniscience, and they interpreted this as basically being a lower level version of Wish but with even fewer restrictions. For the in-story version of course the characters eventually go-mad-with-power and/or summon-something-they-can't-control or whatever, but at the end of the episode they learn the moral that "Phenomenal Cosmic Powers aren't all they are cracked up to be" and then the spell is never mentioned again, AFAIK.
The problem was that there was basically no way to balance this spell for gameplay without divorcing it so far from the original concept that the OP no longer wanted it. And so they weren't happy with the feedback they were getting from the forum, which was mostly along the lines of either "I would never play in a system with this spell" or "yes I would keep this buff running 24/7 because it makes me literally a demigod everywhere all the time".

The second example is of the time-turners in Harry Potter. Where it starts out as joke that "haha Hermione is so nerdy she uses time travel to go to more classes" and then 30 seconds after everyone stopped laughing, someone realizes that this history-warping/stable-time-loop-ensuring device is basically a magical nuclear weapon and "holy schit they hand these things out to children why is every side is this literal wizarding-war not using these things constantly???" and JK Rowling had to go and invent a reason for all these devices to suddenly fall into a magical bottomless hole and never come up again.
Which is less directly related to games but shows the kind of problems you can run into when you start handing out super-powers to people who aren't 12-year-old children. Or who write like them. (which isn't to say the HP books are bad, I enjoyed them, or most of them, but the level of writing is definitely very basic for the most part, IMO)


Anyway, what I think I'm really getting at is please just think through that kinds of mechanics you are handing to your players. Try to imagine the worst-case scenario, and keep in mind that it's OK to limit people. IMO what you CAN'T do is often just as interesting as what you CAN do, and the "yes, but..." guideline is not a blank check for anyone to demand anything or try to claim some kind of "that's not the way it worked in the story" license.


EDIT: As a third example of gameplay-and-story not meshing well was a gameplay log I read about someone testing out a homebrewed system. Well for this setting it turns out that the GM/author wanted there to be a bunch of mega-cool-awesome-unflappable-badass-NPCs, who the mortals (i.e. PCs) should quake-in-fear and/or drool-in-desire-of as appropriate, but these characters had to be SO GREAT that even a 5% chance they could lose a fight was too much. So they weren't just strong and highly resistant, but flat-out IMMUNE to basically everything. And not only immune from the PCs but also FROM EACH OTHER. So you had a setting where nearly every major NPC was some kind of Orcus-on-his-throne character, who sat around not doing anything, denigrated and talked down to the PCs for simply not being as cool and badass as them, then sent them off to another NPC would who denigrate and talk down to them for not being cool and badass, etc etc etc. And it was less like playing a game and more like listening to someone read bad fanfiction at you. And then criticize you for not engaging more with the story.
Don't do that.

[King of Nowhere]

I have the reverse problem with this system - Don't make a system where the more skilled a character is, the worse they can fail (except in special cases).

It's understood that the expert can attempt something a rookie would never try, and if they get it wrong fail spectacularly, but the OWoD system meant that a rookie could only fail while an expert could make a complete mess of a simple task.

One instance was when my stealth specialist vampire was trying to be stealthy while scouting a graveyard. I think the target was 3 successes difficulty 7. Now the more 1s you rolled the worse your failure was so on seven dice I promptly rolled a net result of 4 1s (I think I had one success which negated a fifth 1) - thus failing impossibly badly for anyone unskilled (I tripped over a werewolf).

aaah, it reminds me of the fumble rule that many people complained was forced upon them; that of dropping your weapon on a roll of 1, while at high levels you make more attacks.
"I can see your swordplay improved because you drop your sword more often. you drop your sword almost as often as the master"


keep in mind that it's OK to limit people. IMO what you CAN'T do is often just as interesting as what you CAN do.

indeed, that's what the second law of sanderson for writing magic states. limitations are more important than powers.

[NichG]

There are very few things I'd say should be universally excluded from any possible system design (well, among things systems actually ever have). I suppose I'd have more meta rules instead, like:

- When using in-character and out-of-character voice in rules documents, never lie or mislead or misrepresent things in out-of-character voice.

As other posters have said, communicating what the system is trying to achieve is important. You can do a full in-character rules document to build a system where the accuracy of knowledge is to be questioned. But if you have the OOC voice lie (or just be wrong about things) then you lose that channel of communication - it can't be trusted, and the breaking of trust will also be disruptive to play when people find out.

Otherwise, I think it's all personal preferences that I wouldn't expect to be universal. I don't want to play games where the outcome is fixed, but I know people who do like certain games of that form (10 candles). I don't personally want to play with morality or behavioral judgements baked into the mechanics but some people do actually like alignments or Humanity scores or whatnot. Lots of people like more boardgame style restricted action possibilities (you can only use one of this set of moves, mechanics over fiction), but it makes me personally immediately lose interest. So I don't design systems with those things, but I can't say 'one should never do so' categorically.

[Satinavian]

I'd say the lesson is that character flaws should give bonus points not when you take them, but when they actually apply in gameplay.
I don't like this because it creates metagame incentives to get into situations where your flaws matter.

Usually your characters should try the best to avoid those situations but suddenly the player gets a benefit when the arachnophobic character willingsly gets a spider pet or something. While not always that silly it still often creates jarring behavior that does not make any sense from a character viewpoint.



But on topic :

If you have abilites you can get at character creation or later in game, make sure they cost the same/have the same cost scaling. There are so many systems out there not doing that and end up easily exploitable from the get go sparking endless balancing discussions, bans, gentlemens agreements etc. for no actual benefit.

[kyoryu]

I don't like this because it creates metagame incentives to get into situations where your flaws matter.

Usually your characters should try the best to avoid those situations but suddenly the player gets a benefit when the arachnophobic character willingsly gets a spider pet or something. While not always that silly it still often creates jarring behavior that does not make any sense from a character viewpoint.

I think that falls squarely into the "don't be a jerk" territory.

Like, anything is exploitable. The exploit of "gets the points at the beginning" is "find a way to take 'flaws' that either can't come up, or I'd do anyway". So it's a matter of which type of flaw you want to deal with.

And the best way to deal with exploits is still "don't be a jerk". While systems should be as solid as possible, no system that offers leeway is going to be bulletproof, and so "don't be a jerk" has got to be the final recourse.

Practically speaking, I play a lot of Fate these days, and really haven't seen this come up.

[BRC]

Most of the absolutes are probably just "Things you shouldn't do in any technical writing"

For example, don't use two terms that mean the same thing. If your system uses "Target Number", don't show up later talking about "Difficulty Class" or "Success Value".


I would say that, in general, a system should. Minimize the degree to which character creation system itself can take major choices away from the player. I don't mean "Rolling for stats" (Although that should have limits as well), I mean

Okay, in Deadlands classic, you can start with a flaw called Veteran of the Weird West, this flaw grants you 10 extra character points and in exchange you roll on a table for a penalty of some sort, which can range from minor to extreme. This is fine, since it's opt-in.

However, when rolling for stats (Well, drawing cards), it's also possible to get a Mysterious Past. The Mysterious Past can also have a massive influence on the character, the difference is that the player has no choice in the matter. If you draw a joker while drawing your stats, you get a Mysterious Past, which might totally change the idea for your character.

[Xervous]

But on topic :

If you have abilites you can get at character creation or later in game, make sure they cost the same/have the same cost scaling. There are so many systems out there not doing that and end up easily exploitable from the get go sparking endless balancing discussions, bans, gentlemens agreements etc. for no actual benefit.

I absolutely despise priority and BP in shadowrun, and have come to despise default D&D ability score advancement on these grounds.

You built a scaling method for balance. Use it, please, don’t make me fix the rules of another game out of habit.

[Telok]

aaah, it reminds me of the fumble rule that many people complained was forced upon them; that of dropping your weapon on a roll of 1, while at high levels you make more attacks.
"I can see your swordplay improved because you drop your sword more often. you drop your sword almost as often as the master"

I ran across a similar issue in rewriting Dungeons the Dragoning. Originally you could jam a gun if you rolled more 1s than your level (you could still hit even if it jammed). So a 1st level gun master with 9 dice jammed if they rolled two 1s. But a 5th level character with 5 dice couldn't jam a gun at all.

The best solution I came up with, that I think I'll be using in any dice pool games with possible fumbles from now on, is to change it so the guns jam if more than half the rolled dice come up 1s. It still allows success even if you fumble (more interesting than straight failure) and makes having more skill/bonuses reduce fumbles no matter what.

Its not perfect. In DtD40k7e it makes aimed shots and full auto bursts less likely to jam (they add dice), and it isn't a smooth curve since odd dice pools are very slightly less likely to jam than evens. But its simple and you can't get worse by increasing your skills.

[icefractal]

Related: a system shouldn't claim that PCs are "far above the norm for the world" when the dice math doesn't bear that out. If a so-called-Olympic PC in his area of expertise has, say, a 20% chance of losing to a rookie, then that is not "olympic" at all.This one's probably my biggest pet peeve. A system should be honest about what characters / abilities can do - I hate things like "you're a legendarily-skilled climber, among the best in the world" (actually you have like a 10% better chance at climbing, you can still lose a contest to a random noob), or "this deadly spell opens a rift to the fiery heart of the elemental chaos and burns so hot that not even ashes remain" (does average damage for its level, and not even enough to vaporize, say, an ordinary bear).

Like if you want to make a system where the peak of advancement is "competent but not superhuman, can still lose to a squad of ordinary militia" then that's fine, go ahead. Just don't pretend the PCs are legendary heroes capable of mythic feats and that their "does about twice as much as a typical crossbow" attack is some world-breaking cataclysm of power.


Now TBF, there's also the related but different case of "skill is supposed to be represented by different narrative rather than mechanics". At an extreme, you could make a system where you always flip a coin for success/failure, and the different is just how it's narrated:
* For someone unskilled, failure is 'you failed, as expected' and success is a lucky fluke.
* For someone moderately skilled, both failure and success are down to your performance.
* For someone highly skilled, success is 'as expected' and failure is an unlucky fluke.

Personally, that's not my cup of tea. And I think if it is used, it needs to be something explicit to the system rather than "well the GM could make the results less stupid if they narrate it right, which they're allowed to do". But sure, that's a potentially legit case.

[Anonymouswizard]

I don't like this because it creates metagame incentives to get into situations where your flaws matter.

Usually your characters should try the best to avoid those situations but suddenly the player gets a benefit when the arachnophobic character willingsly gets a spider pet or something. While not always that silly it still often creates jarring behavior that does not make any sense from a character viewpoint.

Honestly when I misery munchkinned I found that it was easier to take overly broad and applicable flaws and complications rather than metagame more specific ones. I think the most successful were 'causes collateral damage's and 'doesn't understand human culture', just because they were easy to use on-demand and GMs are rarely willing to let you be defending yourself in court when important scenes were happening. The first character basically had to give up their Wealth advantage, but that mostly meant they could only invent stuff inside the team basem


But on topic :

If you have abilites you can get at character creation or later in game, make sure they cost the same/have the same cost scaling. There are so many systems out there not doing that and end up easily exploitable from the get go sparking endless balancing discussions, bans, gentlemens agreements etc. for no actual benefit.

I have to admit I pretty much houserule flat XP costs in ASAP when a game does such a thing (I'm looking at you WoD, at least you can just give out extra BP instead of XP and it MOSTLY works*).

I'm also not a fan of scaling XP costs in general, but that's more of a personal dislike of how it slows progression as the game goes on.

* generally powers should scale in cost, but annoyingly not all of them, and it's easier just to ask people to play nice or bring in scaled training time.

[Kurald Galain]

This one's probably my biggest pet peeve. A system should be honest about what characters / abilities can do - I hate things like "you're a legendarily-skilled climber, among the best in the world" (actually you have like a 10% better chance at climbing, you can still lose a contest to a random noob), or "this deadly spell opens a rift to the fiery heart of the elemental chaos and burns so hot that not even ashes remain" (does average damage for its level, and not even enough to vaporize, say, an ordinary bear).

Like if you want to make a system where the peak of advancement is "competent but not superhuman, can still lose to a squad of ordinary militia" then that's fine, go ahead. Just don't pretend the PCs are legendary heroes capable of mythic feats and that their "does about twice as much as a typical crossbow" attack is some world-breaking cataclysm of power.

Amen to that!

[Vahnavoi]

I think the biggest sin is to fail to explain how things are intended to work. It can be a sin of omission if the designers are insular and think everyone already knows what they mean and how to run something. But I think its often a sin of commission as they don't want to tell people that their stuff needs to be run a specific way in order to work, that the customer might be playing the game wrong, and that might not be what a potential customer or some executive manager wants to hear.

I was coming in with an idea similar to this. Basically tabletop designers often fall in the same pit as their players: they assume a metagame or knowledge of prior games is in place. They assume people already know what kind of game they want to run. They assume it would be wrong to challenge these assumed beliefs. Sometimes, this can even be seen explicit in system text, but that doesn't make it better - system texts are instruction manuals, no such text should be built on a premise of "these instructions are crap and you should not need them anyway". Yet, some tabletop roleplaying games somehow still are.

Most other common failures stem from dubious or contradictory system assumptions - where lacking system commentary might not be the cause, but sure makes it harder to spot why the error happens, and how to fix it. The recurring topic of flaws is a good example. Basically: flaws are usually included out of the belief that flawed characters are more interesting than flawless ones. Flaws are rewarded out of the belief that players otherwise don't take them. These two beliefs are contradictory: if it is indeed true that flawed characters are more interesting than flawless ones, you'd expect players themselves to introduce such flaws or make flawed decisions out of the desire to see interesting things happen (this can be demonstrated in freeform games and other games without mechanical benefits, where players do indeed engage in flawed hijinks out of their own motivation). In such a case, no additional reward is required. By adding in a reward, it reinforces the idea that the purpose of flaws is those rewards, rather than any interest towards the flaws themselves.

I recently saw a video, using this same phenomenom to train a dog. Specifically: dogs are internally motivated to bark. Don't want your dog to bark? Give it a treat when it does bark. This way, you sneak in the expectation of an external reward into the dog's mind. Next time, when the dog barks, it expects a treat. If no treat comes, it feels cheated. The internal motivation is weakened by removal of a reward, even though the behaviour didn't need that reward to begin with.

Of course, there's a layer of irony there when it comes to rules that "encourage anti-social behaviour", etc.. As in: if you do specifically encourage it through a game mechanic, it creates the expectation that players who don't have access to that mechanic have no reason engage in that behaviour. Which contrasts with the reality where players are prone to occasional bouts of anti-social behaviour because such behaviour happens to be fun.

[lesser_minion]

It was built with the expectation that players would take flaws to complete their builds, but mental/social flaws with no mechanical effect (and worse, the implication that you could get extra bennies for roleplaying those flaws) were included

I'm not sure this is as big a problem as you're suggesting.

When you're designing the system, you can price in 'fake' flaws when you're deciding how many points PCs start with. So they don't automatically unbalance the game.

It's also fine if taking 'real' flaws is sub-optimal, since they can be used for NPCs or to handle horrible things happening to characters in play.


By adding in a reward, it reinforces the idea that the purpose of flaws is those rewards, rather than any interest towards the flaws themselves.

Yep. I think I'd probably go down the route of making flaws have no mechanical benefit. Missing Eye is in the game because eyes can be lost. It is not there so that you can mutilate your character for bonus points.

That might only apply to character creation, however. Taking "Missing Eye" to get the points for "Drank from the Well of Knowledge" is lame. Finding the Well of Knowledge and plucking your own eye out in exchange for a drink is badass.

[Reversefigure4]

It's hard to put down any absolute rules, but once you go to "are incredibly prone to damaging play experience and should be approached with extreme caution" I'd put "overly grounded in real-world realism" there.

A system where male characters have a higher default Strength score than female ones is an obvious example. It's "realistic" than men are on average stronger than women (presuming we're talking about humans), but there's no gameplay gain from applying such realism, and several obvious downsides (restricting character choice, annoying players, etc).

Unsurprisingly, not a lot of systems these days leaning on mechanical differences between male and female characters.

Less damaging, but along the same lines are real-world realisms like "Guns crush swords in any form of combat". "Guns have an advantage" is probably fine if you're trying to promote real-world outcomes, "anyone who spent points on swords is a fool" isn't.

[Batcathat]

Less damaging, but along the same lines are real-world realisms like "Guns crush swords in any form of combat". "Guns have an advantage" is probably fine if you're trying to promote real-world outcomes, "anyone who spent points on swords is a fool" isn't.

I think something like that depends entirely on the setting and intended feel of the game. While you're entirely correct for some types of games, there are certainly types where swords not being inferior in most situations would be pretty bad for my suspension of disbelief.

[Khedrac]

Come to think of it I have forgoten the absolute worst mistake I own - always proofread the final version!

Traveller 4th Ed (a.k.a. Marc Miller's Traveller). Very nice presentation, decent rules, though rather maths heavy. Then they published an equipment sourcbook mainly covering vehicles. This meant that the book was basically full of forumlas for calculating things (thrust requred to take off from different sizes of planet, artillery ranges, things like that). The version proofread was not the printer's proof and the printer didn't have the same set of fonts. At least two of the symbols used in the equation (square root was the main one) didn't translate rendering over a third of the formula that were the main point of the book garbage.

Another thing not to do (here's looking at both Traveller T4 and RuneQuest 3) is make most of the adventures and supplements you initially release for the new rules version direct copies of the previous version - provide new content please. (RuneQuest Glorantha does a nice spin on this - RQ2 and RQ3 released Apple Lane as one of the first adventures, RQG released a version of it set 20 years later with the original module as the back-history to the new.)

[Pex]

Don't punish a player for doing what you said he could do making him regret doing it. This is the idea of giving a character an ability but in attempt to balance it apply a penalty to the PC making him worse off than if he hadn't used the ability at all. Lose hit points to be closer to death. Lose sanity losing player agency. Lose turns not being able to do anything just sit there while others get to play the game. Be vulnerable to enemy attacks. Outright die.

I don't care such things have already been published by games past and present, including D&D, even 5E. I find the concept to be bad game design.

[Morgaln]

I have the reverse problem with this system - Don't make a system where the more skilled a character is, the worse they can fail (except in special cases).

It's understood that the expert can attempt something a rookie would never try, and if they get it wrong fail spectacularly, but the OWoD system meant that a rookie could only fail while an expert could make a complete mess of a simple task.

One instance was when my stealth specialist vampire was trying to be stealthy while scouting a graveyard. I think the target was 3 successes difficulty 7. Now the more 1s you rolled the worse your failure was so on seven dice I promptly rolled a net result of 4 1s (I think I had one success which negated a fifth 1) - thus failing impossibly badly for anyone unskilled (I tripped over a werewolf).

They fixed that in Revised. While in Revised a 1 still reduced your number of successes by one, you could only botch (fail spectacularly) if you rolled at least one 1 and no successes at all on the rest of the dice. So your chance to succeed would increase with the number of dice while your chance of a botch would go down with each extra die.

[Kardwill]

I think something like that depends entirely on the setting and intended feel of the game. While you're entirely correct for some types of games, there are certainly types where swords not being inferior in most situations would be pretty bad for my suspension of disbelief.

Let's just say that swords should not suck in games where "swordman" is a core genre character concept and a swordman figures prominently on the cover art.

- Swords sucking in a modern Cthulhu game? No problem, any kind of swordman was a twist character begging to be eaten first by a Shoggoth, anyway.
- Swords sucking in a 3 Musketteers game? Even if "musket" is in the title (and should be in the game as a weapon of war. D'artagnan got killed by a bullet, after all), it's uncool to have your swordman character look like a stupid chump.

I think games should avoid rules that go against the core genre and character concepts they try to promote, even if it's less realistic. Not doing so creates "trap" character concepts, where a player tries to have "that cool guy on the cover", and only gets to roleplay a victim.
Or they should directly and explicitly adress the problem. for example, in a Buffy RPG, acknowledge the fact that guns are crazy dangerous, but explain that nobody use them in Buffy because it's not that kind of story and not that kind of character concepts (and the very rare case where a gun is used in season 6 gets all the more shocking and traumatic as a result).

[lesser_minion]

Don't punish a player for doing what you said he could do making him regret doing it. This is the idea of giving a character an ability but in attempt to balance it apply a penalty to the PC making him worse off than if he hadn't used the ability at all. Lose hit points to be closer to death. Lose sanity losing player agency. Lose turns not being able to do anything just sit there while others get to play the game. Be vulnerable to enemy attacks. Outright die.

I don't care such things have already been published by games past and present, including D&D, even 5E. I find the concept to be bad game design.

I agree that this sort of thing can be done badly, but this is extreme. If you're not happy with the costs or risks associated with an ability, you usually aren't forced to take it.

[KorvinStarmast]

Less damaging, but along the same lines are real-world realisms like "Guns crush swords in any form of combat". "Guns have an advantage" is probably fine if you're trying to promote real-world outcomes, "anyone who spent points on swords is a fool" isn't. I'd need to get my old books out, but there are blades, swords, rifles, pistols and more in the original Traveller. Each was good at a certain range but not so good at other ranges. And of course cost was a substantial factor.

[King of Nowhere]

well, if you have something set in the modern world, then guns rule and swords are pointless.
but go back just a couple centuries, guns took a long time to load, were inaccurate, and a good armor could protect against them. indeed, chivalry still did most of their fighting with sabres, and infantry stopped those only by turning their rifles into spears with bayonets. i expect in such a setting swords should be viable weapons

[Vahnavoi]

Realism is often wildly misunderstood. Let's go back to very basics of why realism in roleplaying games is a thing: it was introduced by wargames before modern tabletop roleplaying games, for purposes of educating a subset of people (military officers) about a real subject (warfare). That pursuit is fundamentally at odds with most notions of a fantasy game, which is why Gygax, in 1st Edition AD&D books, painstakingly pointed out that (A)D&D cannot be considered a good simulation of anything beyond itself, it's meant to be a fun past-time rather than a serious study in anything, the topic of the game (fighting fictive monsters in romanticizez environs) is not compatible with realism anyway, and where realism is pursued it's just because reality sometimes makes for an interesting game.

You can generalize and extrapolate realistic games for purposes of simulating and educating people on reality about any real topic, whether human biology or martial arts - but in those cases, the metric of success is that the player genuinely learns something. A game that entertains vague stereotypes ("guns beat swords", "men are stronger than women") because "everyone knows that" isn't in that genre at all - it's leaning to trope to avoid having to teach anyone anything.

[Telok]

I ran across a solution to the dice pool fumbles during a DtD40k7e rewrite. It uses d10, caps the dice pool at 10, and normal dice pools run 3-5. Requiring more than half the dice to come up 1s in order to get a setback works. Its also a setback or complication because you can still succeed (though rarely) the roll while having more than half 1s.

Its not perfect. The probability isn't a smooth slope, odd size dice pools have a slightly lower chance to setback than their higher even number. But the difference is small and, most important, the whole thing is simple and without extra math.

DtD40k7e limits its fumbles to jamming guns. So it isn't a huge deal. The original rule was 'more 1s than your level' which meant a 1st level gun master rolling 8-10 dice likely jammed, while a 5th (max) level person limited to 5 dice couldn't jam any guns.

[Pex]

I agree that this sort of thing can be done badly, but this is extreme. If you're not happy with the costs or risks associated with an ability, you usually aren't forced to take it.

There was a Star Wars game many years ago, I think it was the one just before SEGA if not SEGA itself, when playing a Force User in order to use a Force Power you had to lose hit points, any and all Force Powers. You were committing suicide for the audacity of wanting to play a Jedi. Even the DM saw the folly in this and fiated my character to have max hit points just so I could play the game and not die.

In 5E, choosing not to cast Haste because you lose a turn when it ends is easy enough, but never play an Evoker wizard because if you use your 14th level ability a second time you're killing yourself when other wizards can use their 14th level ability as often as they want? Not so simple.

In Ars Magica where you're supposed to play a Magus and cast spells, roll a 0 on a d10 for the audacity of casting a spell not only does the spell not work but you're out of commission unable to do anything for quite a while.

[Lalliman]

well, if you have something set in the modern world, then guns rule and swords are pointless.
but go back just a couple centuries, guns took a long time to load, were inaccurate, and a good armor could protect against them. indeed, chivalry still did most of their fighting with sabres, and infantry stopped those only by turning their rifles into spears with bayonets. i expect in such a setting swords should be viable weapons
You're right, but you're precisely missing the point that realism alone isn't a good design motivator.


Let's just say that swords should not suck in games where "swordman" is a core genre character concept and a swordman figures prominently on the cover art.
I think this comes down to “don’t offer rules for things no one should do because they’re not conductive to the intended play experience.”

It’s all good for Call of Cthulhu to have weapons that are realistically unequal, because that game is about playing characters who are woefully unprepared for the things they have to deal with. If you make a character who for background reasons is specialised in swords and then find yourself incapable of dealing with serious threats, that’s well within the intended play experience.

But if the game is about hyper-competent action heroes, then it shouldn’t offer options that make player characters incompetent. Either by making it more effective in the game than it is in real life, or by just not offering rules for the ineffective thing. In a modern military game, you can just not have rules for sword fighting. Or you could put sword damage in a “in case you end up fighting third world militia” section without implicitly offering it as a player option.

A big offender to this is D&D 3rd with two-weapon fighting. It’s prominently displayed as something characters can do, has extensive player-facing rules written about it, but is terribly ineffective. The writers clearly held the (reasonable) sentiment that dual wielding is difficult and impractical, but didn’t have the good sense to either make it viable anyways or just not offer rules for it.

[Lord Torath]

well, if you have something set in the modern world, then guns rule and swords are pointless.
but go back just a couple centuries, guns took a long time to load, were inaccurate, and a good armor could protect against them. indeed, chivalry still did most of their fighting with sabres, and infantry stopped those only by turning their rifles into spears with bayonets. i expect in such a setting swords should be viable weaponsEven in modern times, swords and arrows are just as deadly as guns. It's just that guns have a major range advantage over swords, a major Rate of Fire advantage over bows and crossbows, and a major ease-of-use advantage over all of them. Heck, I'd argue that a single sword blow is much more damaging than a single bullet.

But again, this is mostly irrelevant. What's important is what kind of gameplay you want to promote and making certain your rules match with that intention (and include just enough verisimilitude to not leave people scoffing in derision).

[PhoenixPhyre]

Personally, a big one is pretending to be more generic than it is. Or in general, not sign posting the "supported zone of play", whether genre, campaign style, assumptions about settings, or mechanical power levels.

This is one thing that as much as I like D&D...it just doesn't do well at all in any edition. It waffles about how generic it wants to be and doesn't clearly state what the expectations are for many things. Probably trying to be as style inclusive as possible... Without actually including the styles. Just pretending to.

[Gnoman]

I'd say the lesson is that character flaws should give bonus points not when you take them, but when they actually apply in gameplay.


The way GURPS handles this is mechanically forcing them to apply - if you put Alcoholic on your sheet for the 5 character points, and your character is in a situation where they can take a drink, it requires a roll against Will to abstain. This doesn't invalidate player agency, because the player is the one who selected the trait in the first place. It works quite well.

There's also an explicit line in the rulebook that disadvantages that can never ever apply (such as, for example a weakness against magic in a gritty real-world spy adventure) may not be taken.

[glass]

As anyone who has read my contributions to Talakael's thread will already know, my big one is this: Never have anyone roll initiative to react to something, unless and until there is something (that they are aware of) to react to.

[SimonMoon6]

A game should not have as the default assumption "Most PCs will be boring mundane people but maybe one PC will be awesome."

This is a surprisingly common situation in RPGs and I'm not even talking about D&D.

For example, the original Stormbringer/Elric game by Chaosium expected most PCs to be mundane people, but you might have a PC from Melnibone' who then gets to have all the magic that you can have. Or some versions of a Doctor Who RPG will suggest one PC can be a Time Lord (who gets to do all the cool stuff) and the other PCs will be his mere companions who don't get to do anything interesting. Or in the original version of TORG, sure, you could just be a guy with a gun... or you could be a guy with a gun who is very religious so he can make miracles happen. Or in... some game whose name I don't remember but it involved drawing cards instead of rolling dice... it's expected that you'll be some mundane person, but if you know magic, well, then you have vast game-breaking magical powers.

It's like a lot of games say (in D&D terms), sure you could be a fighter or a rogue... or you could be that *plus* cast spells like a wizard or cleric... with the assumption that spell-casting is "rare" even among PCs. Who wouldn't want to play the "rare" character? Well, you can't have a party of *all* "rare" characters.

[King of Nowhere]

Realism is often wildly misunderstood. Let's go back to very basics of why realism in roleplaying games is a thing: it was introduced by wargames before modern tabletop roleplaying games, for purposes of educating a subset of people (military officers) about a real subject (warfare). That pursuit is fundamentally at odds with most notions of a fantasy game, which is why Gygax, in 1st Edition AD&D books, painstakingly pointed out that (A)D&D cannot be considered a good simulation of anything beyond itself, it's meant to be a fun past-time rather than a serious study in anything, the topic of the game (fighting fictive monsters in romanticizez environs) is not compatible with realism anyway, and where realism is pursued it's just because reality sometimes makes for an interesting game.

You can generalize and extrapolate realistic games for purposes of simulating and educating people on reality about any real topic, whether human biology or martial arts - but in those cases, the metric of success is that the player genuinely learns something. A game that entertains vague stereotypes ("guns beat swords", "men are stronger than women") because "everyone knows that" isn't in that genre at all - it's leaning to trope to avoid having to teach anyone anything.


You're right, but you're precisely missing the point that realism alone isn't a good design motivator.

do not confuse realism with verisimilitude. most of our games, being in a fantasy setting, have no realism, because it's impossible to have magic in reality, period.
but verisimilitude means that things have to make sense. they have to be consistent enough with each other, to avoid any glaring plot hole. or, as somebody else said, there's suspension of disbelief, and then there's insulting my f-ing intelligence.

in the specific case of guns vs swords, we know how guns work, and we know how swords work. it's not something somebody made up. do guns beat magic? who knows, it depends on what magic does. it depends on the system designers, basically. but guns vs swords, if you assume that guns are more or less like their real life counterparts, we know guns have a lot of advantages over swords.
and so, if your system just randomly makes swords effective, for no other reason than "this game is supposed to be about swords", it will be hard to swallow.
if you don't want modern guns to outpower swords, don't include modern guns in the system. if you must include them for some reason, do try and find some good reason why they don't work all that well. don't say (or imply) "we want it to be like that in the game, so we made it like that". No, i can accept that you want to enforce a certain balance for the game, but you have to try and come up with a decent excuse that my suspension of disbelief can accept.

my d&d campaign featured modern (industrial style) weapons, and most high level fighters stuck to swords, and I had a perfect explanation: high level people in a 3.5 world are superpowered. the best way to justify what they can do is just to accept that they have superhuman strenght and endurance. so those guns, perfectly effective against normal people, would bounce on the skin of those elites, leaving minor scratches. plus, while bullets can ignore a bunch of armor, magic armor is strong enough to still provide a good protection. On the other hand, a sword lets you use your super strenght to maximum effect. rogues can sneak attack with guns with great results, but rogues at my table were having a hard time hitting, so I wanted to give them a buff anyway.
and the game mechanics reflect that. a rifle deals 2d6 damages and ignores 7 points of non-touch armor, at first level it's impressively strong. you hit as hard as a greatsword, from afar, and ignore basically all armor. at high level, those 2d6 are nothing - even after you add a +5 for weapon enhancement. you're still ignoring some armor, you're still hitting more often, but your bullets aren't damaging enough. while a good greatsword can easily pack 30 damage per hit even without power attacking, and you can strike more often.
However, a troop of soldiers with guns is a lot more impressive than in a normal 3.5 game. A simple group of soldiers is laughable for a group of well optimized, much above wbl level 15 pcs, but with rifles and grenades, a few hundred soldiers (with low level magic support) made for a memorable fight. and cannons mounted on golems kept golem a realistic threat at all levels.
ultimately, guns did exactly what I wanted them to do, and I didn't need any handwavium; I only had to pick the right premises to push towards the desired consequences.

so I'll make my addition to the starting question of the thread. A system should not do illogic things just for balance, nor shoul it go for segregation between story and gameplay. it should aim at balance, but it should do it sensibly.
Personally, if I have to choose between balance and consistency, I'll throw balance out of the window every time.

[Vahnavoi]

King of Nowhere, I feel you put two comments in a row in a way that doesn't make sense. This also lead you to missing my point. When you use phrases like "we know how swords work and we know how guns work", who is "we"? Because it can be demonstrated vast majority of people, and vast majority of tabletop players as consequence, have no clue. The things most people think they know, are not realistic - they are tropes, and the only reason non-realist tropes can have "verisimilitude" or semblance of truth is because of pervasive non-realist thinking on part of humans.

You are crossing streams in other ways as well. Caring about internal consistency of fictive worlds is not covered by suspension of disbelief - it falls under domain of secondary belief, a concept come up by people who didn't consider suspension of disbelief to be an adequate model for how people interact with fiction.

Or, to elaborate:

Suspension of disbelief is willing ignorance of fictive things when they are inconsistent with primary beliefs of an observer.

Secondary belief is willing acceptance of fictive things when they are consistent with the fiction's own premises.

Both "making sense" and "verisimilitude" mean different things and are achieved by different methods for each of these.

For "suspension of disbelief", making sense means making spotting inconsistencies difficult or making them easy to ignore. That is: "making sense" is an illusion. The overall semblance of truth, AKA verisimilitude, relies on appealing to primary beliefs of the audience - how they think the world really works. The plainest example of this is illusory realism in visual arts: creating a picture of an object so accurate that from a distance it can be mistaken for the object.

For secondary belief, making sense means making the events of fiction flow from its own rules in a way that appeals to the audience. The overall semblance of truth, if it can even be called that, relies on appealing to aesthetics and narrative expectations of the audience - how they think a work of fiction should work. The plainest example of this is escapist romance: creating a story so emotionally gripping that the audience would rather live in that reality over their own everyday life.

So you can't really get to any of the "shoulds" in your conclusions from simply demanding games ought to "make sense". Different genres have different standards for making sense.

Which loops back to the beginning of my post: the standard for simulatory realism exist for purpose of education; wargames are concerned with gunfighting having "verisimilitude" to people who actually know how guns work, because the players are expected to actually deal with guns later on. Hence why conclusions drawn from the game ought to be consistent with reality.

If you aren't expecting your players to actually fight guns with swords, that kind of "verisimilitude" does not matter. So what are you appealing to? What are you trying to be consistent with?

[Kurald Galain]

If you aren't expecting your players to actually fight guns with swords, that kind of "verisimilitude" does not matter. So what are you appealing to? What are you trying to be consistent with?
That's easy enough to answer. For verisimilitude, the game designer picks a movie or genre or setting, and makes rules so that they are consistent with the tropes and conventions from that movie, genre, or setting.

E.g. on the topic of guns vs. swords, if I model a game after the Indiana Jones series, then I am reminded of that scene where Indy is approached by a flashy swordsman and shoots him. So for verisimilitude, I should write rules that work similarly. This affects how PCs act: they know that if an NPC is out of reach and pointing a gun at them, they are in danger and should act accordingly.

Conversely, if I model a game after the Star Wars series, then there are several scenes were characters deflect gunshots with a sword (well, blaster bolts with a lightsaber). And for verisimilitude, I need to write rules that work like that; and now the PCs know that if an NPC is out of reach and pointing a gun at them, they can draw their sword and charge in pretty safely.

Of course there is a gray area here, and of course it helps if the rules mention explicitly what movie or genre or setting they're written for.

[EggKookoo]

E.g. on the topic of guns vs. swords, if I model a game after the Indiana Jones series, then I am reminded of that scene where Indy is approached by a flashy swordsman and shoots him. So for verisimilitude, I should write rules that work similarly. This affects how PCs act: they know that if an NPC is out of reach and pointing a gun at them, they are in danger and should act accordingly.

Bear in mind that that particular example worked so well because it was genre-defying.

[Kurald Galain]

Bear in mind that that particular example worked so well because it was genre-defying.

That works very well as an example. If the system is meant for spectacular action films, then verisimilitude suggests a mechanic that makes actions more likely to succeed if they're cool (such as the stunt rules from Exalted; "rule of cool" is very much in-genre for action films). Similarly, if the genre is meant as comedy, then make actions more likely to succeed if they're funny (both Paranoia and TOON have rules for that).

[Vahnavoi]

@Kurald Galain: that's a good enough practical starting point to look for an answer, but it cannot itself be the answer because the same questions about "verisimilitude" recur with such source materials. And for some source materials, such as cartoons, what is it even supposed to mean? Semblance of reality when applied to, for example, surreality of rubberhose animation, can only mean semblance of how people made animation in the past - but such works themselves were not trying to be consistent with much anything. So either "verisimilitude" and the pursuit for "consistency" is nothing more than nostalgia, or you have to look at what made the original worth it on its own terms.

And let's be honest with ourselves - nostalgia is a big motivator for genre fiction.

[Satinavian]

So either "verisimilitude" and the pursuit for "consistency" is nothing more than nostalgia, or you have to look at what made the original worth it on its own terms.
Versimilitude is mostly a goal because it allows the players to dive into the fiction and care for what is happening there instead of being constantly reminded of this being only a game and acting purely on the meta-level.
Because diving into the fiction, playing pretend, seriously exploring "what if" is a major source of fun.

[BRC]

Versimilitude is mostly a goal because it allows the players to dive into the fiction and care for what is happening there instead of being constantly reminded of this being only a game and acting purely on the meta-level.
Because diving into the fiction, playing pretend, seriously exploring "what if" is a major source of fun.

Rephrasing this slightly

Verisimilitude is good because it provides the players with a straightforwards guidance of what is or is not a good idea.

Let's take an example my Call of Cthulhu character, Dynamite Joe. A professional athlete, Joe is built like a brick house and regularly one-shot cultist goons with a baseball bat, because when a professional athlete hits you in the head with a heavy wooden club, you stay down.

If Joe is 40ft away from a few cultists with guns, Joe's player can analyze the situation and determine that, while Joe is tough, he's just A Big Guy, and a gunshot will bring him down before he can get within smacking range of those cultists. Verismilitude tells us that being big and in shape doesn't let you stand up to bullets. It tells us that rushing the cultists is a bad move, and staying behind cover is a good move.


HOWEVER, Versimilitude CAN be replaced with another system, so long as the genre conventions are sufficiently well understood. If we're playing a game that pulls it's "Versimilitude" from over the top martial arts action, then Joe can probably chuck baseballs hard enough to knock the cultists out before they can start shooting. If I'm playing a Kung-Fu martial arts adventure I should know that ten bikers with guns and knives are no threat at all, and a single old blind man with a cane is an apocalyptic force of destruction that I should be terrified of.


So, as far as what a system shouldn't do, a system shouldn't betray it's version of Versimilitiude. The Kung-fu adventure shouldn't have it's heroes going down to muggers with guns, Call of Cthulu shouldn't let me bludgeon the mythos into submission with a baseball bat.


Edit: one of my favorite takes on this is from Deadlands Classic

Deadlands has a reasonably realistic take on getting shot with a gun. Due to exploding damage dice, it's possible for literally any attack to cause devastating damage, and people are generally a bit more durable than they should be, but if you assume that an above average number of "hits" are grazing blows, it works pretty well. Character's durability is greatly increased by the use of meta resources to negate wounds, which is explicitly fluffed as Luck or Fate intervening to cause shots that would have hit to instead miss. or for direct hits to become grazing shots. As a result, characters can become pretty bullet-spongey, even with "Realistic" wounds.

Of course, the Genre Conventions won't allow any bullet sponging in a Duel. So during a High-noon duel, you cannot spend fate to reduce wounds. This way the system can handle both aspects of the Western genre: Death defying gunfights with bullets flying everywhere yet our outgunned Heroes staying up AND dramatic shootouts where a single bullet can spell death.

[gbaji]

One of my pet peeves are designs that seem like they give you flexibility but actually don't. The old WoD system (from the 90s) used a dice pool mechanic. You got a number of d10s to roll based on your PC's stats, and the GM would set a Difficulty, which I think defaulted to 6 (or 7?). You'd roll all the d10s, and any result equal to or higher than the Difficulty counted as a "success." Any result of 1 would negate a "success." If you got a 10, you got that "success" and had the option to reroll it for another one. But after all that, it's still just a binary pass/fail system. The task you're rolling for only needs one "success" to succeed itself. You got no special benefit out of obtaining multiple "successes." There was almost never a reason to reroll a 10 because that counted as the one necessary "success," and the reroll could come up a 1, canceling it out.

Every time a roll was made, the players would get psyched by a large number of "successes," only to be mildly let down that only one was needed. It made a weird emotional obstacle that the players had to get over each time.

I think the newer WoD rules are better, where the Difficulty is always set at something like 6 and the functional difficulty of the task manifests in how many "successes" you need to succeed in the task itself.

Huh. That's strange (and it seems as though either you guys were misreading, or future revisions changed things). Most games that use dice pools use them both to allow for adjustment of the target number *and* the "number of successes". That is, arguably, the entire point (and advantage) of using dice pool mechanics in the first place. It allows for two different axis for the resolution, and allowed for more complex configurations (is having a lower number of dice but an easier target number better than the other way around?). Break points in terms of odds and outcomes are just a heck of a lot more variable. I tend to like that degree of choices instead of a simple "plus/minus on a single die roll" bit.

I will also second the concern with dice pools and fumbles (or auto/fail) values. That does create the possiblity where the more dice you have, the more poorly you can do (more fails/fumbles/whatever). Which is not really what most would expect. I will agree that there are a lot of game designers who aren't actually very good at statistical probability calculations, and don't really think though the effects caused by "more dice" in the mix.


Of course, there's a layer of irony there when it comes to rules that "encourage anti-social behaviour", etc.. As in: if you do specifically encourage it through a game mechanic, it creates the expectation that players who don't have access to that mechanic have no reason engage in that behaviour. Which contrasts with the reality where players are prone to occasional bouts of anti-social behaviour because such behaviour happens to be fun.

One can argue that all flaw systems do this to some degree. Which brings us up to the earlier point that a game system needs to set the expecations for the players.

It's rare for a flaw a character takes to actually affect only their own character. In practice/play, they tend to manifest in ways that affect their performance in the group, and often force them to take actions that cause harmful outcomes for the rest of the PCs in said group. And yeah, this can varry depending on exactly how "exuberantly" the player plays out the flaw. At the end of the day, if a player is a disruptive player, they will find ways to play that are disruptive. Flaws just give them a great excuse to do this and say "that's just what my character flaw says I have to do".

To be fair though, those same players would likely play obnoxious and disruptive characters even in games that didn't have flaw systems anyway, so...

And yeah. The point about paranoia is totally valid. In some games, creating disruption and chaos for the entire group *is* the point.


It’s all good for Call of Cthulhu to have weapons that are realistically unequal, because that game is about playing characters who are woefully unprepared for the things they have to deal with. If you make a character who for background reasons is specialised in swords and then find yourself incapable of dealing with serious threats, that’s well within the intended play experience.

As a little aside though, there are some creatures in CoC that can't be damaged by guns at all (or take very little damage from them). That's not to say that those same creatures will be affected much by a sword either. But there are some that require "magic damage" to harm them, and it's a lot more likely that you might find a magic sword or dagger or other melee type weapon than magic bullets (and if you do find magic bullets, you might want to be careful using them). So... Having a character with a sword skill is useless... right until it's not. Which is about right for that game.



A game should not have as the default assumption "Most PCs will be boring mundane people but maybe one PC will be awesome."

This is a surprisingly common situation in RPGs and I'm not even talking about D&D.

For example, the original Stormbringer/Elric game by Chaosium expected most PCs to be mundane people, but you might have a PC from Melnibone' who then gets to have all the magic that you can have. Or some versions of a Doctor Who RPG will suggest one PC can be a Time Lord (who gets to do all the cool stuff) and the other PCs will be his mere companions who don't get to do anything interesting. Or in the original version of TORG, sure, you could just be a guy with a gun... or you could be a guy with a gun who is very religious so he can make miracles happen. Or in... some game whose name I don't remember but it involved drawing cards instead of rolling dice... it's expected that you'll be some mundane person, but if you know magic, well, then you have vast game-breaking magical powers.

Yeah. That's a big problem. Same deal with a Star Wars themed game too. Who gets to be the Jedi?

I did play a fair amount of Stormbringer back in the day, and sure, you *could* play a "normal person with a normal weapon", but you were basically dead if you ran into anything with demon stuff. I've seen it work, but it really requires excellent encounter balancing by the GM. You basically have the mundane folks fighting with the other mundane mooks, and the powerful demon summoners/controllers fight each other. There was a bit of a flip side to it as well, in that the folks with demon stuff attracted a lot more attention, and were generally the targets of any nasty powerful bad guys, while the mundane folks more or less got ignored. But yeah, you were always playing that game with basically two separate lanes.

[EggKookoo]

Huh. That's strange (and it seems as though either you guys were misreading, or future revisions changed things). Most games that use dice pools use them both to allow for adjustment of the target number *and* the "number of successes". That is, arguably, the entire point (and advantage) of using dice pool mechanics in the first place. It allows for two different axis for the resolution, and allowed for more complex configurations (is having a lower number of dice but an easier target number better than the other way around?). Break points in terms of odds and outcomes are just a heck of a lot more variable. I tend to like that degree of choices instead of a simple "plus/minus on a single die roll" bit.

I was thinking mostly in terms of combat. The 2e Storyteller rules do mention degrees of success, but at least the W:tA book provided next to no information about what that meant. In combat, do extra successes transfer over as additional damage dice? I could never find out.

Storyteller/WoD was terrible this way. A lot of foes, especially at higher levels of challenge, had magical abilities that boiled down to "whatever the GM wants to happen." Great, I need to buy a book for that?

[Jay R]

Like sure, having options that are less good but cost less has its place, but if two options have the same cost they should be equally desireable, in a vacuum, and choosing one or the other should come down to personal preference or due to the kind of plot the PC is likely to be involved with (like if the DM proposes a campaign where you have to fight a lot of robots, robot-killing powers may be more useful than undead-killing monsters, even if they cost the same and would be worth the same in a campaign where you fight both at the same frequency).

I disagree. This sounds good, but it is based on an assumption that all options exist to be balanced, rather than to simulate something.

I think making tactical decisions is a good thing, and that players should have their PCs purchase superior equipment.

To use a ludicrous example, a Fighter could buy, and fight with, either a spear or a chest. They both cost 2 gp (in 3.5e). Nobody would ever choose to buy a chest to fight with, but the rules weren't set out to provide only balanced weaponry; they were set out to show anything people could buy in a medieval economy. Provide all the options, and let players pick the best ones.

Similarly, not all feats, or skills, should be equally valuable for every player, or even for every campaign. The difference isn't just personal preference; if you fight with two daggers, then Improved Trip is a poor choice. There's nothing wrong with having poor choices available. After all, it's possible to choose the wrong for to attack, or the wrong illusion to cast. Having options that are poor choices is no different from having it be possible to cast a fire spell at a red dragon.

I want my decisions to matter. [After all, the only thing I'm doing in the game is making decisions.] For it to matter what I choose, some choices must be better than other ones.

[JNAProductions]

I disagree. This sounds good, but it is based on an assumption that all options exist to be balanced, rather than to simulate something.

I think making tactical decisions is a good thing, and that players should have their PCs purchase superior equipment.

To use a ludicrous example, a Fighter could buy, and fight with, either a spear or a chest. They both cost 2 gp (in 3.5e). Nobody would ever choose to buy a chest to fight with, but the rules weren't set out to provide only balanced weaponry; they were set out to show anything people could buy in a medieval economy. Provide all the options, and let players pick the best ones.

Similarly, not all feats, or skills, should be equally valuable for every player, or even for every campaign. The difference isn't just personal preference; if you fight with two daggers, then Improved Trip is a poor choice. There's nothing wrong with having poor choices available. After all, it's possible to choose the wrong for to attack, or the wrong illusion to cast. Having options that are poor choices is no different from having it be possible to cast a fire spell at a red dragon.

I want my decisions to matter. [After all, the only thing I'm doing in the game is making decisions.] For it to matter what I choose, some choices must be better than other ones.

Well-balanced does not mean everything is the same.

If I play a Fighter with a big ol' Greatsword, suddenly taking a Two Weapon Fighting feat at level 12 is a dumb choice. Not because the TWF feat is BAD, but because it doesn't synergize with my build.
There should ALWAYS be a use case for the intended power of a feat. Your example-chest vs. spear-is not applicable here, because the chest is not intended to be a weapon. But if, say, a trident is a spear with a higher damage die, but they're just as easy to acquire proficiency in, just as easy to use, and are basically identical save for maybe a token GP cost... That's not good balance. You have an option that's not just superior, it's a no-brainer choice that effectively removes the spear from play. (Caveat this with, if GP is really tight and the difference between a spear and a trident in cost is significant, then the trident being outright better is okay.)

[gbaji]

I disagree. This sounds good, but it is based on an assumption that all options exist to be balanced, rather than to simulate something.

I think making tactical decisions is a good thing, and that players should have their PCs purchase superior equipment.

To use a ludicrous example, a Fighter could buy, and fight with, either a spear or a chest. They both cost 2 gp (in 3.5e). Nobody would ever choose to buy a chest to fight with, but the rules weren't set out to provide only balanced weaponry; they were set out to show anything people could buy in a medieval economy. Provide all the options, and let players pick the best ones.

Similarly, not all feats, or skills, should be equally valuable for every player, or even for every campaign. The difference isn't just personal preference; if you fight with two daggers, then Improved Trip is a poor choice. There's nothing wrong with having poor choices available. After all, it's possible to choose the wrong for to attack, or the wrong illusion to cast. Having options that are poor choices is no different from having it be possible to cast a fire spell at a red dragon.

I want my decisions to matter. [After all, the only thing I'm doing in the game is making decisions.] For it to matter what I choose, some choices must be better than other ones.

I think that there is a difference in terms of character build options (typically made before the game/adventure starts, and can't be changed during play), and character choices made during play (which can include things like "what weapon will I equip right at this moment?", or "what skill feat will I use to try to deal with the situation right in front of me?").

In some cases, some character build options may be significantly better or worse than others, not even based on game mechanics, but the specifics of the setting/adventure/arc that the GM plans to run. I suppose this is a GM choice to make, but I would not have a problem warning someone who took a lot of abilities that are designed to be used against say undead if I'm planning on runnning a game with no undead in it, for example. Or a character taking a lot of social skills, and I'm running a straight dungeon gauntlet game. Or, in the other direction, I'm runnning a game based entirely off intrigue and politics, and someone's making a pure combat character. Some game sytems have a range of assumptions built into them, and may "balance" these things somewhat naturally, but some do not.

But sure. Within those constraints, I tend to allow players to just build their own characters. Some will build better than others. Some may care more about build efficiency than others. If a player comes to me asking about efficient chocies, I'll give them advice about it, but it's certainly not "wrong" nor something I feel needs to be corrected if someone builds a less than ideal character. Afterall, you never know when those ranks in knowledge: architecture and engineering will actually pay off for your fighter, right?

[Kurald Galain]

Semblance of reality when applied to, for example, surreality of rubberhose animation, can only mean semblance of how people made animation in the past - but such works themselves were not trying to be consistent with much anything.
They were trying to be internally consistent. That's the point.
And, most likely, consistent with whatever their genre or inspiration was. The style of animation has absolutely no bearing on this, I'm really not sure why you're bringing that up.


Versimilitude is mostly a goal because it allows the players to dive into the fiction and care for what is happening there instead of being constantly reminded of this being only a game and acting purely on the meta-level.
Precisely.


Verisimilitude is good because it provides the players with a straightforwards guidance of what is or is not a good idea.

So, as far as what a system shouldn't do, a system shouldn't betray it's version of Versimilitiude. The Kung-fu adventure shouldn't have it's heroes going down to muggers with guns, Call of Cthulu shouldn't let me bludgeon the mythos into submission with a baseball bat.
And that also hits the nail on the head.

[King of Nowhere]

King of Nowhere, I feel you put two comments in a row in a way that doesn't make sense. This also lead you to missing my point. When you use phrases like "we know how swords work and we know how guns work", who is "we"? Because it can be demonstrated vast majority of people, and vast majority of tabletop players as consequence, have no clue. The things most people think they know, are not realistic - they are tropes, and the only reason non-realist tropes can have "verisimilitude" or semblance of truth is because of pervasive non-realist thinking on part of humans.

no, i completely disagree on this. if you are a military guy using guns for a job, then you may say that most people have no clue. from your perspective of somebody extremely competent scoffing those with lesser knowledge. but that attitude is pointless here, because it's not required for tabletop gaming. most people probably don't know about stopping power and wall penetration, or they don't know the actual accuracy rates in a firefight, but that's not the point because no tabletop game wants to try and simulate that kind of stuff.

what i expect everyone to know about guns and swords - and what's actually relevant to this discussion - goes roughly as such
- guns kill from afar, and are pretty accurate at range
- guns can shoot fast, so that if you charge someone with a gun, they can shoot you multiple times in case they miss
- guns can penetrate easily any historical armor. modern specialized armor can stop a bullet, depending on circumstances, but being hit hurts regardless
- a sword is plenty lethal in melee
- if we stage a fight with a swordsman and a gunsman, the gunsman wins easily because he can shoot and kill the swordsman before he can come close. only exception if they start already close to each other and the swordsman can hit first.
- soldiers use guns, not swords. at most they have bayonets, but they haven't been widely used since WW1. if swords were actually comparable to guns, soldiers would carry swords.

now, you may argue that there are inaccuracies there. you may point out that there are reports of melee fighting even in modern warfare. you may point out that bullets penetrate walls better than most people think. you may point out that people high in adrenaline can take a couple shots to the chest and keep running and stab you with a sword; and yes, they will die of their wounds later, but you are still dead, and that's why you need stopping power. you may point out a bunch of other details.
but all that is moot, because the core of the argument is that a gun is better than a sword in a vast majority of circumstances. barring surprise, a gun is by far the superior weapon, and wielding a gun gives a ludicrous advantage.

and so you can't have a game set in some kind of alternate world where modern guns are available and yet swords are a legitimate weapon choice. that just breaks suspension of disbelief - or however you want to call it.
you absolutely can have a game set in some kind of alternate reality where people with swords can beat guns, by postulating some meaningful change to how reality works. maybe people have superhuman endurance, allowing them to shrug off bullet wounds. maybe people have superhuman reflexes, allowing them to dodge bullets. maybe people have prescience, allowing them to perceive where the bullets will be fired and moving out of the way before the trigger is pulled. maybe there are forcefields that will stop all bullets, but will be penetrated by slower objects like swords. whatever the reason.
but there must be such a reason. if the underlying premise of your game is "you are detectives in the real world" and a samurai with a sword kills a whole squad of soldiers, people are going to scratch their heads.

others have described it as the conventions of a setting/genre, which is also a way to see it; because a setting where guns are useless will generally include some reason for it.



You are crossing streams in other ways as well. Caring about internal consistency of fictive worlds is not covered by suspension of disbelief - it falls under domain of secondary belief, a concept come up by people who didn't consider suspension of disbelief to be an adequate model for how people interact with fiction.

Or, to elaborate:

Suspension of disbelief is willing ignorance of fictive things when they are inconsistent with primary beliefs of an observer.

Secondary belief is willing acceptance of fictive things when they are consistent with the fiction's own premises.

Both "making sense" and "verisimilitude" mean different things and are achieved by different methods for each of these.

For "suspension of disbelief", making sense means making spotting inconsistencies difficult or making them easy to ignore. That is: "making sense" is an illusion. The overall semblance of truth, AKA verisimilitude, relies on appealing to primary beliefs of the audience - how they think the world really works. The plainest example of this is illusory realism in visual arts: creating a picture of an object so accurate that from a distance it can be mistaken for the object.

For secondary belief, making sense means making the events of fiction flow from its own rules in a way that appeals to the audience. The overall semblance of truth, if it can even be called that, relies on appealing to aesthetics and narrative expectations of the audience - how they think a work of fiction should work. The plainest example of this is escapist romance: creating a story so emotionally gripping that the audience would rather live in that reality over their own everyday life.

seems pretty much what I said, just phrased differently


So you can't really get to any of the "shoulds" in your conclusions from simply demanding games ought to "make sense". Different genres have different standards for making sense.

because different genres have different premises, and within those premises they make sense. a star wars setting has the force giving you combat clarvoyance, allowing you to position yourself just right to dodge/parry/deflect that laser blast. it makes sense within the setting.
well, it makes sense up to a point. why not use a flamethrower? how about a normal gun instead of a laser, a lightsaber won't be able to deflect that. how about an explosive ammunition that you can shoot near the jedi and will kill him with the explosion? though i suppose you can use the force to protect yourself against those threats too. anyway, makes sense in the setting.
in a vampire setting, vampires are supernatural and can probably withstand at least a few bullets. specifics can vary depending on the setting, but it still makes sense in its own setting.
but all those settings must make sense according to their own premises.
A comedy can afford to be inconsistent and run with rule of funny, but you are not supposed to take it seriously.


Well-balanced does not mean everything is the same.

If I play a Fighter with a big ol' Greatsword, suddenly taking a Two Weapon Fighting feat at level 12 is a dumb choice. Not because the TWF feat is BAD, but because it doesn't synergize with my build.
There should ALWAYS be a use case for the intended power of a feat. Your example-chest vs. spear-is not applicable here, because the chest is not intended to be a weapon. But if, say, a trident is a spear with a higher damage die, but they're just as easy to acquire proficiency in, just as easy to use, and are basically identical save for maybe a token GP cost... That's not good balance. You have an option that's not just superior, it's a no-brainer choice that effectively removes the spear from play. (Caveat this with, if GP is really tight and the difference between a spear and a trident in cost is significant, then the trident being outright better is okay.)



To use a ludicrous example, a Fighter could buy, and fight with, either a spear or a chest. They both cost 2 gp (in 3.5e). Nobody would ever choose to buy a chest to fight with, but the rules weren't set out to provide only balanced weaponry; they were set out to show anything people could buy in a medieval economy. Provide all the options, and let players pick the best ones.

I think that discussion is confusing individual options with charcter build.
individual options are just single items. and in that case, indeed, it's bad if one is just better than the other. if a trident is just better than the spear, nobody will use the spear, they will all use the trident, and that's it. and people will wonder why even bother to include a spear in the first place.
but a character build is a whole lot of different powers and abilities coming together and synergizing in completely different ways. and in a game giving enough freedom, there are thousands of possible options.
it's actually impossible to balance builds, unless one totally restricts the build rules. the main issue is, there are so many possibilities, the game creators/playtesters can't forsee all of them. still, there should be enough possible diverse builds, and it should be roughly possible to balance them with each other. balance to the table often comes into play at this point.

[kyoryu]

Well-balanced does not mean everything is the same.

Well-balanced, to me, should mean:

1. Every option that's available should have a situation where it is useful.
a. Note that this is more important in cases where you are presumed to have unlimited choice to options - in a scenario where those choices are limited, "this is what you were able to get" is a valid situation where it's useful, though that's not a popular style of game these days
2. The cases where an option are useful and not should be reasonably obvious.
3. The harder it is and more impactful a change is, the more important relative balance.

So, in D&D, classes should be fairly tightly balanced, and it should be obvious where they excel and don't excel - because it's incredibly hard to change and super impactful.

Toughness can be balanced, but since it has specific use cases, those should be made clear. The problem is that it sounds like something a Fighter should take, when they shouldn't.

Choosing two weapon fighting and greatsword should both be viable - and one might be superior in some cases. It's more important that you can point out where each one excels than how much each one excels. IOW, if greatsword does 25% more damage when it's applicable and the two weapon fighting only does 15% more, or does 35% more or even 50% more? That's probably okay (unless the scenario where each is useful is like 90/10 in favor of one).

If you can switch things up fairly easily, then it's less important that they're relatively balanced. So, if the abilities of two weapons vs greatsword are inherent to the class/weapon choice, and not feats or permanent buys? Then two-handed and greatsword don't need to be as "even", as long as they both have situations where they shine. (To me, that's actually a more interesting play style, where people are choosing gear/tactics based on the situation rather than once at build-time).

[Telok]

I like the tradeoff DtD40k7e made with guns & swords. For normal people they're both deadly. Sure you can roll low and have to plug a guy 4 or 5 times, but often normal people get pretty much one-shot by a handgun round to the chest or a good dagger stab.

But its different for heroes. PCs and their serious opponents are literally supernaturally tough, agile, and lucky. Dragons, demons, mecha, invisible carnivorous dungeon elephants. Not to say four goons with revolvers can't put you in the hospital, but its unlikely for a hero. The difference between guns & swords is that its easier to boost the damage on the swords and you get extra attacks earlier. And against the big tough things or other exalts, that matters.

[gbaji]

If you can switch things up fairly easily, then it's less important that they're relatively balanced. So, if the abilities of two weapons vs greatsword are inherent to the class/weapon choice, and not feats or permanent buys? Then two-handed and greatsword don't need to be as "even", as long as they both have situations where they shine. (To me, that's actually a more interesting play style, where people are choosing gear/tactics based on the situation rather than once at build-time).

This is absolutely my preferred method as well. I try really hard to make various weapon/skill/whatever options viable, but with different situations where they shine. Weapons specifically, there are cases where dual wielding may be ideal. Others where sword and board may serve you best. And yet others where a big old two handed weapon may work best. Each has advantages and disadvantages and different situations where they may shine.

I actually added in a set of close combat rules to our RQ game specifically to provide situations where shorter/smaller weapons might become more viable choices (beyond just "what can you conceal and/or reasonably carry around while in town"). And I made a slight modification to one of the weapons in the standard list specifically to synergize with that system better. The entire objective here was to avoid cases where a character would just pick one "best weapon" and always use it in every situation. It's worked pretty well, and most players will actually have their characters spend time/effort gaining skill with multiple different weapons and combinations as a result. And that's really saying something for a game that is skill based, since it really is a noticable effort to pick up a new weapon when you're already highly skilled with another one (it's not like you get a feat that makes you good with "all 1h weapons" or something similar).

Huh. And I also added in some reach/zoc rules, partly for managing movement and OOA in combat, but also to create additional (but situational) advantages for longer weapons as well. Part of that was absolutely to improve the similation of combat in the game, but it was also about providing the kind of variety/balance you are talking about.

Did we somehow switch from things you should not do, to things you should? Hmmm...

[Reversefigure4]

In the real modern world, guns beat swords everytime, no question. That's why soldiers carry them. But in a -game-, guns shouldn't beat swords unless your systems stated goal is realism, and even then you either need to balance it by making swords cost half as much, or at least putting in a side bar explaining that swords are a trap option.

I find Call of Cthulhu does this reasonably well - several entities are outright immune or highly resistant to gunfire, and real world gun laws are continually referenced to ensure you can't bring your guns everywhere with you (at least in non-American-setting scenarios).

[Kurald Galain]

I find Call of Cthulhu does this reasonably well ... real world gun laws are continually referenced to ensure you can't bring your guns everywhere with you (at least in non-American-setting scenarios).
I'm reasonably sure that real world laws also don't let you bring a sword everywhere with you, either :smallbiggrin:

[gbaji]

In the real modern world, guns beat swords everytime, no question. That's why soldiers carry them. But in a -game-, guns shouldn't beat swords unless your systems stated goal is realism, and even then you either need to balance it by making swords cost half as much, or at least putting in a side bar explaining that swords are a trap option.

It's also difficult to scale damage levels in a system with both guns and swords and make both work well. If you are scaling things to some heroic level where the PCs can take gunfire to some degree (body armor, super toughness, or whatever), then swords realistically shouldn't be able to harm them, and if the scale is to balance melee weapons against available armor/HP, then guns will tend to be very very overpowered. The latter can work fine, but inevitably, guns will become increasingly more used, and the system can't really run in an heroic manner anymore. You just can't do "swords and sorcery" style game using firearms, without making the "swords" useless or firearms pretty much an "I win" button.

They only really seem to work well in games where combat is kinda supposed to be lopsided/deadly anyway. Call of Cthulhu does this well, for example. Getting hit by any kind of firearm is almost always going to take someone out of a fight, if not kill them outright in that game (well, for normal human targets anyway). So the game can be "balanced" to fists, claws, and knives, with firearms (or, you know, dynamite), actually being a "I win" button. And that's not only ok in that game, but kinda expected. The point isn't to defeat your opponents in a fair fight, but to avoid ever getting into anything similar to a fair fight in the first place. There's absolutely nothing heroic about that game.

[RandomPeasant]

Making guns and swords equally viable just requires that you pick a magic physics that does that. Look at Dune. They have laser cannons and people still fight with swords because the physics of the setting are such that using a laser cannon on a guy with one of the (ubiquitous and highly concealable) personal shield generators is a really bad idea. Another easy approach is to declare that magic works with swords more easily for whatever reason. This could be because people know how to enchant swords but not guns (I believe this is what Shadowrun does, but I'm not terribly familiar), or because that's just the nature of magic (this is how it is in Cradle, because there is a Sword Icon and a Bow Icon but no Gun Icon so if you use guns you lock yourself out of Sage and Monarch powers). You can even go the Star Wars route and have arbitrary magical swords that arbitrarily counter guns.

If you have people with superhuman physical abilities in your game, that can help too. There really is a range where a knife draws faster than a gun, and if you assume that people have better-than-real reflexes (either because of cyberware, magical enhancements, or being elves) that range probably increases some. If a street samurai can kill a room full of thugs before any of them have a chance to draw their weapons, but will get gunned down if that same fight starts with the thugs entrenched at the far end of an ally, that naturally gives you situations where both guns and swords are worth using.

[Telok]

Another easy approach is to declare that magic works with swords more easily for whatever reason. This could be because people know how to enchant swords but not guns (I believe this is what Shadowrun does, but I'm not terribly familiar),

My SR lore is about three editions out of date but if I recall correctly they fixed it with economics.

Stuff that improved weapon damage was pricy. Like the magic metal was almost half pure gold or something, needed a mage to make, and was so nice for magic the mage was going to want some so you need to make a double batch, etc., etc. So you could shell out a hundred fifty grand or such for a magic sword to use every day that'll last the rest of your life or get maybe two magazines of ammo for your assault rifle which will run out after the first or second serious fight you use it in. Or the tech boosts for weaponry was easier to find & conceal for a sword, plus you didn't have to keep shelling out for stolen military-only ammo after every mission.

That said, SR also focuses less on lawless free-for-all victory-or-death all-or-nothing style combat. Sneaking into secure facilities and running away with someone's computer isn't helped by full-auto spray & pray gunfire.

Another general option I mentioned earlier is to have swords & guns be normally lethal to normal people. Then have your game be about things like monster slaying heroes or not be focused on fighting. Then make it easier to boost swording up to the heroic levels required for monster slaying where the choice between sword & gun stops being so clear cut.

[Satinavian]

Like the magic metal was almost half pure gold or something, needed a mage to make, and was so nice for magic the mage was going to want some so you need to make a double batch, etc., etc.That was weapon fokci and those were primarily for physical adepts, ( you know, the magic powered martial artist guys and even those nearly always skipped it). Magical weapons did not really play a role otherwise and certainly were not worth the money for the few people who could use them. Most melee fighters just used regular weapons.

What did make melee somewhat viable in SR was primarily superhuman strength. Swords, axes etc could be better than real world expectations justified by having them in the hand of super strong cyborgs/genetic experiments/nonhumans/a combination thereof. Sometimes "supersharp because future tech" was added on top of it (Dikote). This still did not make melee good, just not completely worthless. And yes, some editions made spirits resistant to guns etc. But spirits were always best countered by mages, not melee fighters.

[Beelzebub1111]

The Power Rangers TTRPG is a perfect example of everything you are not supposed to do:

Do not spread your equipment lists over two pages.

If your equipment has some measure of rarity or value, but no currency, explain what your players can do to acquire that equipment.

If you include a leveling system, explain how and when your players should gain levels. "When the GM feels like they should" is not good enough.

If every class has a resource, make sure every class has a way to spend that resource, regardless of what options they take at character creation.

If your villains have a "threat level", explain what that number means and how to use those numbers to balance an encounter.

[flond]

There was a Star Wars game many years ago, I think it was the one just before SEGA if not SEGA itself, when playing a Force User in order to use a Force Power you had to lose hit points, any and all Force Powers. You were committing suicide for the audacity of wanting to play a Jedi. Even the DM saw the folly in this and fiated my character to have max hit points just so I could play the game and not die.

In 5E, choosing not to cast Haste because you lose a turn when it ends is easy enough, but never play an Evoker wizard because if you use your 14th level ability a second time you're killing yourself when other wizards can use their 14th level ability as often as they want? Not so simple.

In Ars Magica where you're supposed to play a Magus and cast spells, roll a 0 on a d10 for the audacity of casting a spell not only does the spell not work but you're out of commission unable to do anything for quite a while.

I mean a lot of what you're describing just sound like... costs and risks?

Casting from hp can make a lot of fun tactical decisions, and the evoker can always just... choose lower powered spells if they think the overcharge is worth it.

I think a world without tradeoffs like "do something really powerful but be stunned for a round " would be a lot less tactical or engaging.

[Pex]

I mean a lot of what you're describing just sound like... costs and risks?

Casting from hp can make a lot of fun tactical decisions, and the evoker can always just... choose lower powered spells if they think the overcharge is worth it.

I think a world without tradeoffs like "do something really powerful but be stunned for a round " would be a lot less tactical or engaging.

That's a nice way of saying it, but it's still punishing the player for doing what you said he could do. If you don't want players to have such power in the game don't put it in. If you don't want players to use the Force, why make a Star Wars game? If you don't players to use spells, why make a game about PCs casting spells? It's not a question of never having limits on PC power. Having limitations is not the problem. The problem is in what those limitations are. Making a player regret using the power is not an acceptable limitation.

[EggKookoo]

That's a nice way of saying it, but it's still punishing the player for doing what you said he could do. If you don't want players to have such power in the game don't put it in. If you don't want players to use the Force, why make a Star Wars game? If you don't players to use spells, why make a game about PCs casting spells? It's not a question of never having limits on PC power. Having limitations is not the problem. The problem is in what those limitations are. Making a player regret using the power is not an acceptable limitation.

Doesn't that descibe things like moving away from a foe for some tactical reason, while risking an opportunity attack? Or choosing any feature that grants +X on damage but -Y on to-hit? Or any similar mechanic?

[Kurald Galain]

That's a nice way of saying it, but it's still punishing the player for doing what you said he could do. If you don't want players to have such power in the game don't put it in. If you don't want players to use the Force, why make a Star Wars game? If you don't players to use spells, why make a game about PCs casting spells? It's not a question of never having limits on PC power. Having limitations is not the problem. The problem is in what those limitations are. Making a player regret using the power is not an acceptable limitation.

Not acceptable to you, but personally I'd be entirely fine with it, and call it more interesting gameplay.

Some RPGs are chock full of it. You can cast spells in Call of Chthulhu, but you'll regret it. You are encouraged to treat ordinary people like cattle in Vampire, but you'll lose your humanity. You benefit from a high Rage score in Werewolf, until you roll too high on your rage check. And so forth.

Also, tropes like the Dangerous Forbidden Technique and the Deal with the Devil are very common in fiction. They make good stories, so it makes sense to include them in games about stories.

[Kurald Galain]

Doesn't that descibe things like moving away from a foe for some tactical reason, while risking an opportunity attack? Or choosing any feature that grants +X on damage but -Y on to-hit? Or any similar mechanic?

You're hitting the nail right on the head.

A common opinion on forums (that I have literally never encountered at any game table) is that in D&D, you cannot use trip maneuvers because you'll be PUNISHED!!!!
Whereas the actual rule is that tripping is a risk/reward move where you risk getting an opportunity attack, which (1) you can mitigate with various defenses, (2) you can avoid with good tactics, and (3) you can choose to take if the reward is worth it, as a risk is not a certainty.

Board games, video games, and CCGs deal just fine with risk/reward options; it's just that a vocal minority of D&D players seems to be extremely opposed to them.

[Xervous]

My SR lore is about three editions out of date but if I recall correctly they fixed it with economics.

Stuff that improved weapon damage was pricy. Like the magic metal was almost half pure gold or something, needed a mage to make, and was so nice for magic the mage was going to want some so you need to make a double batch, etc., etc. So you could shell out a hundred fifty grand or such for a magic sword to use every day that'll last the rest of your life or get maybe two magazines of ammo for your assault rifle which will run out after the first or second serious fight you use it in. Or the tech boosts for weaponry was easier to find & conceal for a sword, plus you didn't have to keep shelling out for stolen military-only ammo after every mission.

That said, SR also focuses less on lawless free-for-all victory-or-death all-or-nothing style combat. Sneaking into secure facilities and running away with someone's computer isn't helped by full-auto spray & pray gunfire.

Another general option I mentioned earlier is to have swords & guns be normally lethal to normal people. Then have your game be about things like monster slaying heroes or not be focused on fighting. Then make it easier to boost swording up to the heroic levels required for monster slaying where the choice between sword & gun stops being so clear cut.

Guns were dirt cheap across the editions that matter (do yourself a favor and ignore 5th+). 70-80% of combat potency tended to flow from the character, so a troll with a makeshift club or his own titanium reinforced knuckles was plenty lethal. Part of what assists melee relevance is the systems allowing for characters to be made so durable that they can wade into gunfire from anything at or below their pay grade. You can make all manner of combat monsters in Shadowrun, but that’s not always what’s needed for a job. Melee characters have an easier time retaining some of their potency when confronted with mandatory security checkpoints, but as always that’s getting into campaign specifics.

Melee and ranged accuracy keyed off the same attribute, so there was a relatively low cost to broaden a melee character into decent ranged competency. Composite bows were particularly terrifying in some editions as they also made use of the high strength melee characters had.

[gbaji]

A common opinion on forums (that I have literally never encountered at any game table) is that in D&D, you cannot use trip maneuvers because you'll be PUNISHED!!!!
Whereas the actual rule is that tripping is a risk/reward move where you risk getting an opportunity attack, which (1) you can mitigate with various defenses, (2) you can avoid with good tactics, and (3) you can choose to take if the reward is worth it, as a risk is not a certainty.

Board games, video games, and CCGs deal just fine with risk/reward options; it's just that a vocal minority of D&D players seems to be extremely opposed to them.

I can see arguments from both sides on that one. On the one hand, risk/reward is a balanced approach to a game system. But you also have to balance against "cost for the ability in the first place". If the risk/reward balance is for a combat maneuver or skill that anyone could use, then there should be no problem. Use this maneuver and you get this advantage, but take this risk doing it. But if the character has to spend something (skill points, a feat, whatever) as part of build/progression to gain access to something, and that something includes a risk/reward balance, I can see how some players might view that as a negation of the ability itself to some degree.

Which, yeah, kinda depends on how good the benefit is versus how bad the risk is (and, of course, what sorts of alternative abilities there are that I could have obtained instead). So there absolutely can be some legitimate beefs when looking at some "for pay" abilities that have a risk/reward effect, but where the reward doesn't outweigh the risk sufficiently to make it worth taking instead of some other ability. And this can be even more legiitmate if we're examining classes in some games where the spread of choices for one is maybe less desirable than another. It's certainly a rabbit hole of game balance details you can go down, but it's also why I try to avoid taking any sort of firm "this is always good/bad" position in the first place.


It's actually hard for me to nail down something that absolutely should not be done in a game system. I've played a lot of games, and can't think of very many that were simply unplayable, or didn't have game rules that at least somewhat reflected what the game designers were trying to do. For me, it's more about implementation details than broad "though shall not" kinds of things.

I suppose I'd point at games with MegaDamage mechanics? Maybe? I think that's something that so firmly bifurcates a game that it makes it hard to play without basically "picking a mode". Doesn't help that the mechanic is most commonly seen in mech games, and I've just never been a fan of that genre. But yeah, those games did tend to turn into basically two different games. Play while in a mech, and play while not in a mech. And you really kinda didn't want to mix the two (like at all).

[Vahnavoi]

@Kurald Galain: a good chunk of this "punishment" issue is psychological - and may just be faulty game analysis.

To wit: in any oppositional game, which majority of combat scenarios are, of course your opponent will threaten punishment to disincetivize you from doing things that would be inconvenient to them - and carry out such punishment if they just can. This is one basic tactic and natural part of all such games. The possibility and cost of such punishment is not something different from risk/reward or cost/benefit, it's a part of it. I'm naming both risk/reward and cost/benefit separately, because your statement that "risk is not certainty" is not even relevant to many such cases - sometimes the punishment is certain and it still is the best course of action to just eat the punishment.

So, sometimes, what happens is that people get the "my opponent is punishing me to disincentivize behaviour" part, but don't get the rest. Another way to put it is that they interprete punishment as prohibition (because how do people, in other contexts, learn something is prohibited? Because prohibited things are punished). But in an oppositional game, this is premature.

The actual game design point is in how the punished strategies fare against the "non-punished" ones. If every special maneuver eats an attack of opportunity but basic "roll dN for hitpoint damage" doesn't, causing all those specials to fall below basic attacks... yeah at some point, it will feel like the game doesn't really want you doing those things, because there genuinely isn't a reason to use them.

[icefractal]

Ultimately if you're talking about an ability being worth taking (or not), the relevant factor is the potency of the ability vs the opportunity cost of other abilities you could have taken instead.

So I'd say that while an opportunity cost can push the balance of an ability to "underpowered, not worth taking / using" it's far from the only thing that can. IME, abilities that simply do too little with no downside are the main ones cluttering things up.

For example, in a 3.x style game, which of these feats would you rather have?
Improved Line Holding: When you ready an attack against a charge, you gain an extra +2 to hit.
Vital Overcharge: Take two points of un-preventable Constitution damage to take a full round of actions as an immediate action, which doesn't change the timing of your next turn.

The first one has no action cost either, nothing but the opportunity cost of the feat. But it's clearly pretty bad, just as the second one is clearly strong despite having a fairly significant downside.

[Vahnavoi]

You ended up saying the same thing as me, with different words.

Where this gets absolutely hilarious when players start to see opportunity costs as punishments. My favorite version of this (to hate), is the idea that somebody choosing to play a Fighter instead of Wizard in 3rd edition D&D is basically the Devil for robbing so much play power from a group, and the playgroup should punish the Fighter right back by ostracizing them until that player caves in and plays a Wizard.

[lesser_minion]

Just going back to review the original examples that were presented:


There was a Star Wars game many years ago, I think it was the one just before SEGA if not SEGA itself, when playing a Force User in order to use a Force Power you had to lose hit points, any and all Force Powers. You were committing suicide for the audacity of wanting to play a Jedi. Even the DM saw the folly in this and fiated my character to have max hit points just so I could play the game and not die.

Using the same bar for both health and mana is a good example of a mechanic that can go wrong pretty easily without careful balancing. But even then, I don't think that that means it should never ever be done.


In 5E, choosing not to cast Haste because you lose a turn when it ends is easy enough, but never play an Evoker wizard because if you use your 14th level ability a second time you're killing yourself when other wizards can use their 14th level ability as often as they want? Not so simple.

This sounds to me like "once per long rest" but less boring. And using it while horribly out of position and with only 3 hit points remaining is far from the worst way to lose a character.


In Ars Magica where you're supposed to play a Magus and cast spells, roll a 0 on a d10 for the audacity of casting a spell not only does the spell not work but you're out of commission unable to do anything for quite a while.

Any stressful activity in Ars Magica runs the risk of a (potentially catastrophic) botch, it's not something unique to spells. The guiding philosophy here is that dangerous things are dangerous.

Also, twilight specifically cannot be triggered by trying to cast a spell unless you're in a dangerous situation with additional complications, as it requires a double botch.

[Gnoman]

It's also difficult to scale damage levels in a system with both guns and swords and make both work well. If you are scaling things to some heroic level where the PCs can take gunfire to some degree (body armor, super toughness, or whatever), then swords realistically shouldn't be able to harm them, and if the scale is to balance melee weapons against available armor/HP, then guns will tend to be very very overpowered. The latter can work fine, but inevitably, guns will become increasingly more used, and the system can't really run in an heroic manner anymore. You just can't do "swords and sorcery" style game using firearms, without making the "swords" useless or firearms pretty much an "I win" button.


You're either dramatically overestimating how powerful personal firearms are, or dramatically underestimating how powerful melee weapons are. A sword or spear or club might have more difficulty with armor (or might not - armor designed to stop bullets can get weird when cutting is involved), but if you're fighting somebody without armor any of them is as deadly as any handgun or most rifles.

[SimonMoon6]

My favorite example of players not realizing that a cost to use an ability was actually perfectly reasonable happened in a DC Heroes RPG game. In this game, there is a power called "Omni Power" which lets the user mimic any power in the game. However, there is a cost to pay: you have to spend hero points (which is a combination of experience points and also points used in the game to "do better" at any action), with the more powerful powers costing more hero points to mimic.

This power is one of two powers that the game uses to represent characters who seem able to do almost anything but often don't. For example, the pre-Kyle version of Green Lantern rings would have Omni-Power since GL could read minds or pass through walls or shrink enemies to imprison them inside the ring, etc, but wouldn't do that sort of thing all the time. (Post-Kyle rings are much more limited.)

Anyway, the player in question stated that he didn't like Omni Power, he would never use Omni Power, etc. It's the worst power in the game, he said.

Then, I ran a game where the characters gained powers in a way that was only partially under their control, and this particular player's PC gained Omni Power. And suddenly, he was using it all the time. It really was worth its cost.

I think he tried to justify this by saying that he still wouldn't choose to have Omni Power, but since he had it, he might as well use it. But I think that just shows that an ability with a cost can still totally be worth it, especially if the cost is reasonable compared to the effect of the ability.

[Cluedrew]

System's should never do anything unethical in the real world. And I don't mean something that would be unethical in the real world, I mean there are real world ethical problems with this game. Luckily there are few examples of this and it is and I think the why is pretty obvious so I'm just going to move on.

Someone (forgot who) early on pointed out that universal things a system shouldn't do are pretty few. But there are also I think are probably a few classes of things that you shouldn't do depending on the system. Most of them are some variety of consistency. Like tonal consistency, the character concepts should drawn from the same pool, they should have abilities that fit those characters and so on. Even health costs might be tonally inconsistent in a heroic power fantasy game, but completely fit into a game that is about character being worn-down by overwhelming odds and tough choices.

Even things like "guns are better than swords", which is broadly true today, would be hilariously inappropriate in the early days of guns where they were at best something you gave the troops you didn't have time to properly train in the use of a bow. (And even that is a massive simplification of what happened. Since I'm here, that is another issue with "realism" in games, reality is way more complicated than people think.)

[NichG]

Someone (forgot who) early on pointed out that universal things a system shouldn't do are pretty few. But there are also I think are probably a few classes of things that you shouldn't do depending on the system. Most of them are some variety of consistency. Like tonal consistency, the character concepts should drawn from the same pool, they should have abilities that fit those characters and so on. Even health costs might be tonally inconsistent in a heroic power fantasy game, but completely fit into a game that is about character being worn-down by overwhelming odds and tough choices.


I'd agree with this. My list of 'things a horror system should not do' or 'things a comedy system should not do' is a lot less empty. I think basically, once you know or imply the goal of the system, now there's a tons of dos and don'ts - basically don't do things which prevent the goal from being achieved, but for any specific goal we can actually think about what those might be. Genre emulation is a certain class of goal, so thats enough to make things concrete.

E.g. I can say that there are subsets of the horror genre - the ones in which the viewer or player is actually supposed to feel afraid or nervous or tense - where it's very important for the agency of the protagonists to be strongly limited. Being in control, knowing too much about certain things, etc active works against that feeling of nervousness or unease or suspense. But in another genre, giving the players agency (both the power to decide things and the knowledge to understand the consequences) would be completely central to the play experience and 'don't arbitrarily restrict player agency!' would be a good constraint for designing those systems.