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  1. - Top - End - #1
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    AssassinGuy

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    Default Does Every aspect of a TTRPG need to have a Strategic Mini-game?

    I noticed that there is a strong desire on this board to create "systems" to handle all aspects of the game. So, if you want to do social skills; we need a system in order to solve who gets their way. If you are going into the woods, you need a system in order to determine how long you can survive. If you are going to intimidate somehow, you need a wide variety of choices and rolls. I understand the appeal as no matter what happens, you know what to do, and remove grey area.

    Every TTRPG should have a focus or "intended state of play" in which the rules maybe more developed or focused on. For example, D&D likes to focus a lot on "tactical combat" so has a lot of rules for how to kill stuff. Those Dark Places is an industrial, sci-fi space horror game, so it has more detail mechanics on panic states. Call of Cthulthu is more of an investigation and sanity losing focus, so mechanics focus on
    those game play methods. Other games have other focuses.

    Mini-games and such have their place in helping create the games focus. They are also great in board games, video games, wargames, etc. However, the only way a TTRPG with a GM can cover the vast swathe of game styles, scenarios, resolutions, etc. is by letting the GM adjudicate for areas that are outside of the core "intended state of play" that make up any session. It is one of the few things that make TTRPGs unique as a game experience. Should designers lean into this advantage, or are a variety of strategic mini-games the preferred state of play?

    I look forward to the discussion and solid, well thought out refutations of my poorly worded thoughts.
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    Bugbear in the Playground
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    Default Re: Does Every aspect of a TTRPG need to have a Strategic Mini-game?

    Quote Originally Posted by Easy e View Post
    Mini-games and such have their place in helping create the games focus. They are also great in board games, video games, wargames, etc. However, the only way a TTRPG with a GM can cover the vast swathe of game styles, scenarios, resolutions, etc. is by letting the GM adjudicate for areas that are outside of the core "intended state of play" that make up any session. It is one of the few things that make TTRPGs unique as a game experience. Should designers lean into this advantage, or are a variety of strategic mini-games the preferred state of play?
    I think it depends on the game (of course), but that's a pretty cheap cop out. So. I think there is an advantage to focusing on the core "intended state of play" with the bulk of the rules and then just adjudicating stuff outside that area. if those areas aren't that critical or focused as part of the game, the players maybe don't actually want to spend that much time dealing with them. Creating a new mini-game is just more work for very little payoff.

    I've also personally found that mini-games can be jarring from a game flow point of view. I'm assuming here that the core rules don't deal with super detail on that area (except maybe some broad skill rolls), so any mini-game would presumably have completely different mechanics than the rest of the game. That can be fun. Maybe.

    If it's a big issue in any given game, then maybe create house rules that cover that aspect of play but still follow the same basic outcome determination methodology as the game itself. It'll be less jarring and may lead to even more modifications in the future. The end result may be a jumbled mess, but could become (over time) a pretty elegant and much improved complete game compared with what you started with.

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    Ogre in the Playground
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    Default Re: Does Every aspect of a TTRPG need to have a Strategic Mini-game?

    Quote Originally Posted by Easy e View Post
    Mini-games and such have their place in helping create the games focus. They are also great in board games, video games, wargames, etc. However, the only way a TTRPG with a GM can cover the vast swathe of game styles, scenarios, resolutions, etc. is by letting the GM adjudicate for areas that are outside of the core "intended state of play" that make up any session. It is one of the few things that make TTRPGs unique as a game experience. Should designers lean into this advantage, or are a variety of strategic mini-games the preferred state of play?
    Personally i do like a variety of mini games providing the option to switch the focus of the game around without losing much detail. But that leads me personally to prefer crunchy games.


    Recently i have sen more games offering both a minigame and a fast resolution option for various optional topics. The group can then use whichever fits more dependend on how important the part is at the moment. This generally works as long as you don't have to build differently depending on which rules you use. Otherwise you lose the ability to switch detail grade on the fly.

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    Firbolg in the Playground
     
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    Default Re: Does Every aspect of a TTRPG need to have a Strategic Mini-game?

    Quote Originally Posted by Easy e View Post
    I noticed that there is a strong desire on this board to create "systems" to handle all aspects of the game. So, if you want to do social skills; we need a system in order to solve who gets their way. If you are going into the woods, you need a system in order to determine how long you can survive. If you are going to intimidate somehow, you need a wide variety of choices and rolls. I understand the appeal as no matter what happens, you know what to do, and remove grey area.
    I suspect that's because the default perspective of the board is D&D, and D&D does have a lot of system crunch in some places (combat especially) and not a lot in others even though some of those others could have consequences like combat.

    So there are things that feel dissimilar that seem like they should feel similar instead.

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    Firbolg in the Playground
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    Default Re: Does Every aspect of a TTRPG need to have a Strategic Mini-game?

    Anything worth doing is worth doing right.

    If you want Quertus, my signature academia mage for whom this account is named, to part with one of his artifacts, you’ve got to present a clear reason why he should think that this is a good plan, you’ve got to play the tactical minigame of “how does he think, and what does he want”, not just roll Diplomacy at him. And I try to roleplay my NPCs with the same level of fidelity, as individuals with individual wants and needs and personalities.

    Anything worth doing is worth doing right.

    If combat is worth doing, make it a cool tactical minigame, filled with meaningful choices; if it’s not, let’s just “roll combat”, so we can hurry up and get to the good part.

    If talking to people is with doing, make it a cool tactical minigame, filled with meaningful choices; if it’s not, let’s just “roll Diplomacy Reaction Check”, so we can hurry up and get to the good part.

    Anything worth doing is worth doing right.

    Whatever the game is about? Whatever the players want to do? These should be worth doing, should have an engaging minigame to play. Otherwise, we may as well “roll session”, so we can get to an RPG worth playing.

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    Default Re: Does Every aspect of a TTRPG need to have a Strategic Mini-game?

    Combat obviously greatly benefits from it.
    For everything else it seems really out of place.
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    Default Re: Does Every aspect of a TTRPG need to have a Strategic Mini-game?

    Every aspect of tabletop roleplaying game already happens in the greater strategic context of how you communicate with other player and the game referee to reach your objectives. Additional minigames are only necessary where they serve aesthetics that are hard-to-reach with natural language discussion. Aspects that are way out of focus can be glossed over. A game about being parents of a small kid probably doesn't need a minigame for combat, a game about boots-on-ground combat in a medieval setting probably doesn't need a minigame for space flight, so on and so forth.

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    Default Re: Does Every aspect of a TTRPG need to have a Strategic Mini-game?

    Quote Originally Posted by Yora View Post
    Combat obviously greatly benefits from it.
    For everything else it seems really out of place.
    That's what I have found.
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    Default Re: Does Every aspect of a TTRPG need to have a Strategic Mini-game?

    Quote Originally Posted by Quertus View Post
    Anything worth doing is worth doing right.
    Yes.

    It does, however, imply that the designers need to know what they want the game to mechanically do and be able to effectively communicate that to the consumers through the medium that the game rules use.

    If the game is supposed to have all of the character social scenes decided by rolling one die and moving on then it needs to be called out. If the game is going to be marketed as good for running Arthurian romance shining knights on horses, you need to damn well have more stuff developed than just a combat engine designed to handle people on foot in small rooms.

    If the game rules are in written books then the info on what to do with the rules needs to be in those books. If your game rules are videos & blog posts then you can put important stuff in there. But critical info like "if you blindly apply rule X as written to all possible situations then your game will stop being heroic sword & sorcery fantasy and start being silly Saturday morning cartoons", that had better be in your rule books and not buried half an hour into a video of some boring mumbling developer.

    Edit: almost forgot.
    Teaching someone the rules of chess does not make them a good chess player. It makes them someone who has the ability to make legal chess moves during a game. To become a good chess player they need to be shown & taught how to play the game at a level above just memorizing rules. Without that "how to apply the rules" information they face years of practice as they blindly make mistake after mistake, losing the vasy majority of games while they blindly recreate basic strategy. RPGs are the same way. How and when to apply the rules is just as, if not more, important than being able to follow them. Many games fail to fo this.
    Last edited by Telok; 2022-10-07 at 11:33 AM.

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    SwashbucklerGuy

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    Default Re: Does Every aspect of a TTRPG need to have a Strategic Mini-game?

    No.

    But every section of the game should be developed enough to be able to function to the degree of detail the game is looking for.

    A great deal of the game could be left up to the player describing how they want to go about doing a thing, and the GM assigning a check of some sort. There doesn't need to be a "Jump" skill, and "jumping" doesn't need to be its own action or not it's own action, it could depend entirely on what the person is trying to do.

    If the game doesn't intend to really cover some area of RPGing, maybe exploration, maybe social, maybe even combat; the rules in those areas can be minimized, or even not included at all. Though it would be nice for a game to be clear about "This is a combat survival game and almost nothing will want to talk to you." before it just dumps all the social rules.

    This board, like much of TTRPGing, skews towards D&D, for obvious reasons. A game with a highly developed and detailed combat system (although IMO, not a great one) and fairly minimal social and exploration rules. It is this way because of its roots in wargaming. There are survival horror games where exploration is highly detailed, because encountering almost anything will kill you. There are investigative detective games with detailed social rules.

    If all these games are any indication, it generally benefits to be very detailed in whatever area you want to focus. A more general game with no specific pillar focus could probably get away with much lighter rules in all 3 areas.
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    Firbolg in the Playground
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    Default Re: Does Every aspect of a TTRPG need to have a Strategic Mini-game?

    Quote Originally Posted by Telok View Post
    Yes.

    It does, however, imply that the designers need to know what they want the game to mechanically do and be able to effectively communicate that to the consumers through the medium that the game rules use.
    Yes and no? Yes, but?

    So, yes, one component is the game knowing what it’s about. Clearly, if the game knows that it’s about something, it should be engaging in those areas that it is explicitly about.

    However

    If the players decide that they want to talk to someone / something in D&D, the onus falls on the GM to make that engaging with concepts like “personality”, even if the players never get to look at a set of printed rules on “getting what you want from NPCs”. Or if the players decide that they want to make the game about Space Ship Combat as Space Vikings, then the onus falls on the GM to add a worthwhile Space Viking Ship Combat minigame. Or to say, “uh, we can’t do that in Call of Cthulhu / Shadowrun / whatever” (are there any other systems/settings where it’s obviously physically possible, but there’s no support for it?).

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    Default Re: Does Every aspect of a TTRPG need to have a Strategic Mini-game?

    I agree that not every TTRPG needs or should try to cover every aspect of life of its characters. It's a fool's errand to try to mechanically, accurately and realistically simulate every aspect of a fictional world, without complex computer algorithms (even with them). Also, not all games are intending to represent the same sorts of things or will spend time with characters doing the same things.

    However, if a game has its players choosing to assign mechanical character resources to one ability or another, then both those abilities should have roughly equal impact on the game - else, there would be a clear "best" option for all characters in order to be effective in the game - see the problem with "dump stats".

    If you have to choose between combat ability and social ability or knowledge for your character - but combat has definitive, mechanical effects and consequences and take up the vast majority of the game, while the social and knowledge elements are mostly useful only so far as the GM chooses to allow them to be, and adjudicates interactions without referring to any firm rules - I'd say this is a poorly designed game. Give everyone the same amount of combat-build resources, and a separate pool of non-combat abilities. Any given GM and group could choose to spend more or less time in either sphere of the game, in this case, and all the players would feel they have an equal ability to interact.

    In another sense, a game isn't a game without some rule-based interactions. Any activity which is intended to have consequence in the game for the players/characters should be "gamified" in some way. The detail put into each aspect of the player's activities proportional to the import and consequence on the game's outcome. If it doesn't matter too much what happens when they're talking to each other and NPCs in between action scenes, then you don't need to many or any rules for it. If most of the game time is spent there, and it will determine a lot of what happens, then there should be some mechanical game element to it -unless the "game" is just to practice your improvisational acting and story telling. A GM led game does need rules beyond just "the GM decides what happens by whatever method they want", imo. There at least need to be definitive rules for how each player gets to contribute to the storytelling, making it fair and equal for each player, if the game premise is primarily "collaborative storytelling".

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    Default Re: Does Every aspect of a TTRPG need to have a Strategic Mini-game?

    I'm going to answer your question with another question:

    Does any aspect of a role-playing game need to have a mini-game?

    (The implied answer to the original question is no, and I think I can extend this to non-strategic mini-games.)

    I think the most relevant view of mini-game here is a section of game play that changes the core loop from the one used more commonly, at least we are going to try it. Because why change the core loop? Because it doesn't work with what you are doing, because you are trying to do something it wasn't built for. Why not just built the core loop to do what you want? Well because you want to do more than one thing.

    And if you want your system want to do two or more significantly things, that might be just what you have to do. But otherwise (and sometimes even then) the best solution is to just try to integrate what you want from your system in the core loop. It generally helps complexity and transitioning through game states.

    Not that mini-games or even a hybrid system can't work, but those are not the only options.

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    Default Re: Does Every aspect of a TTRPG need to have a Strategic Mini-game?

    Quote Originally Posted by Yora View Post
    Combat obviously greatly benefits from it.
    Does it? If I'm playing a pastoral game about exploring the town, growing as a person, and making friends strategic combat would just get in the way.

    For everything else it seems really out of place.
    A lot of games default to the D&D model, and thus aim themselves at combat and exploration. In this situation rules for debates are useless, but some good rules on exploring an area would be handy (which makes it odd that D&D5e provides basically nothing). Meanwhile a game like Monsterhearts probably needs a codified way of tracking social relationships between a potentially large cast, but has no need for codified combat.

    To reuse a sentence I've used elsewhere in my life I don't expect D&D to have in depth hacking rules, I do expect it to have some for overland travel.
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    Default Re: Does Every aspect of a TTRPG need to have a Strategic Mini-game?

    Quote Originally Posted by Cluedrew View Post
    I'm going to answer your question with another question:

    Does any aspect of a role-playing game need to have a mini-game?

    (The implied answer to the original question is no, and I think I can extend this to non-strategic mini-games.)

    I think the most relevant view of mini-game here is a section of game play that changes the core loop from the one used more commonly, at least we are going to try it. Because why change the core loop? Because it doesn't work with what you are doing, because you are trying to do something it wasn't built for. Why not just built the core loop to do what you want? Well because you want to do more than one thing.

    And if you want your system want to do two or more significantly things, that might be just what you have to do. But otherwise (and sometimes even then) the best solution is to just try to integrate what you want from your system in the core loop. It generally helps complexity and transitioning through game states.

    Not that mini-games or even a hybrid system can't work, but those are not the only options.
    You are technically correct - the best kind of correct.

    Personally, I focused more on the question of, “does every aspect of the game need to be strategic”, to which I replied, “only the parts that matter”.

    But, yes, one could focus on the “minigame” aspect, and evaluate the relative value of various minigame… structuring models?

    Myself, I suppose I’m all for everything following the high level
    GM: this is the game state.
    Player: I take this action.
    GM: this is the new game state.
    And the low-level resolution that gets you from state to state being a different minigame for each action.
    Last edited by Quertus; 2022-10-08 at 07:22 PM.

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    Barbarian in the Playground
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    Default Re: Does Every aspect of a TTRPG need to have a Strategic Mini-game?

    Let's take it to LARP.

    Does a LARP need rules for how a sword attack hits? No, because you have a sword and can just hit the other guy.

    Does a TTRPG or LARP need rules for social interaction? No, you can just talk to people.

    Does LARP need rules for hacking? Well, yes, even if the rules are "these are the things you can hack", because you otherwise do illegal things and are no longer a LARPer, but a criminal.

    So, you *need* rules for things where you cannot physically do it and see what happens. But that is only the beginning.

    See, if you have a LARP story that goes on over multiple years and have a character there who is supposed to be the best swordsman, well, you better hope the guy playing him is super into HEMA or Olympic fencing, because he *actually needs to be the best* (or very close to it), otherwise he literally can't play the given role convincingly - and giving the role to some rando guy who rocked up from the local HEMA club to try this LARP thing out probably isn't the best idea.

    So, if you have a thing that your characters can theoretically do, but you want to enable the fantasy of being better at it than their players, you need some kind of rules for it, even if it is a simple "give our long-term LARPers one more life".

    That's the answer to the question as stated, you need rules in these two cases. But there is the question as intended, and that is how deep you want to go with the mechanical complexities - this was pretty much answered already, figure out what you want to focus on in your game and make that part fancy, have some quick resolution mechanics for the rest. And you should try your best and do both the quick mechanics and complex ones well.

    Lastly, there is the issue of genre. If your TTRPG has a mechanically rich combat system, but handwaves anything than combat with a single dice roll, if it an RPG? I'd say that there is a good argument for "no, it isn't", it's more of a TTTPG, a tabletop tactical puzzle game. You can roleplay in such a game, the same as you can roleplay in Call of Duty, but the game isn't really set up to support such roleplay.

    As for mechanics feeling off for social stuff, you feel that way because you haven't done any melee combat. If you did, then both social and combat parts would feel off to you, it's a necessary evil you need to make this sort of game playable - I've played quite a few TTRPGs over the years, and not a single once got even close to how I make decisions when in a duel or skirmish (both of these have very different feels to them, but that's a discussion for another time).

    (There is one more case of LARP rules, where they try to give you some advantage that you should have that was lost because of nature of other rules. If I rock up to a LARP wearing real chain mail, I should be harder to kill, but because of how the being hit with boffer weapons rules work, the armor does nothing but slow me down. Word of advice, you want at least triple HP, wearing the damn thing for several hours for 2 hits instead of one was not worth it. Well, except for the intimidation factor.)
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    Default Re: Does Every aspect of a TTRPG need to have a Strategic Mini-game?

    Quote Originally Posted by Easy e View Post
    I noticed that there is a strong desire on this board to create "systems" to handle all aspects of the game. So, if you want to do social skills; we need a system in order to solve who gets their way. If you are going into the woods, you need a system in order to determine how long you can survive. If you are going to intimidate somehow, you need a wide variety of choices and rolls. I understand the appeal as no matter what happens, you know what to do, and remove grey area.

    Every TTRPG should have a focus or "intended state of play" in which the rules maybe more developed or focused on. For example, D&D likes to focus a lot on "tactical combat" so has a lot of rules for how to kill stuff.
    I'm going to stop you right here, because while I largely agree with what you've said up to this point, I take issue with that last statement.

    It's true that D&D focuses on tactical combat, but that's because it has mechanics focused on combat. If we take WotC's statements about how D&D should play as the unsullied Authorial Truth, though, D&D is supposed to involve combat, exploration, and roleplaying, if not in equal amounts then similar ones. For that to be true, though, exploration and roleplaying would need similar levels of support to combat; in the actual book, however, half the rulebook is focused on combat, while exploration and roleplaying get maybe a couple of sections on how the DM should design stuff, maybe with some skill check DCs thrown in.

    Not all aspects of a TTRPG need to be supported by mechanics. But the aspects of a TTRPG you consider important do. If you leave it up to the GM and players to figure stuff out for themselves—GMs who generally have little experience with game design and less time to do it in—they're going to focus on the parts of the game that don't require them to design it. They're going to focus on the parts of the game where hundreds or thousands of man-hours were spent making sure the system was fun and easy to run, not the part where they're flying blind.

    I agree with most of what you said, but the way you said them makes it feel like those things are supporting something I don't agree with. Focusing on what systems a game doesn't need, like you're trying to defend some TTRPG from accusations of needing better mechanics for social conflicts or something, instead of focusing on what systems a game does need and opening that avenue for criticism...I don't want to put words in your mouth, but that framing feels like it's meant to imply something I don't agree with.


    Postscript
    Part of the problem is also that basically all big-name TTRPGs have a heavy combat focus. D&D and Pathfinder, Shadowrun, various Star Wars RPGs, even Call of Cthulhu and the World of Darkness games to an extent. WoD does have mechanics meant to get the players in the headspace of whatever supernatural creatures they're playing, but their other mechanics tend to skew towards using those creatures' supernatural powers to fight whatever supernatural foes beset them.
    And while I've never played CoC, the rulebook at my local library and most of the after-action reports I've heard make it sound less like a game about psychological horror than about fighting monsters and losing (usually). The vibe I get is closer to "The Dunwich Horror" (which ends with a few professors fighting an invisible spawn of Yog-Sototh with spells they researched, a magic potion, and a shotgun) than it is to "Call of Cthulhu".

    There absolutely exist TRPGs which don't focus on combat. Plenty of generic RPGs exist with rules intentionally designed to work equally well in a courtroom or hospital as on the battlefield. I've got a couple of indie RPGs I've wanted to run for ages that are nothing like dungeon-crawlers, with New Gods of Mankind being perhaps the most extreme example. And while I've heard a lot about Powered by the Apocalypse games, I've never gotten around to reading any. But with the exception of the Apocalypse Engine, none of those have even a percent of the TRPG market. They are niche.

    If you want a game you can go to the local game shop and play, or that's easy to convince your D&D group to try, it's going to be D&D or a game with effectively identical mechanical priorities. For people who want to try something different, this is frustrating.
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    Default Re: Does Every aspect of a TTRPG need to have a Strategic Mini-game?

    Quote Originally Posted by Yora View Post
    Combat obviously greatly benefits from it.
    For everything else it seems really out of place.
    You see I would say that combat rules basically wreck the rest of the game due being so unbalanced

    Firstly when people have lots of rules/minigames for a category of action it tends to dominate the headspace and thus the reactions of the players. When confronted with an issue people tend to run down their options and due to the rules those appear disproportionatly aimed at certain outcomes. If "Combat" gives a dozen options (by looking at combat maneuvers, feats etc) "Magic bypass" gives a half-score options (with a quick scan of the spell list) and then there is talk to them....giving absolutely no idea what to say. Really how to judge what could happen etc. So picking from the better defined and more numerous options is far less mental work and so people tend to go for that. This is part of mechanics of what drives the "rule focus on X so the game focuses on X" that GreatWorldGold so nicely put just above. And that goes even for when the character would know better.

    Which leads into the second point player/character separation.
    Combat systems allow players who are wheelchair bound 98lb weaklings to equally play a wizard, barbarian, or an SAS officer in spite of themselves
    Social minigame systems allow the shy, inarticulate, types to play bards, political fixers, and marshalls in spite of themselves.
    Skill systems can support a dummy playing a genius and limit the genius playing a doufus from just ignoring that dump stat.

    the "oh just act it out" option massively promotes those players who have high Charisma, Presence, Wits type traits and the Persuasion, Bluff, Intimidate, etc skills themselves over the players who don't no matter what type of character they may be playing. Now I say this as someone for whom this is a massive advantage which as a teen I abused the heck out of. But as a DM I want the shy kid to not be limited to play shy or antisocial characters (sure they may want to but if they don't the game play shouldn't penalize them)
    Last edited by sktarq; 2022-10-10 at 05:02 PM.

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    Default Re: Does Every aspect of a TTRPG need to have a Strategic Mini-game?

    Quote Originally Posted by GreatWyrmGold View Post
    It's true that D&D focuses on tactical combat, but that's because it has mechanics focused on combat. If we take WotC's statements about how D&D should play as the unsullied Authorial Truth, though, D&D is supposed to involve combat, exploration, and roleplaying, if not in equal amounts then similar ones. For that to be true, though, exploration and roleplaying would need similar levels of support to combat; in the actual book, however, half the rulebook is focused on combat, while exploration and roleplaying get maybe a couple of sections on how the DM should design stuff, maybe with some skill check DCs thrown in.
    I think there also needs to be some awareness of the relative complexity of different aspects of playing a game though. One can argue that exploration, for example, can be accurately modeled using a relatively small number of skills that are somewhat self explanatory and therefore maybe need very little actual written rules. Same can be argued for many social skills use applications (roleplaying bits). It's somewhat part of game design. I've very rarely run into cases where myself or the players are having issues because there just aren't enough skills to check against to determine how well we wandered around looking for stuff in the wilderness. Basic rules with a handful of applicable skills (track, foraging, cartography, stealth, spot, climbing, swimming, etc) and some rules guidelines are pretty much sufficient and everyone will be satisfied with the results. More rules just take up space in a published work and may provide minimal benefit to the players (who you're asking to pay by the page for said rulebook).

    I do completely agree with your point that if skills are of equal cost in the game system, they should be of equal value. A lot of this should be resolved in scenario creation and how the GM runs things. But yeah, if you've got a GM who makes combat resolution a focus and just kinda handwaves the other sections of play (making very little distinction between whether the PCs have allocated points to applicable skills or not), then that's a problem. I've certainly played in scenarios where, one way or another, the PCs were going to get the needed information from the NPCs, and were going to figure out who the bad guy was, and were going to find their way to the bad guys hideout, because that was all necessary for the scenario to play out, and so making character skill rolls along the way mattered little relative to players just figuring things out themselves. The combat at the end, however, was detailed and the outcome was 100% determined by how well the PCs could fight. And in that case, you could absolutely be left scratching your head wondering "why did I bother putting points into social or exploration skills?".

    Quote Originally Posted by GreatWyrmGold View Post
    And while I've never played CoC, the rulebook at my local library and most of the after-action reports I've heard make it sound less like a game about psychological horror than about fighting monsters and losing (usually). The vibe I get is closer to "The Dunwich Horror" (which ends with a few professors fighting an invisible spawn of Yog-Sototh with spells they researched, a magic potion, and a shotgun) than it is to "Call of Cthulhu".
    Just as an aside, and as someone who played a *lot* of CoC back in the day, 99% of success in the scenarios was based on using your character's social/investigative skills to great effect. Most scenarios were basically the PCs trying to figure out what was going on without cluing the evil cultists into that fact. Failure in that stage almost always resulted in horrific death. The combat system was so heavily weighted towards "side which initiates the attack against the other (by surprise is even better!) tends to win overwhelmingly" (which, to be honest, is not an inaccurate simulation of modern combat), that it made the difference between "PCs figure out what and where cultists are doing their evil stuff, sneak there, and open up on them" and "PCs fumble around foolishly, tip their hand, and the cultists figure out they are a threat and organize to take *them* out" to almost always be the difference in success or failure. Even if you managed to survive the cultists attacking you, you were rarely likely to be able to thwart their plans after that point, at least not without severe (possibly total) losses.

    The old classic "Masks of Nyarlathotep" was absolutely harsh in this way. Possibly the hardest campaign source like ever. It played out in a series of scenarios set in various parts of the world as the players followed clues. One minor mistake in the earlier phases of the adventure would result in later phases becoming increasingly difficult, if not impossible, simply because the bad guys know who you are and begin tracking your activities. They are ready for you every time you arrive in a new city to look for clues and you will have no clue who they are. It's... brutal. It's not even just the combat system I spoke of earlier (but that's bad enough), the magic system in CoC is very "ritual magic" heavy. There are very very few direct combat type spells in CoC. There are a lot of horrifically evil things that can be summoned and sent at enemies if you know who and where they are. Things that you are almost certainly going to be completely unable to deal with. And yeah, some of the bad guys have access to spells and items that can just plain kill you from virtually *anywhere* (scry and die taken to a horrible extreme). Heaven help you if you were wounded in an early fight, and any of the bad guys (who may not have even been in the fight but become aware of it afterwards) were alive to collect a blood sample...

    The psychological bits were really more expressed based on player roleplay though. So yeah, the core scenarios often did focus on the mechanics and decisions of "winning" versus "losing". But there could be some extremely fun stuff along the way, *if* you had players who were willing to actually roleplay the whole "insanity" bits of the game well. Some tables just played them as temporary hinderances to their actions, which works mechanically, I suppose. The real fun is when the players are accurately playing characters who are becoming increasingly paranoid, terrified, and frankly twitchy (like, really twitchy), as they encounter more and more horrifying things and have to deal with them. Taking the randomly rolled temporary insanities and then playing them out as lingering effects made for incredibly fun play. Doubly so if the GM just handed a note to the player telling them what was afflicting them, and they just roleplayed out it. Trying to figure out why the other PCs are behaving the way they are, and perhaps what will trigger them into some sort of over the top flight or fight mode was half (or more!) of the fun of the game.

    Dunno. I really enjoyed playing that game. Needs to have an extremely good GM to work well though. And players who are willing to really get into the genre and play their characters as if they really are "normal" folks who are gradually being exposed to increasingly horrifying things, becoming more and more aware of just how "wrong" the things they are dealing with are, but are also increasingly aware of the dire consequences if they fail. It actually helps lead the players to the point of roleplaying out the sometimes extreme and desperate actions their characters may need to take to finally succeed in the end. The funny bit is that there are a number of (mostly low budget) films based on this genre, and no matter how cheesy they seem when you actually watch them, they're scarily accurate accounts as to how players tend to play their characters in a typical well run CoC adventure. I've often wondered how many of those are written and directed, not based on a strict reading of the Lovecraft works, but by folks who played CoC a lot. Cause, it's just amazing how accurate the portrayals are to how things actually ran at tables I played in. Again. Great game, if you can find the right set of players with the right mindset.

    Quote Originally Posted by sktarq View Post
    Which leads into the second point player/character separation.
    Combat systems allow players who are wheelchair bound 98lb weaklings to equally play a wizard, barbarian, or an SAS officer in spite of themselves
    Social minigame systems allow the shy, inarticulate, types to play bards, political fixers, and marshalls in spite of themselves.
    Skill systems can support a dummy playing a genius and limit the genius playing a doufus from just ignoring that dump stat.

    the "oh just act it out" option massively promotes those players who have high Charisma, Presence, Wits type traits and the Persuasion, Bluff, Intimidate, etc skills themselves over the players who don't no matter what type of character they may be playing. Now I say this as someone for whom this is a massive advantage which as a teen I abused the heck out of. But as a DM I want the shy kid to not be limited to play shy or antisocial characters (sure they may want to but if they don't the game play shouldn't penalize them)
    Absolutely this. It's one of the reasons why I have pretty firm GM rules that run in both directions. I allow for the fact that the Characters are better at things than the players are *and* that the Players may be better at things than the Characters are. As a GM you have to ask that outgoing charismatic player who is a drama student and practices at the local improv every weekend "ok, did you make a social skill roll that's actually written down on your character sheet" when they dramatically roleplay how their character is going to influence the NPCs into helping out the party (or whatever social situation). I totally allow (and encourage) active roleplay by the players, but if it's not followed up by an actual skill roll based on the character's abilities, then it's lovely window dressing based perhaps on what the player wants their character to do, but clearly may not be executed as well by the actual character because you took Cha as a dump stat, and have no actual social skills whatsoever.

    Same deal in the opposite direction. The absence of a player actively playing out what their character is doing doesn't disallow them making a skill roll if they have it on their character sheet. I strongly believe that one of the great things about RPGs is that it allows us to play characters that are decidedly "not like us". So players should not be penalized for playing characters with dramatically different personalities/skills than they have themselves, just because they're not able to perform the actions themselves. I don't ask a socially shy player to stand up on the table and sing a song for the group to illustrate what their bard is doing. If they want to, that's great (uh... if not overdone), but if they just want to describe that "my bard will stand on the table and sing a ballad", I'm ok with just having them roll that.

    And yeah. One of the trickiest things to do when judging tourney tables was to actually tune out the antics of the more outgoing/exuberant players. Otherwise, all you'd ever get at the final round was a table full of drama queens. While amusing (often very much so), it's not terribly fair to the other players.

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    Default Re: Does Every aspect of a TTRPG need to have a Strategic Mini-game?

    I'd say that most aspects (those that belong to the expected gameplay areas, at least) need at least some abstraction. But the proper depth and complexity of abstraction depends more on how hard that area is to grasp for the players, as well as how severe the consequences for failure are than on anything else, at least beyond a certain level of granularity. Which means that for things where you're accepting a low level of granularity or where it's something most people can at least do ok at[1], you can get away with a simpler abstraction (possibly just needing some basic principles and a resolution mechanic), whereas for things where the expected gameplay has lots of granularity or that are very outside most people's experience, you need a lot more. Even holding granularity constant, familiar things need (generally) less abstraction than more alien things. Because you have to translate alien aspects into terms people can wrap their heads around.

    For everyone I've ever played with, talking is something much more familiar than fighting, especially fighting monsters. So naturally, combat abstractions need a lot more moving parts even if combat isn't super dominant. My games tend to be largely talking and much less fighting. And even most of the talking is just...talking. In those instances, I am the translation layer between the fiction and the players. In combat, there are too many moving pieces and the granularity is too high and the familiarity is too low for me to effectively serve as that translation layer. In other games, sure, you could get away with a "roll Fight to resolve the conflict" system. That's a very basic abstraction, just like "roll Charisma (Persuasion) to convince the person" is. But it's a system none-the-less.

    It's important to distinguish between
    a) a game that has no rules for something (5e D&D has no rules for hacking a computer, although you could apply the generic ability checks)
    b) a game that has rules that don't fit someone's desires/wants/needs in that area.
    5e D&D does have rules and mechanics for exploration and social stuff. Just not the rules that some people wish it had.
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    Default Re: Does Every aspect of a TTRPG need to have a Strategic Mini-game?

    Quote Originally Posted by Quertus View Post
    Personally, I focused more on the question of, "does every aspect of the game need to be strategic", to which I replied, "only the parts that matter".
    OK, it took me a second read through several days later. But what exactly is strategic and are we sure we want it to be put into the parts that matter? Like, even if you have a good model for discussion, do we want character development to happen along paths laid out in the rules, involve a lot of player skill testing challenges and are so - very - slow - to - resolve? I don't think so and that is the vibe I'm getting here.

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    Default Re: Does Every aspect of a TTRPG need to have a Strategic Mini-game?

    TTRPGs need good game structures for the things that are supposed to be the focus of that particular RPG. Without them, players don't have an easy way to resolve "what do I do next?"

    Even ihe answer is "explore the environment until I find something to do next" then they need a game structure to enable that and kick start them in that direction.

    Otherwise you have a bunch of PCs sitting around in a tavern starting a brawl because the Quest Giver / DM proxy hasn't shown up yet to tell them what to do.

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    Default Re: Does Every aspect of a TTRPG need to have a Strategic Mini-game?

    The rules are a dispute resolution mechanism. It is possible to game without rules - freeform - with a table that is capable of reasonably resolving disputes in a way that is acceptable to all parties. However, only a small fraction of tables are able to accomplish this (and even those only some of the time for certain types of games). The rest rely on rules.

    Within the TTRPG framework, there's basically three ways to arrange the rules: a mini-game, a simple flat rule, or no rules. These are basically in tension between their ability to assist in providing satisfactory resolution and the time and effort required to deploy them. Consequently, the more important a given aspect of the game is and the more likely it is to produce disputes the greater reason to have a minigame.

    Combat is an obvious candidate for minigames, because it is extremely likely to produce disputes of the most substantial kind. 'Your character is dead' is the sort of thing that generally doesn't go over very well without rules.
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    Default Re: Does Every aspect of a TTRPG need to have a Strategic Mini-game?

    Wild thought: only a small amount of tables can do freeform right because people keep explaining freeform wrong to them.

    "Feeform" doesn't mean "without rules". It means "free in format", as in, a player can explain what they want to do in a natural language, in any way they see fit.

    It is completely common for freeform games to have rules. One of the more common ones is "one person is chosen as a referee - in case of a dispute, the referee has final say". Tabletop roleplaying games copied this from wargaming and feeform wargames existed before modern tabletop roleplaying games.

    The error persists because tabletop rolepayers, for reasons that make little sense even in context and no sense outside of it, regularly use words such as "rule" and "rules" only to refer to abstracted mechanics governing characters in the game. When in truth rules about player conduct and game process are just as important and can be used to sidestep the need for complex abstracted rules in the first place.

    "B-b-but fiat! Fiat BAD!"

    Games are fundamentally arbitrary. All abstracted mechanics are just codified fiat decisions. Stop screaming about fiat and start paying attention to who's fiat decisions you are adhering to and why.

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    Default Re: Does Every aspect of a TTRPG need to have a Strategic Mini-game?

    No it doesn't, the same way a CRPG doesnt always need to be centered around a gripping narrative.
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    Default Re: Does Every aspect of a TTRPG need to have a Strategic Mini-game?

    The answer is of course not. You don't even need a single minigame, and can just rely on a single core resolution mechanic (see FATE).

    That said, this tactical systems can add more depth to the rest of the game and allow for interesting results. I'm designing an RPG right now, and I have around 4 mini games: one for combat, one for social interactions, one for 'problem solving', and one for running a faction. All these minigames bleed into one another a bit, so they aren't completely discreet, but it means that I can offer a lot of options to the players in a wide variety of areas.

    Also it allows those GMing my system to have more options for interesting encounters rather than just combat. Last session in my play test, players used the problem solving and social systems to turn a primordial being of creation into a normal person instead of needing to kill them. This involved hours of game time puzzle solving, and discussion where every member of the party was able to take part, from the fighters to the mages. However that only worked because I'd written up classes in such a way that they all had ways of interacting with each subsystem.

    Contrast DnD where the only mechanical subsystem is combat (and maybe problem solving). This means that during social interactions, there isn't enough mechanical complexity to give different classes different ways to interact with the system, thus even though it's a large portion of the game, doing well in it comes down to having a high ability score, and maybe one or two spells. You can't give fighters things to make them better at social, because there really aren't any other mechanics for them to interact with other than 'roll high' and maybe 'know what your target is thinking'.

    If charisma and social spells were removed, then there wouldn't even be a social system and all characters could interact with it somewhat equally again. Having a commonly interacted with system, without making it tactically complex, often leads to players that are unable to interact with it, and thus have to sit out portions of the game.

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    Default Re: Does Every aspect of a TTRPG need to have a Strategic Mini-game?

    Quote Originally Posted by Cluedrew View Post
    OK, it took me a second read through several days later. But what exactly is strategic and are we sure we want it to be put into the parts that matter? Like, even if you have a good model for discussion, do we want character development to happen along paths laid out in the rules, involve a lot of player skill testing challenges and are so - very - slow - to - resolve? I don't think so and that is the vibe I'm getting here.
    Great example. So, sure, Character growth can be strategic, filled with decision points and meaningful choices… or not.

    Bruce Payne can have his parents shot and killed in front of him, and have a scary encounter with bats in a dark cave…

    … and decide that fear is a powerful weapon, one he intends to use as he fights crime, shooting criminals as karmic revenge for his parents being shot, while dressed as a rat (Because what are bats but rats with wings, and he can’t fly, so dressing up as a bat would just be silly).

    … or decide that the bats represent the criminal element, by overcoming his fear of one he overcomes his fear of the other, and what are bats but rats with wings, so he’ll become their predator, and dresses up as Catman, who toys with his victims before tearing them to shreds and eating them. Maybe his victims are even criminals.

    Or the GM could say, no, I gave you these encounters so that you could become The Light, and fight against the darkness in a suit of high-tech power armor - anything else would be incoherent, and bad roleplaying on your part, and result in us not having a game, because I’ve already put lots of work into light puns, and appropriate villains. No, you don’t get to make light puns - that’s what the villains will be doing. You need to be dark and brooding, because your parents just died, like, 20 years ago or something, and left you with nothing but your looks, your intellect, a fortune, a loyal butler, a high-tech company, and a great reputation. Um, that is, until your arch nemesis taunts you about being so dark, then you need to do a 180, and become a happy-go-lucky, carefree Super who throws jokes at the villains about their own names and actions. That’s your character arc.

    Over the top? Sure. But hopefully it gets across what I mean about a strategic minigame having meaningful choices.

    Is it “so very slow to resolve”? I mean, I hope so, as character growth doesn’t normally happen overnight. But neither “very slow to resolve” nor “strategic” necessitate a laborious minigame.

    That said, getting to know your target, finding out their likes and fears and motivations, and using those to your advantage, isn’t exactly trivial, and I like how The Negotiator handled a blunder on that in its opening scene. I personally generally prefer for “talky bits” in an RPG to be, eh, roughly as laborious as combat? Probably generally less, but greatly more so for a worthy challenge (usually - that time the party plows through a worthy challenge, they get to feel awesome)? How about you? How much relative time and effort do you like to spend on a combat, a social challenge, and a character growth arc? Do you like them to be filled with strategic options and meaningful choices that can affect the outcome of the story?
    Last edited by Quertus; 2022-10-14 at 10:09 AM.

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    Default Re: Does Every aspect of a TTRPG need to have a Strategic Mini-game?

    To answer OP's question: Not necessarily.

    I do think games are the most interesting when they offer choices, but not all games emphasize the same choices.

    So you're doing a thing, and you make a roll by itself, with no system. Is that interesting?

    Maybe.

    For instance, say you're trying to get into a castle. You could fight your way in.... or you could sneak in... or you could bluff your way in.... or you could disguise yourself. Let's say you sneak. You've made a choice, of many, to do this. You know the risks (if you're cuaght, the guards will probably fight you). You roll the dice...

    I'd say that's interesting. It's not the dice roll that's interesting in and of itself, but you've made an interesting decision (which approach you'll take, what success you'll get, what risks you're taking) and the die roll tells you how that played out. I'd say that's really interesting, even if the mechanical parts of the die roll, themselves, aren't.

    Okay, another situation. You've been trapped in a cave. The only way out (and all other options have been exhaustively tested) is to jump over a crevasse. You roll to do so. That's not interesting to me. That's just being told to roll the dice, you don't have any choices or decisions to make.

    So..... does everything need to be a system? In a game (note: not game system) where the players have few choices at that macro-level, I think you need to have choices somewhere, so making mechanical systems interesting makes a lot of sense.

    In games where you already have a lot of agency at that macro-level, it matters less. If I was playing a dungeon-delving game where most of the game was "where do we go, what do we fight, what do we not fight, what do we sneak around, what do we avoid, how do we interact with stuff" and the like, I'd be perfectly okay with a combat system, even, that was extremely brief and let me get back to the other stuff.

    OTOH, if I'm playing a game where most of the game is being led from one combat to another, and the combat is supposed to be the "interesting" bits? That combat system needs to have a lot more heft and decisions in it.

    So, no, not everything needs to be a "system". But you should be giving your players interesting choices, and making "systems" around things is one way to do that.

    Quote Originally Posted by Jakinbandw View Post
    The answer is of course not. You don't even need a single minigame, and can just rely on a single core resolution mechanic (see FATE).
    Arguably Fate has three minigames - Conflicts, Challenges, and Contests.
    Last edited by kyoryu; 2022-10-14 at 10:59 AM.
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    Default Re: Does Every aspect of a TTRPG need to have a Strategic Mini-game?

    Quote Originally Posted by kyoryu View Post
    Arguably Fate has three minigames - Conflicts, Challenges, and Contests.
    Lasers and Feelings then.

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    Default Re: Does Every aspect of a TTRPG need to have a Strategic Mini-game?

    Quote Originally Posted by Jakinbandw View Post
    Lasers and Feelings then.
    A very good example. A game can be incredibly light on mechanics, if there's enough decision-making happening in non-mechanics areas of the game!

    (I actually want to make a micro-game experiment called "flip" where there is literally one mechanic - flip a coin)
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