# Game Fundamentals - The Illusion of Accomplishment



## Celebrim (Apr 20, 2010)

So its probably not a big secret that one of the attractions of gaming is that through a game you recieve the illusion of having accomplished something.  Whether its Bejewelled Blitz, WoW, Settlers of Cataan, or D&D one of the reasons people play games is for the immediate affirmation of success and accomplishment which in real life generally occurs alot less often and requires alot more effort.

On the whole, I don't think any one here is going to assert that the illusion of accomplishment is in and of itself a bad thing. 

However, well before I had any theories about games in general or had read anyone elses theories about games, I had made an assessment that the sort of player most likely to be disruptive at the table and most likely to engage in poor sportsmanship was a class of gamer that I dubbed 'ego gamers'.  The ego gamer had invested a large portion of his self-esteem in his ability to achieve success in a game.  Or to put it in other terms, for the 'ego gamer' the payoff in the game was almost entirely achieving the illusion of success.   For these players, socializing with friends, telling or experiencing a story, mental exploration, or simply the social permission to goof off, play, and be silly that is generally withheld from anyone above 16 unless they are drinking were essentially unimportant.  Unless the game provided a regular illusion of success, the 'ego gamer' was discontent and anything that hindered the 'ego gamer' from this goal was hateful.  In effect, the 'ego gamer' had taken that regular dose of affirmation that all gamers get when they 'win', found it good indeed, and become a 'affirmation junkey'.  

The reason that this tended to become a problem is that the ego gamers I encountered generally defined a successful game as one where they defeated every obstacle put in front of them with as little effort as possible.  Any temporary setback (like a fight they were losing), any momentary failure (like a run of bad dice), or any obstacle the DM placed in front of them (like an encounter requiring something other than a straight foward tactic), tended to be met with confusion, dismay, and often outright anger.  To avoid these emotions and get back to the fix they crave, the 'ego gamer' generally starts resorting to out of game solutions to the problem.  That is, if the dice aren't going there way, then they start cheating.  If there current tactics are failing, they resort to either bargaining with the DM or arguing with him.  Thus, the ego gamer was particularly prone to becoming 'power gamers', 'rules lawyers', or the more familiar terms I later heard to describe specific instances of what I considered the root behavior.

Now, before this gets much further, let me say that my intention is not to flame 'ego gamers' as purveyors of badwrongfun.  We could equally note that the guy who plays because he recieves social permission to goof off can be disruptive by taking that emotional stimulus too far, or that the DM whose sole reason to play is to tell a story is likely to find himself frustrated when the story being created isn't as cool as the one he envisioned before he started and that this leads to all sorts of anti-social behavior as well.  It's certainly not my intention to say that 'ego gamers' are worse sorts of gamers than 'roleplayers', who can be just as annoying.  Think the the amateur thespians who get off solely on creating wierd, dysfunctional characters with all sorts of emotional baggage, and unusual accents and mannerisms and then insisting that the games role-play revolve around their characters emotional state despite the wishes of the rest of the table.   Nor is it necessarily my claim that 'ego gamers' are 'bad roleplayers', as I've met several who - especially when they think an advantage can be achieved by doing it - are some of the best RPers I've ever had the pleasure of sharing a table with.  And, many of them become masters of tactics, dungeoneering, and the system as well.

But, still, I am saying that if your sole investment in the game is recieving an immediate reward and affirmation of your awesomeness, it can lead to table conflict, and - to put it in the most charitable way I can - a game that I just don't enjoy either running or playing.   As a referee with players like that at the table, I feel used, as if the only reason for my existance was to say "Yes, oh, yes, baby" to the player with as much enthusiasm as I could muster to whatever they said or did.   As a player at the table with other players like that, I feel as if the game is a simplistic exercise in dice rolling with a basic structure that works counter to the goal of recieving an affirmation of meaningful success.  That is, I don't believe you can win in a game; I don't believe RPGs are competive; you can't meaningfully keep score in most games; I believe all success ultimately comes at the grace of the DM, and I find the measure of the character's success a very poor measurement of my own even for a game.   If I wanted the thrill of victory, I'd play something where competiveness was built in, luck was minimized, and obstacles could only be overcome by increasing my personal skill (however trivial that 'skill' might actually be) rather than by increasing arbitrary numbers on the playing peice.

I bring all of this up not because I'm having alot of problems 'in real life' that make me think I've totally misjudged what players think is fun, but because there are increasing divergence in the online community and hints of divergence in the design community over how the potential problem of the 'ego gamer' needs to be addressed.  It hasn't been placed in those terms beofre, and I'm not sure that anyone is going to want to place the problem in those terms (perhaps someone could suggest a term that sounds less derogatory), but after participating in scores of threads over the last few years where to me it seemed like that was the underlying issue and what was being discussed was only a special case or proxy argument, I wanted to put it in those terms and see what happened.  

There seems to be a rather sizable block of players and designers who believe that addressing the needs of the 'ego gamer' needs to be the overriding concern in game mastery and even game design.  That is, the trend in thinking about RPGs seems to be more toward making a system and encouraging game masters to run it in a way that the players recieve a regular and uninterrupted dose of reinforcing affirmation of thier awesomeness.  The trend seems to me to be toward ensuring a regular heavy dose of the illusion of success, either to reward existing players or to addict new players.  It's my contention (look out, thesis coming) that contrary to the good intentions of the designers, running the game to this end or designing the system to this end (counterintuitively) chases more players from the game than it draws in and ultimately is not satisfying to even the 'ego gamers'.


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## ggroy (Apr 20, 2010)

There's always going to be people who heavily invest their ego into a particular endeavor.

For example, "ego-musicians", "ego-poker players", "ego-golfers", "ego-mathematicians", "ego-lawyers", etc ... are not much different than "ego-gamers".

One major difference is that the "barrier to entry" to becoming an "ego-gamer" is quite low, compared to other niches like music, law, sports, politics, etc ...


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## Negflar2099 (Apr 20, 2010)

Let me start off by saying this is a great post. I'm glad you brought this topic up. One time I was DMing for a group that was very focused on success and, as you describe, would balk at any challenge or complain wildly about any setback. When non-stop arguing with me wouldn't work many of the players resorted to cheating. As you did, I felt used, that I was only there to present weaksauce challenges for them to steamroll. They were exactly the ego gamers that you describe. 

I agree with you that there is a trend towards games that satisfy the ego gamer. As you point out it's not just RPGs or tabletop games, it's everything. Designers have recently realized that games that provide simple but constant rewards (such as FarmVille or Wow for that matter) keep players addicted and playing. Bottom line (for video games at least) it works. Wow is addictive precisely because of this constant illusion of achievement. 

The question is does that translate to pen and paper RPGS? My answer is I don't think so. I think that given the nature of RPGs which tend to have a lot of different playstyles and agendas at a table, focusing on anyone preferred playstyle is bound to alienate the others. If nothing else someone has to DM and personally I don't see how a DM can keep running a game for ego gamers without feeling used and if there's nobody willing to DM then there's no game. 

That said I'm a story driven DM to the point where I am constantly fighting my own tendency to just want to railroad the players so I can tell the story I want to tell. Maybe there's a type of DM out there who wouldn't mind running a game just to satisfy his or her friend's egos. I have a hard time picturing it but I suppose it's possible.


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## Steel_Wind (Apr 20, 2010)

Celebrim said:


> _8>-*Much insightful analysis snipped for brevity*-<8_
> 
> It's my contention (look out, thesis coming) that contrary to the good intentions of the designers, running the game to this end or designing the system to this end (counterintuitively) chases more players from the game than it draws in and ultimately is not satisfying to even the 'ego gamers'.




  Maybe it can. I think the other point to consider is what the consequences are for “chasing gamers from the game” if the positive ego affirming doggie treats are not used. Do you end up with less overall gamers down the road? Even if you don’t – do you end up with less overall sales? 

  You just might. 

So does the more gamers “down the road” assessment really matter to a game company’s bottom line? I would argue that from a large company like WotC, they have decided that it is not their focus. Don’t get me wrong, lifestyle gamers are great to have and provide a certain level of guaranteed sales for all products over the course of the game’ product cycle. Lifestyle gamers can be a pain in the ass to deal with in terms of customer service and marketing, but having them LEAVE YOUR GAME hurts your company’s bottom line in a measurable and significant way, especially in the later stages of a game’s product cycle when the Lifestyle Gamer’s market share of overall sales of late stage products increases relative to newcomer purchases.  So you do want Lifestyle gamers as part of your market. But to maximize profits, I’m not sure that creating them is part of a game company’s focus.

I would argue that managing a game’s “churn” rate is the most important aspect from a large game manufacturer’s viewpoint. On a macro scale, gamers come and go every hour, of every day of the week, every year of the product's life cycle, without cessation or fail. There is *absolutely nothing you can do to stop it*, as most of the meta-reasons for people leaving the game have little to do with the game itself, and far more to do with: social factors; moving away; girlfriends & wives; children; new jobs; different activities competing for leisure time; and, people simply entering into different stages in their lives. 

Accordingly, companies like WoC adjudge that the big impacts on the player departure aspect of  "churn" are, for the most part, judged to be beyond their reasonable control or any element of their  game's design.

And in fairness, I think that’s probably an accurate assessment.

So instead, the wise game company focuses upon that aspect of player churn they CAN control – and that’s player acquisition and persuading the new player to stay in the game long enough to at least purchase the core rule books. Any more purchases than that – including the purchase of game accessories or online subscriptions, is absolute gravy. 

Sometimes, you need to accept that the game manufacturer’s view of its bottom line and its best interests do not always coincide with the health of your own gaming group or a preferred play style. When it comes to heavy-handed praise and positive reinforcement for the benefit of acquiring new players and new sales from those new players, I think this is one of those times that our overall interests may diverge somewhat from the game company’s.

  Great post though!


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## Obryn (Apr 20, 2010)

I'll start by saying that I agree with you that gamers whose ego depends on their characters' success or failure are detrimental to the game.  My disagreement is best made with the point, below.



> There seems to be a rather sizable block of players and designers who believe that addressing the needs of the 'ego gamer' needs to be the overriding concern in game mastery and even game design. That is, the trend in thinking about RPGs seems to be more toward making a system and encouraging game masters to run it in a way that the players recieve a regular and uninterrupted dose of reinforcing affirmation of thier awesomeness. The trend seems to me to be toward ensuring a regular heavy dose of the illusion of success, either to reward existing players or to addict new players.



I think it's important to make a distinction between players who want to _win_ and players who want to _participate._  I've seen a lot of confusion between these two goals, and none of it leads to a productive conversation.

As an example, see Morrus's recent post which may or may not have led to this one...  Not liking the "stun" or "dominate" conditions in 4e doesn't mean that a player has a great deal of ego invested in winning, or that the DM wants to tilt the field in their favor; it just means that the DM or players want to make sure that they can participate in a meaningful fashion on more rounds.  If this leads to easier "victory" conditions along the way, that's a side-effect, not a goal.

In the same way, a disdain for "Save-Or-Die" effects isn't usually geared towards wanting to win fiights more easily.  It's geared towards helping an encounter stay tactically interesting for longer, and making sure players aren't left sitting on their hands for most of a fight (or until they can be Raised, or until their new character can show up, etc).  It's a shame that SoD (and, the somewhat-related Level Drain) so often get characterized as a kind of litmus test for gamers.

-O


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## Nifft (Apr 20, 2010)

Celebrim said:


> There seems to be a rather sizable block of players and designers who believe that addressing the needs of the 'ego gamer' needs to be the overriding concern in game mastery and even game design.  That is, the trend in thinking about RPGs seems to be more toward making a system and encouraging game masters to run it in a way that the players recieve a regular and uninterrupted dose of reinforcing affirmation of thier awesomeness.  The trend seems to me to be toward ensuring a regular heavy dose of the illusion of success, either to reward existing players or to addict new players.  It's my contention (look out, thesis coming) that contrary to the good intentions of the designers, running the game to this end or designing the system to this end (counterintuitively) chases more players from the game than it draws in and ultimately is not satisfying to even the 'ego gamers'.



 Worse yet, discussion of the meta-issue -- including this one -- work to shatter the illusion of accomplishment for those who participate. It's a bit like studying humor: the patient seldom survives.

Your thesis seems sensible to me. Reducing the barriers to an accomplishment does cheapen that accomplishment.

However, I don't much like the term "ego gamer". The word "ego" is over used (and frequently misused), and many of its connotations are negative. I can't see a lot of people lining up to self-identify as "ego gamer"s outside of the context of this thread.

Cheers, -- N


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## ggroy (Apr 20, 2010)

Of the people I knew of who would fall into the rpg "ego-gamer" category back in the day, they were frequently the same ones who exhibited similar behavior when it came to video games.

At video arcades, these people would be doing stuff like kicking in the coin box, smashing the joystick, etc .... on an arcade machine, whenever their man died in the arcade video game they were playing.  When they were playing a video game console at home, they would smash the joystick and/or throw it really hard across the room (sometimes making a new hole in the wall) whenever their man in the video game died.


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## Celebrim (Apr 20, 2010)

Steel_Wind said:


> Maybe it can. I think the other point to consider is what the consequences are for “chasing gamers from the game” if the positive ego affirming doggie treats are not used. Do you end up with less overall gamers down the road? Even if you don’t – do you end up with less overall sales?
> 
> You just might.
> 
> ...




I would generally agree with the thrust of this argument, but I think it misses one very fundamental aspect of what drives the sales of your game that, when included in your analysis, I think totally reverses the conclusion you reach.

And that missing point is that virtually all game masters are 'lifestyle gamers', and by the very nature of game mastery, virtually all good game masters are 'lifestyle gamers'.  The success of your PnP game depends on something which has no real parallel in other types of gaming.  It doesn't really matter at all how many players you have; it only matters how many game masters you have.  Your goal as a game creator isn't to get players.  The base of players is comparitively infinite.  The limited resources you are try to compete for and expand is game masters, because if you have GM's, then you'll have players.

I believe based on my recent experience that the reason that there are 24 million lapsed players and only 1.5 million current D&D players, is that there are a couple of million missing good DM's out there.  If your sales are lagging, its because you either lost or didn't create game masters, and the reason D&D historically dominated the industry for most of the industries existance is that it did the best job of creating game masters.

Looking at just my own situation, when D&D chased me from there game by abandoning me, they lost (already) about $400 dollars in sales.  I just hauled in 7 players that either have never played or haven't played since 2nd so far as I can tell primarily for lack of a DM.  If the game proceeds like games in the past, all those players would end up going out and buying supplements at some point.  But since I've economically become my own game publishing company for the moment, WotC is locked out of my local market.   I'm the 'retailer' in this equation, not even the esteemed but humble LFGS.  I'm the one determining whether the product gets sold.  If I don't play, they don't reach my market.  If I don't buy, they don't reach my market.

The fundamental problem is that on the 'doggie treats' front, not only can PnP systems not compete as an affirmation delivery system with the direct mechanical stimulus injection you can get from a computer game, but a system geared to doing that offers nothing to the game master - or if it did, it would create dysfunctional ego driven DMs.  And while a game can endure a ego driven player, an ego driven game master kills the game in very short order and all those new players at best go back to their WoW.  In actuality, they probably never leave it, because nothing in this model creates a game master.


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## ExploderWizard (Apr 20, 2010)

Obryn said:


> I'll start by saying that I agree with you that gamers whose ego depends on their characters' success or failure are detrimental to the game. My disagreement is best made with the point, below.
> 
> 
> I think it's important to make a distinction between players who want to _win_ and players who want to _participate._ I've seen a lot of confusion between these two goals, and none of it leads to a productive conversation.
> ...




I think it is more a case of some people never being happy with anything:

I want more tactical options! (enter conditions)
I hate conditions imposed on ME!!! ( return to simple HP attrition)
I want more tactical options! 

It is the never ending loop of the perpetually dissatisfied.


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## Celebrim (Apr 20, 2010)

Obryn said:


> I think it's important to make a distinction between players who want to _win_ and players who want to _participate._  I've seen a lot of confusion between these two goals, and none of it leads to a productive conversation.




So, let me get this straight... You are saying that since you think you can disguish between those that want the immediate gratification of victory vs. the immediate gratification of _participation_, that any talk of the role of delayed gratification would be unproductive and sign of confusion on the part of the poster?  In addition to the fact that I think you are hiding your terms within other terms that imply them, since 'participation' in the context you are using it implies 'successful participation' and excludes 'unsuccessful participation', I think you are very much missing the point.   For one thing, it seems to me that the entire thrust of your argument makes an assumption about the nature of what it means to play an RPG that pushes the reader to accept that the point of playing an RPG is to recieve the illusion of success.  Your definitions of 'participate' and 'victory' are locked into mechanical 'illusion of success' feedback loops.


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## Obryn (Apr 20, 2010)

ExploderWizard said:


> I think it is more a case of some people never being happy with anything:
> 
> I want more tactical options! (enter conditions)
> I hate conditions imposed on ME!!! ( return to simple HP attrition)
> ...



That's only if you leap to the assumption that the same people are asking for both things at once.

-O


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## ggroy (Apr 20, 2010)

ExploderWizard said:


> I think it is more a case of some people never being happy with anything:
> 
> I want more tactical options! (enter conditions)
> I hate conditions imposed on ME!!! ( return to simple HP attrition)
> ...




This sounds very similar to the style of excuses that many hardcore alcoholics make all the time, to justify their own excessive drinking.


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## francisca (Apr 20, 2010)

Obryn said:


> That's only if you leap to the assumption that the same people are asking for both things at once.
> 
> -O




It isn't a leap.  From the designer/manufacturer standpoint, there is a pool of potential consumers, asking for both at the same time.

Classic example of "they".


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## Nifft (Apr 20, 2010)

ggroy said:


> This sounds very similar to the style of excuses that many hardcore alcoholics make all the time, to justify their own excessive drinking.



 Daddy drinks because you cry.

Cheers! -- N


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## Celebrim (Apr 20, 2010)

ggroy said:


> Of the people I knew of who would fall into the rpg "ego-gamer" category back in the day, they were frequently the same ones who exhibited similar behavior when it came to video games.
> 
> At video arcades, these people would be doing stuff like kicking in the coin box, smashing the joystick, etc .... on an arcade machine, whenever their man died in the arcade video game they were playing.  When they were playing a video game console at home, they would smash the joystick and/or throw it really hard across the room (sometimes making a new hole in the wall) whenever their man in the video game died.




My point is to not focus on the dysfunctionality of players.  The 'ego-gamer' who applies himself to mastery of Donkey Kong is, however dysfunctional they may be out side of the game, applying himself to the game of Donkey Kong in a way that is appropriate to the game and the intended play of the game.   Donkey Kong is an effective delivery system for delivering the illusion of success, and at some level that's all that the game has to offer and if you are missing that you are missing the game.   My intention is to focus the discussion not on the sterotype of the 'ego gamer' but on whether a PnP game can ever really compete with Donkey Kong (or WoW) on that stage, and if so, how does it go about doing it successfully?

My ultimate contention will be to show that it can successfully compete with Donkey Kong for the ego gamer market, but not by trying to do what Donkey Kong (or Wow) does and further, that if it tries to transform itself into a game that uses the tool set of Donkey Kong (or Wow or Bejewelled Blizt or even Settlers of Cataan) that its going to fail.


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## cdrcjsn (Apr 20, 2010)

Ego gamer is a loaded term.

It can mean as you described it (someone with the primary goal of "winning" an encounter).

But it can also mean the person who is so self-involved with staying true to their character's persona that they act in ways that are detrimental to the party.  The coward.  The thief.  The backstabber.  The fop that avoids combat.  These can be just as bad as the player whose mentality is "Go! Go! Rush!  Get phat lewts!"

People play this game for different reasons.  In fact the 4e DMG is great in identifying the various reasons why people play this game, and the pros and cons of each personality type.

Achievement oriented players aren't bad.

Achievement oriented players that act like jerks are bad.

But jerks are jerks regardless of why they like to play their game.


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## Obryn (Apr 20, 2010)

Celebrim said:


> So, let me get this straight... You are saying that since you think you can disguish between those that want the immediate gratification of victory vs. the immediate gratification of _participation_, that any talk of the role of delayed gratification would be unproductive and sign of confusion on the part of the poster?  In addition to the fact that I think you are hiding your terms within other terms that imply them, since 'participation' in the context you are using it implies 'successful participation' and excludes 'unsuccessful participation', I think you are very much missing the point.   For one thing, it seems to me that the entire thrust of your argument makes an assumption about the nature of what it means to play an RPG that pushes the reader to accept that the point of playing an RPG is to recieve the illusion of success.  Your definitions of 'participate' and 'victory' are locked into mechanical 'illusion of success' feedback loops.



What?    No, not at all, and in fact I'm not even sure where you're getting that.  I'm not talking about success or failure at all.

I'm talking about showing up to play a game and then _actually playing in that game_ - that is, participating in a good portion of it, regardless of whether the party gets TPK'd or finds a long-lost artifact.  The kind of participation I'm talking about includes when every single die roll comes up a 1 and the party gets slaughtered.

I'm assuming that wouldn't be either success or the illusion thereof under your definitions.  IMO, if your definition of "success" is so broad as to include "playing the game" then I must admit I'm not really sure what you're talking about.

-O


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## MichaelSomething (Apr 20, 2010)

Yes, you hate diamonds (players who play with the goal of achievement) and would rather play with hearts (people who play in order to socialize), spades (players who like to explore content) and maybe clubs (players who play to compete with others).  

Now if only I could remember where those terms came from.


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## Celebrim (Apr 20, 2010)

MichaelSomething said:


> Yes, you hate diamonds (players who play with the goal of achievement)...




Err...wrong.  I think they take special handling, but I'd be an unhappy DM with no 'diamonds' (as you call them) at my table.  If you had to focus on what I find difficult as a DM it is players who only have _a_ goal, rather than multiple goals, and generally the approach I take to handling a player who exhibits focus on a single goal is to find ways to encourage them in investing in multiple goals of play and different ways to define success rather than a single one.


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## Celebrim (Apr 20, 2010)

cdrcjsn said:


> Ego gamer is a loaded term.
> 
> It can mean as you described it (someone with the primary goal of "winning" an encounter).
> 
> ...




Please reread my post.  I think you'll find we are in general agreement over all of that, and that you cover no material that I didn't cover, but that you are also missing my point.

On the other hand, I'll happily accept 'achievement oriented' as a positive term for 'ego driven'.


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## Obryn (Apr 20, 2010)

francisca said:


> It isn't a leap.  From the designer/manufacturer standpoint, there is a pool of potential consumers, asking for both at the same time.
> 
> Classic example of "they".



True!  But I think it's important to note that any individual player isn't necessarily asking for both at once.  So, "Well, you _asked _for more tactical options..." it's not necessarily a valid response to a particular player who's complaining about conditions.  Better might be, "Well, _they_ asked for more tactical options..."

-O


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## Celebrim (Apr 20, 2010)

Obryn said:


> What?    No, not at all, and in fact I'm not even sure where you're getting that.
> 
> I'm not talking about success or failure at all.




So, although I'd like to keep a specific discussion of 4e out of it, since you keep referring back to another thread, let me address this in those terms.

In 4e, suppose you are unconscious until you make a saving throw.  Each turn then, what happens to you as a player?  Well, each turn you have an important task to undertake.  You must throw a dice and determine if you can wake your character up from their torpid state.  As a player, you are participating.  However, if you fail in your save, you as a character and you as a player don't get the oppurtunity to contribute toward success.  

You claim that you can fundamentally distinguish a situation where you as a player roll a die and fail to wake your character up, and you as a player roll a die and fail to hit the target.  But, from a play perspective, you the player participated in the exact same amount and in the exact same way and contributed the exact same thing to the game state in both cases.  You then want to claim that the player who is unhappy with being unconscious for several rounds would be happy with missing all of their attacks for several rounds, and you know what - I have a very hard time believing that.  Because while the fluff we dress the two events in is different, from a meta-perspective its the exact same degree of participation.  Player roles dice; player fails at task and can take no other actions that turn.  You claim you aren't talking about success or failure?



> I'm talking about showing up to play a game and then _actually playing in that game_ - that is, participating in a good portion of it, regardless of whether the party gets TPK'd or finds a long-lost artifact.




I think I know exactly what you are talking about.  



> The kind of participation I'm talking about includes when every single die roll comes up a 1 and the party gets slaughtered.




Every single saving throw comes up a 1, and the party gets slaughtered; no freakin' difference in the actual participation level of the player.  



> IMO, if your definition of "success" is so broad as to include "playing the game" then I must admit I'm not really sure what you're talking about.




On that we are agreed.  If you don't get it yet, I don't know what to tell you.


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## Obryn (Apr 20, 2010)

Celebrim said:


> So, although I'd like to keep a specific discussion of 4e out of it, since you keep referring back to another thread, let me address this in those terms.



No, I'm fine not referring to it.  I'm looking for points of reference here, and the other thread was convenient.



> You claim that you can fundamentally distinguish a situation where you as a player roll a die and fail to wake your character up, and you as a player roll a die and fail to hit the target.  But, from a play perspective, you the player participated in the exact same amount and in the exact same way and contributed the exact same thing to the game state in both cases.



It's all about the psychology and experience of playing a game.  If I am participating (by rolling dice, saying what my character is doing, etc.) and end up failing, I am still participating meaningfully and feel like I'm participating.  If I am sitting at the table and doing nothing but eating Doritos, I am not participating meaningfully in the game.



> You then want to claim that the player who is unhappy with being unconscious for several rounds would be happy with missing all of their attacks for several rounds, and you know what - I have a very hard time believing that.  Because while the fluff we dress the two events in is different, from a meta-perspective its the exact same degree of participation.  Player roles dice; player fails at task and can take no other actions that turn.  You claim you aren't talking about success or failure?



I don't really see why this would be such a leap, honestly.  There's a big difference between, "I attempt something and fail" and "I attempt nothing at all."  You don't experience these two circumstances differently?

I don't experience a game from the "meta-perspective" you're talking about, and I don't know anyone who does.  From an experiential perspective (which should be essential when you're talking about goals and motivations), the two are completely different - in one I'm interacting with the game and the rules, and in the other I'm not.

I'm not conflating success with participation, here.  You seem to be, by your arguments that participating and failing is no different from a meta-perspective from not-participating at all.



> I think I know exactly what you are talking about.
> 
> Every single saving throw comes up a 1, and the party gets slaughtered; no freakin' difference in the actual participation level of the player.



Based on these two lines, I don't honestly think you do.  Playing a game and losing is very, very different from not playing a game at all.

-O


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## Barastrondo (Apr 20, 2010)

An interesting topic.

An additional consideration that might bear mentioning is that a player's approach to success and failure can sometimes be a learned behavior rather than an innate competitive spirit. For better or for worse, gamers have a wide variety of formative experiences. Someone who spent most of his early gaming career playing with a group where even a minor failure = death may have learned to associate all failure as unacceptable. Similarly, players who get started with lower-lethality games (which may or may not be related to system) may try riskier things because they've learned that notable failures may be interesting complications rather than an end to that character or the campaign.

So you reach an interesting quandary. Mechanics and genre conventions that are meant to encourage people to take more risks and get used to the idea that failure can be an interesting result also feed the engine of the competitive gamer who dislikes failure because he's addicted to success. 

Which further emphasizes the dire need for more good game masters -- people who teach people to love gaming as a whole. To go beyond teaching players a particular set of "achievements" or "survival skills," but to emphasize what RPGs do best -- the ability to do _anything_.


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## Celebrim (Apr 20, 2010)

Obryn said:


> It's all about the psychology and experience of playing a game.  If I am participating (by rolling dice, saying what my character is doing, etc.) and end up failing, I am still participating meaningfully and feel like I'm participating.  If I am sitting at the table and doing nothing but eating Doritos, I am not participating meaningfully in the game.




False contrast.  



> I don't really see why this would be such a leap, honestly.  There's a big difference between, "I attempt something and fail" and "I attempt nothing at all."  You don't experience these two circumstances differently?




False contrast.



> I don't experience a game from the "meta-perspective" you're talking about, and I don't know anyone who does.  From an experiential perspective (which should be essential when you're talking about goals and motivations), the two are completely different - in one I'm interacting with the game and the rules, and in the other I'm not.




Once again, on your turn, rolling one dice and failing a saving throw and on your turn rolling one dice failing in an attack are the exact same level of interaction with the game and the rules.  Contrasting rolling one dice and failing with sitting back and eating doritos all session long is a logical fallacy and an attempt by you to deflect discussion of the topic.



> I'm not conflating success with participation, here.  You seem to be, by your arguments that participating and failing is no different from a meta-perspective from not-participating at all.




I know what I wrote.  I know how what I wrote 'seems' to you, and I wish I could get you to consider what I wrote rather than the baggage you are bringing to this from your investment in arguments in other threads.  I have in no way provided an example contrasting non-participation and participation.  I could, but I want to get over this hurdle before making the conversation any more complicated, given that the very basic case I keep repeating is not being understood.



> Based on these two lines, I don't honestly think you do.  Playing a game and losing is very, very different from not playing a game at all.




I agree.  However, failing a saving throw to recover round after round is not 'not playing a game at all' any more than failing an attack roll round after round is 'not playing at all'.  I'm not attempting to say that either situation doesn't suck, but they suck in the exact same way.


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## Doug McCrae (Apr 21, 2010)

Celebrim said:


> And that missing point is that virtually all game masters are 'lifestyle gamers', and by the very nature of game mastery, virtually all good game masters are 'lifestyle gamers'.



OD&D is the game for those guys. Or possibly Chivalry & Sorcery. For everyone else, there's AD&D.



> D&D will always be with us, and that is a good thing. The D&D system allows the highly talented, individualistic, and imaginative hobbyist a vehicle for devising an adventure game form which is tailored to him or her and his or her group. One can take great liberties with the game and not be questioned. Likewise, the complicated and “realistic” imitators of the D&D system will always find a following amongst hobby gamers, for there will be those who seek to make adventure gaming a serious undertaking, a way of life, to which all of their thought and energy is directed with fanatical devotion. ADVANCED DUNGEONS & DRAGONS, with its clearer and easier approach, is bound to gain more support, for most people _play _games, not _live _them—and if they can live them while enjoying play, so much the better. This is, of course, what AD&D aims to provide. So far it seems we have done it.



 - Gary Gygax, Dragon #26


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## Celebrim (Apr 21, 2010)

Doug: I'm really not sure where Steel Wind draws the line between 'casual gamer' and 'lifestyle gamer', and I suppose we should ask him for a precise definition lest we risk misunderstanding him too much.

For my casual definition, I'd suggest that anyone on EnWorld with more than 100 posts is probably a 'lifestyle gamer'.  Anyone who is over 30 and has been playing since before they were 20 is probably a 'lifestyle gamer'.  And, more importantly for my purposes, anyone that puts more than an hour per week into their gaming outside of play itself is probably a 'lifestyle gamer'. 

As for you quoting of Gary, I'm not really sure how you meant it, since it seems to offer plenty of nuance that can be easily jumped on by those that would want to disagree with what I said and those that would want to agree.  But as for how I'd respond to Gary himself, I'd note that Gary proposes a false delimma.  He asks us to choose between playing a more complicated game and being a 'lifestyle gamer', and playing AD&D and being a more 'casual gamer'.  But those are not the only options, and in particular I think history shows that AD&D was more successful at capturing both the casual gamer and 'lifestyle gamer' (however we define that) market.


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## I'm A Banana (Apr 21, 2010)

There's a boatload of consensus in this thread, and I'd like to commend Celebrim for a really interesting, well-reasoned OP.

So, onto specifics.



> My intention is to focus the discussion not on the sterotype of the 'ego gamer' but on whether a PnP game can ever really compete with Donkey Kong (or WoW) on that stage, and if so, how does it go about doing it successfully?




I think no. Videogames are perhaps one of _the best_ ways do deliver the illusion of achievement/success, because they reward you in so many ways. Flashing lights. Sounds. Colors. Shapes. Movement. Stories. All in reaction to you memorizing a pattern or timing your button presses quick enough. As awesome as D&D may be, it can't compete with the artificial construct of light and sound that a videogame can produce.

What I think D&D can provide is a variety of different kinds of things. Stories, and exploration, and competition, and success, all together, in a way that is intimately, specifically, reactive to individuals. 



> And that missing point is that virtually all game masters are 'lifestyle gamers', and by the very nature of game mastery, virtually all good game masters are 'lifestyle gamers'. The success of your PnP game depends on something which has no real parallel in other types of gaming. It doesn't really matter at all how many players you have; it only matters how many game masters you have. Your goal as a game creator isn't to get players. The base of players is comparitively infinite. The limited resources you are try to compete for and expand is game masters, because if you have GM's, then you'll have players.




Y'know, I've never heard it put that way before, but that makes _total sense_. You're not selling to players, you're selling to GM's, who then *make* players, which expands your market. And GM's are 'lifestyle gamers' by default. Interesting, and interesting implications for the "sense of ownership" that PnP GM's have over the system. 



> If I wanted the thrill of victory, I'd play something where competiveness was built in, luck was minimized, and obstacles could only be overcome by increasing my personal skill (however trivial that 'skill' might actually be) rather than by increasing arbitrary numbers on the playing peice.




Heh. Clearly, I'm not much of an achievement-seeker. That playstyle sounds too much like work to be fun to me.


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## Hussar (Apr 21, 2010)

Celebrim said:
			
		

> Once again, on your turn, rolling one dice and failing a saving throw and on your turn rolling one dice failing in an attack are the exact same level of interaction with the game and the rules. Contrasting rolling one dice and failing with sitting back and eating doritos all session long is a logical fallacy and an attempt by you to deflect discussion of the topic.




But, that's not ALL you do on your turn.  If you are sleeping, you make one die roll and you're done.  If you are up and about, you move, make your attack, possibly perform a third action, possible use an action point to perform another action, possibly are granted another action by another player, possibly perform an Opportunity Attack, and, to top it all off, you can talk in character at any point in time.

So, no, the two things are not equal.  On one hand, you make a single die roll and pass to the next person.  On the other, you take a full turn, plus other actions as well.

This is true regardless of edition really.

----------------

That being said, I do agree that the game has to do everything humanly possible to attract new GM's.  Without GM's you have no games at all.  With that in mind, what do you think WOTC could be doing that it isn't doing now to attract new GM's?

Keep in mind, one thing.  Goal oriented gamers are probably the most easily satisfied.  It's easier to keep that guy happy than probably any other gamer - give him a straight up challenge that isn't pixel-bitching and he's good to go.  Get an entire group of them, and DMing is probably the easiest job in the world.

Couldn't you say that by creating goal oriented players, the game makes entry into DMing easier?  

I would point out that earliest forms of D&D certainly moved in this direction.  Basic/Expert D&D was all about go to this place, kill these things, take that treasure, go home.  Wash, rinse, repeat.  Basic D&D spent maybe a page on anything that wasn't directly related to kill and loot.  Expert spent a bit more time, but, most of that was on designing an outdoor adventure where you would kill and loot.  It wasn't until the Companion rules that you saw other real goals.  And even then, the goal was pretty specific - become a lord, then an emperor then a god in the Immortals set.

In AD&D, it was kill and loot until you got enough to build your castle and get your followers.  Then it was "retire that character and start again".

D&D has pretty much always catered to the goal oriented player hasn't it?


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## Obryn (Apr 21, 2010)

Okeydokey.  Let's go all the way back to the beginning, then.



Celebrim said:


> There seems to be a rather sizable block of players and designers who believe that addressing the needs of the 'ego gamer' needs to be the overriding concern in game mastery and even game design.  That is, the trend in thinking about RPGs seems to be more toward making a system and encouraging game masters to run it in a way that the players recieve a regular and uninterrupted dose of reinforcing affirmation of thier awesomeness.  The trend seems to me to be toward ensuring a regular heavy dose of the illusion of success, either to reward existing players or to addict new players.  It's my contention (look out, thesis coming) that contrary to the good intentions of the designers, running the game to this end or designing the system to this end (counterintuitively) chases more players from the game than it draws in and ultimately is not satisfying to even the 'ego gamers'.






> I know what I wrote.  I know how what I wrote 'seems' to you, and I wish I could get you to consider what I wrote rather than the baggage you are bringing to this from your investment in arguments in other threads.  I have in no way provided an example contrasting non-participation and participation.  I could, but I want to get over this hurdle before making the conversation any more complicated, given that the very basic case I keep repeating is not being understood.



Briefly, I think that concrete examples would really, really help here.  I tried to provide one, by way of comparing it with Morrus's recent thread re: conditions and players' participation.  Because that's not what you're talking about, could you please be more specific as to examples of this trend in game design?

-O


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## Alzrius (Apr 21, 2010)

I'm of the opinion that the "illusion of accomplishment" (though I'm not sure I'd call it an illusion) is largely fed by the reward-system in RPGs.

To be sure, this isn't always the case. Simply achieving a success in a situation of "success versus failure" (whether on a single die roll, or on a larger scale such as a combat encounter) brings with it a sense of satisfaction. However, I think that more often, an accomplishment is measured by the amount of reward a PC gets.

In D&D, a character commonly gets rewarded in both meta-game and in-character mannerisms. Meta-game in the form of gaining experience points which directly translate into greater power and ability. In-character in the form of items and money (to purchase items) that directly translate into greater power and ability. People feel a sense of accomplishment when they do something that's worth something - the reward not only justifies the action, but also quantifies it.

This is one of the major reasons behind complaints of bad role-playing - players have their characters doing what's most rewarding for the player wanting to power-up their PC, rather than doing what makes the most sense from an in-game perspective.


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## Saeviomagy (Apr 21, 2010)

Obryn said:


> Briefly, I think that concrete examples would really, really help here.  I tried to provide one, by way of comparing it with Morrus's recent thread re: conditions and players' participation.  Because that's not what you're talking about, could you please be more specific as to examples of this trend in game design?



As far as I can work out, Celebrim is comparing a permanently dazed character with only one tactical option who misses every round with a character who is at or below 0 hitpoints and doesn't roll a 20.

It's a bit of a wierd and manufactured scenario. I don't really know why he's doing it, because his overall point seems to be that games where success has a high likelyhood are bad games.

You are comparing a character who is stunned with no save (ie - stunned until end of next turn by a foe who has a large supply of such powers) with... well... anyone else.

Your argument is that a game with less participation is a worse than a game with lots of participation.

I'm not quite sure why Celebrim is conflating participation and success though. Maybe he's continuing on some fragment of an earlier conversation?

I'd have to say I agree with both of you: stun kills fun, and so do easy wins. So would having only one viable tactical option, being permanently dazed and always missing.


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## Celebrim (Apr 21, 2010)

Hussar said:


> But, that's not ALL you do on your turn.  If you are sleeping, you make one die roll and you're done.  If you are up and about, you move, make your attack, possibly perform a third action, possible use an action point to perform another action, possibly are granted another action by another player, possibly perform an Opportunity Attack, and, to top it all off, you can talk in character at any point in time.




However, while that is true, it is not true that on every round you have or take all of those options.  On many rounds, moving makes no real sense, you have no useful third action to perform, you don't have or don't want to spend an action point, and you aren't granted an action by another player nor does an oppurtunity attack present itself nor does anything really novel and interesting spring to mind to say IC.  That all those things are true would not be unusual.  Many rounds, you have a single attack to make and thats really all you have useful to do.  _On those somewhat frequent rounds_, the level of participation you have in the game when you make an attack and fail is exactly the same as when you take no action because you failed a saving throw.  In each of those rounds, the key act of participation was rolling a dice, and the net outcome of that participation was nothing.

I've been playing for a long time.  I don't have alot of experience with 4e but I feel pretty safe in thinking your hypothetical round where you take 5 or 6 actions on your turn such that failing your attack is a small loss is a lot rarer of an occurance than a round where you straight up slog and where, if you miss your attack, you might as well have not done anything.

Certainly I know that that in all earlier editions a 'slog round' is fairly common, and certainly I've got enough 'sense motive' to know that the guy experiencing a run of bad luck in the big fight where he can't hit anything is just as frustrated _if not more so_, than the guy who can't even move at all because of some status effect or other circumstance.  Both find themselves unable to get that moment of payoff in the action/reward loop.



> So, no, the two things are not equal.  On one hand, you make a single die roll and pass to the next person.  On the other, you take a full turn, plus other actions as well.




And, in many cases that 'full turn' is a euphemism for 'single die roll and pass to the next person'.  This is true regardless of edition.  

Therefore it follows that there is nothing inherently worse about being stunned than having a round where your only productive action is to make an attack and then missing.  Both suck equally.  Both involve the same amount of participation.  Therefore, a game that had to ban the unfun of being stunned on the grounds that it was annoying to ever 'miss a turn', would soon have to ban rounds where your only productive action hinged on a single die roll.  Because failing in that action involves missing a turn.

And in fact, that assessment wasn't contriversial to the OP in the other thread.  If I may quote Morrus: 



> Alot of them are almost "miss a turn" statuses (often more than a turn), or "do nothing fun" statuses; and the players in question get really agitated by the situation. Even those which aren't actually "miss a turn" (like stunned, petrified, unconscious) *can often mean "your turn is irrelevant" *(like slowed if you're 5 squares away, blinded, etc.)



 - emphasis added

Morrus is making the natural observation here that any DM whose watched players can make and that anyone who has been that player can relate to.   

It is not like I've suddenly invented the observation that having nothing productive to do or being crippled to the point that your actions have virtually no chance of success is functionally identical to losing your turn.  This is a common observation that has been made across the whole spectrum of gaming, from RPGs to CCGs to board games.  It is a fundamental tactic of many strategic games to steal actions in this manner from your opponent by forcing them to lose rounds of development making useless moves.  It freakin' ridiculous that I should even have to argue something this basic and widely observed.


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## The Shaman (Apr 21, 2010)

Nifft said:


> Daddy drinks because you cry.



Ouch.


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## Steel_Wind (Apr 21, 2010)

Celebrim said:


> Doug: I'm really not sure where Steel Wind draws the line between 'casual gamer' and 'lifestyle gamer', and I suppose we should ask him for a precise definition lest we risk misunderstanding him too much.




   Lifestyle gamer:

  Any individual who meets *ALL* of the following criteria:


 has been playing roleplaying games for more than three years;
 is no longer a fulltime student attending high school or university/college for an undergraduate degree;
 plays RPGs at least once a month; and,
spends more than $100 a year on RPG games and accessories
If you meet this test, you are a "lifestyle gamer". My guess is that the large majority of ENWorlders meet this test, and of the ones who do not meet that test but are members on ENWorld, the reason they don’t meet it is due to their age/educational stage. Otherwise, those tendencies and interest are why we are all here, after all. Problem is, we tend to project this identity upon others and assume that most gamers meet this test. In fact, the vast majority of gamers do not. The vast majority of gamers are, instead, casual gamers (those who do not meet this test.)

  Why apply these requirements for the definition? Because marketing data collected by the industry (principally WotC in the wake of the purchase of TSR) determined a few key indicia of who their customers are, when they start being customers - and when they stop being customers. 

  That process is called "churn" and understanding customer churn is vital to understanding the RPG business.

  It turns out, according to Ryan Dancey and based upon information collected ten years ago, that the vast majority of gamers who play RPGs play them for three years or less, usually commencing in high school or university. They play as "casual gamers", having played RPGs and spent some money on them -  but do not yet meet the test for "lifestyle gamer".  They are casual gamers because they are overwhelmingly expected to become "lapsed" gamers and to exit the hobby through player churn when they move and leave their adolescent / young-adult social circle in their late teens and early 20s. Dancey threw around the numbers of "close to 80% leave after three years". I have no idea if that is still true - or if it was ever true - but I expect Ryan Dancey is not in the business of misleading people and he had access to the data at the relevant time. I expect that he was telling it the way it is.

  Pay attention to that number. That means that 80% of the people who buy the Core Rules of the D&D edition of the day are not going to be playing RPGS three years from now.  That reality has a PROFOUND impact upon the design and marketing decisions of a game publisher.

  Why casual gamers leave the hobby varies from individual to individual to individual, but the biggest reason marketing research identified was that the individuals moved and left behind their previous gaming group. That event more than any other has been identified as how people "churn out" of the hobby. They don't leave because they can't find a DM. They know *exactly* where their DM is; he's hundreds (or thousands) of miles away -- and as a consequence, he's no longer their DM at all. Same thing as concerns the rest of their social circle they gamed with. And at that point, that usually means the player becomes a "lapsed" D&D/RPG player.

  If all you had to do was "train DMs" it would be easy. But that's not what you have to do. You also have to steer people together and enable them to meet up not only with a DM - but with *an entire group of people*. That's not easy to accomplish. In fact, it's quite damned hard to do, even with the Internet. And even when they meet up - they have to "click" together as at least "gaming friends", and preferably out of game friends too.  That's not an easy thing to accomplish.

  That's what D&D Encounters is all about  -- and it is what previous organized play sessions conducted by the RPGA is all about, too. It's not about teaching people to play D&D -- that is a wholly secondary misison. It's about getting people together with other like-minded people who want to learn how to game so as to enable them to either form a group toegether outside of organizedp lay (usually) or otherwise attach themselves to an existing gaming group (less usually). Once those social bonds are forged and you have a group to play with - the hard part is over. 

Not only do you have a DM - you have an entire gaming circle. You're up and running - until you up and move, that is.

  Moving away from a gaming circle is most likely to occur in the years following high school and university. Once that stage has passed and you are still playing regularly - the chances of you leaving the hobby diminish sharply. In short, that's the point where Darth Hasbro proclaims "*I have you now*".

   Bam - you are a lifestyle gamer.  Doesn't mean that you will not stop playing at some point and become "lapsed", but the chances of that occurring are MUCH less than they were if you lost your gaming group after you moved and relocated in your early 20s.


  Other life disruptions can cause a gamer to stop gaming of course. They are various and sundry, but GFs/wives, children and jobs will all take their toll. So will competing leisure activities (Hello WoW/golf/fishing/*whatever*) 

  Player churn still occurs through all stages of life. I would caution, however, on relying upon the analysis that Ryan Dancey has mentioned frequently over the past years when it comes to spending habits tied to age. I am not saying that his data is wrong. I think his data was spot on _when it was collected_. But that data is examining a demographic at a particular point in time (ca. 2000) and as such, that data is expected to change over time, too. I think the data Ryan Dancey has mentioned on spending habits among gamers who are older than 35 was accurate when it was collected - and is now DEAD wrong.

  That's just me. I may be DEAD wrong, too.


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## pemerton (Apr 21, 2010)

Celebrim, I agree with you that there is a deep divide. I disagree that it turns on "ego gamers". Rather, I think it turns on attitudes to what counts as fun in playing a game.

I also think that this is central to your discussion with Obryn about success vs participation.

I think the more modern sorts of RPGs are designed for players who want to play the game by (i) engaging the game mechanics, and thereby (ii) changing the imagined ingame situation. Hence the particular irritation for those players of mechanics which deprive them of actions - because they lose the chance to engage the mechanics.

But such players may still be quite willing to endure PC failures - it's just that those failures should be ones which open up new opportunities to engage the mechanics and thereby affect the gameworld. Examples would include being taken prisoner, or being driven out of town by an angry mob. This sort of PC failure is also a player failure in one sense - the game didn't go where you were trying to take it - but not in another sense - I'm still playing the game I want to play by engaging the mechanics and thereby affecting the gameworld. But the latter doesn't strike me as ego-gaming. It's just a particular preference about what I look for in a game.

A game like HeroQuest or The Dying Earth has no real equivalent to D&D status conditions, but it would be strange - in my view, at least - to describe either as an RPG aimed at ego gamers. Both are games that let the players continually engage the mechanics to affect the gameworld - even relationships and equipment are brought into the sphere of game mechanically mediated character abilities. I think it would be correct to describe both as RPGs that would not satisfy a player with traditional Gygaxian preferences. (4e is a funny game in the way that it deliberately mixes old and new style - and it has some problems as a result, especially in the skill challenge mechanics but also in the way it puts a large burden on the GM to handle monsters causing status effects with care. Rolemaster, with its need to call an OB/DB split round-by-round, also has a little bit of the new mixed in with the old, but I suspect this was fortuitous rather than deliberate - an attempt at a simulationist mechanic also produced a mechanic that is reasonably compelling for the more modern-oriented player.)

Or consider the difference between those who prefer M:TG, and those who prefer traditional wargames. Players of the former are hardly being pandered to as ego gamers, given that every game has at most one winner. But it's obviously a very different gameplay experience from a traditional wargame. I would expect a game like 4e to be more fun for the typical M:TG player than for the typical traditional wargamer.

What a pen and paper RPG does offer that neither Donkey Kong nor M:TG does is an opportunity not only to engage the mechanics, but by doing so to shape a dramatic, compelling, shared imaginary world or storyline. And modern RPGs, with their changed approaches to participation etc, reinforce this distinguishing feature rather than reducing it.

And if the above sounds like its influenced by reading Robin Laws game texts and Ron Edwards essays, well that's because it is!


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## innerdude (Apr 21, 2010)

Obryn said:


> Briefly, I think that concrete examples would really, really help here.  I tried to provide one, by way of comparing it with Morrus's recent thread re: conditions and players' participation.  Because that's not what you're talking about, could you please be more specific as to examples of this trend in game design?
> 
> -O




Well, I think there's a definite correlation between the perceived needs of new GMs and game design. 

It seems to me that perhaps one of the reasons D&D has narrowed its general play style focus is because WotC recognized the "GM problem" already discussed--without a GM, there's no game. One of the ways to create a larger supply of GMs (and thus have those same GMs hook their friends into the game) is to create a rules system that removes much of the "stress" of being a GM. What are the two biggest stressors of being a GM? Adjudicating for players (who may not always agree with rulings) and preparing adventures. And I think we can all agree that 4th Edition, regardless of its merits or failings, was certainly forward-thinking in that regard. 

More than any other previous edition, 4th Ed. seems to have a subtle, but clear message to players that says "Hey, you can DM this too. It's not that hard, really, and it's actually a lot of fun!" Because powers and classes are so balanced, and because the game focuses on team-based encounter design, at a fundamental level, 4th Edition is doing its darndest to get out of the way of a fledgling DM's biggest potential weaknesses--creating cohesive narrative and balancing encounters. 

Another way to do this is to help new GMs not feel like they are failing by not coming up with their own "ZOMG Uber-Epic Plot." The encounter and skill challenge structures create their own internal consistency that can give a fledgling DM the confidence to say, "You know what, I don't necessarily know how the BBEG is making things happen, but by golly I've got 5 easy-to-prepare encounters ready, and I can tie things in as I go." 

Now, another question that goes along with this though is, does team-based, encounter-driven design create more natural "positive reinforcement" points for an ego-driven gamer than another type of system? I don't know the answer for that.


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## jmucchiello (Apr 21, 2010)

Steel_Wind said:


> Lifestyle gamer:
> 
> Any individual who meets *ALL* of the following criteria:
> 
> ...



I'm lapsed!! Why didn't someone tell me I was lapsed?!

I haven't spent $100 on RPGs in the last 5 years in total. (And that includes buying the 4e core books.)


> If all you had to do was "train DMs" it would be easy. But that's not what you have to do. You also have to steer people together and enable them to meet up not only with a DM - but with an entire group of people. That's not easy to accomplish. In fact, it's quite damned hard to do, even with the Internet. And even when they meet up - they have to "click" together as at least "gaming friends", and preferably out of game friends too. That's not an easy thing to accomplish.



This is not really true. Once you possess a GM he will bring in players for you. Most people come into RPGs through existing social relationships with existing players and GMs. It is rare for someone to discover RPGs in a vacuum and flounder at finding a GM.


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## Starfox (Apr 21, 2010)

While I like the topic, I find this line of thought misguided:



Celebrim said:


> Once again, on your turn, rolling one dice and failing a saving throw and on your turn rolling one dice failing in an attack are the exact same level of interaction with the game and the rules.




There is a huge difference here, in that making an attack involves making a decision - to attack, who to attack, using what attack, and to not run away. Rolling a single dice on your turn involves no decisions. It is just a mechanic timer over which you have no effect whatsoever, and can easily be delegated to a computer. In fact, I find my players prefer non-interactive unconsciousness - this is where you go make a new pot of tea and let some of the tension out you your system. Making rolls each turn does not make a situation involving as long as this roll does not involve any choices, any tactics.

I know the thread passed over this topic and there were some answers along this line, but I still want to stress that participation is about choices - not merely die rolls. And that is a big issue with mechanics like (the original 4E) skill challenge rules - once you've identified the skill to use, there is no further need of choices, there is only mechanics in the form of dice rolling. This is the point where my players lose interest. Keeping their interest trough a 18-roll skill challenge (complexity 5) is just not possible once they analyze the situation.


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## S'mon (Apr 21, 2010)

Success in a game of skill *is* an accomplishment - maybe a trivial accomplishment, but real, not illusory.  Winning a game of chess is an accomplishment.  Winning a game of Warhammer Battles is an accomplishment.  Succeeding in a D&D session through player skill is an accomplishment.

"Illusion of accomplishment" might be an appropriate term for:

1.  Success in games of pure chance, like Snakes & Ladders.  We may feel we accomplished something when really it was just the luck of the dice.

2.  Success that is pre-mandated, where the 'game' is set up so players can't really lose.  This may be relevant to RPGs, which often stack the deck by default heavily in favour of the players.  Computer games which allow saves & respawns could fall into this category, but arguably grinding through the levels to ultimate victory is a sort of accomplishment, even though real failure is only possible if the player gets bored and gives up.


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## wedgeski (Apr 21, 2010)

Celebrim said:


> In each of those rounds, the key act of participation was rolling a dice, and the net outcome of that participation was nothing.



I don't want to reduce your argument to a single point, but you've dismissed criticism of this position unfairly, I think.

*Even if* all I did was use an attack power on my turn; even if I didn't want to move, or spend an action point, or take advantage of an Opportunity Attack, or use actions gifted to me by the decisions of my comrades. Even if I didn't want to do any of these things (which is, in my experience, actually quite rare) I'm still doing much more than rolling a d20 and hoping for a 10.

I'm engaged in strategic thinking. I'm observing the actions of the party, looking for advantageous tactics, and thinking of ways in which they might need help. I have to decide between my Dailies, my Encounters, and my At-Wills. I have to judge how long I can keep what I'm doing without getting killed, or without letting one of my friends get killed. I'm engaged with *the game* on a much greater level than if I'm essentially dying and making Death Saving Throws, where all I would be doing is rolling a d20 and hoping for a 10 (or more to the point, a 20).

If you were to say my engagement with the *system* amounted to the same (roll a d20, add modifiers, higher is better), then I'd agree. But the game is not just the system, it's also the collaboration with your party, and your OP after all is not entitled "System Fundamentals".


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## Garthanos (Apr 21, 2010)

Starfox said:


> here, in that making an attack involves making a decision - to attack, who to attack, using what attack, and to not run away. Rolling a single dice on your turn involves no decisions. It is just a mechanic timer over which you have no effect whatsoever, and can easily be delegated to a computer. In fact, I find my players prefer non-interactive unconsciousness - this is where you go make a new pot of tea and let some of the tension out you your system. Making rolls each turn does not make a situation involving as long as this roll does not involve any choices, any tactics.
> 
> I know the thread passed over this topic and there were some answers along this line, but I still want to stress that participation is about choices - not merely die rolls




There was a couple threads where it came to light that player power and pc power were distinct .. In some games like Fate there are things a Player can do like spend a fate point to generate a narrative change in the action... independent of the status of his character and similarly games where luck points might be spent on your allies. Fate can even result in a trade off between player and character power... Character Aspects which represent well disability can be used to generate more fate points granting more player power. 

The idea is to extend player interaction somewhat beyond their primary playing piece so that some choices may be available even when your primary route to interaction with the game may be disabled.

A while back somebody wanting to DM for money wanted to avoid player disablement asked for brainstorming one of the resullts were allowing Warlord style powers even when the PC was "unconcious" .. like inspiring your allies to fight harder and buffing them or rallying them to your side granting them extra moves and extra attacks... these things resulting in player involvement changing when the character gained a unfun condition.... not stopping.


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## ExploderWizard (Apr 21, 2010)

Obryn said:


> No, I'm fine not referring to it. I'm looking for points of reference here, and the other thread was convenient.
> 
> 
> It's all about the psychology and experience of playing a game. If I am participating (by rolling dice, saying what my character is doing, etc.) and end up failing, I am still participating meaningfully and feel like I'm participating. If I am sitting at the table and doing nothing but eating Doritos, I am not participating meaningfully in the game.
> ...




Participation in the activity is important.  The activity is the game itself. The question we must ask is what defines meaningful participation from participation that isn't " good enough"?

For example, my character rolls poorly for a save early in a large battle involving ghouls. The _character_ will be out of action for the duration of the battle. 
The DM then hands me a card with the stats of the ghast leader of the pack and invites me to continue participating in the action in the role of bad guy. 

Am I still participating in the game? I say yes. I have something interesting to do and am not reduced to snack muncher for the rest of the fight. 

My chosen character failed, but I didn't have to sit on my hands because of it.


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## Steel_Wind (Apr 21, 2010)

jmucchiello said:


> I'm lapsed!! Why didn't someone tell me I was lapsed?!
> 
> I haven't spent $100 on RPGs in the last 5 years in total. (And that includes buying the 4e core books.)




You are not lapsed - you are just not a lifestyle gamer. You play; you are not a big spender on the game.

You are a gamer.  Any chance you are over 35 and prove Ryan Dancey's other point too?



> This is not really true. Once you possess a GM he will bring in players for you. Most people come into RPGs through existing social relationships with existing players and GMs. It is rare for someone to discover RPGs in a vacuum and flounder at finding a GM.



Oh yes. The magical super powers of a GM.  I've been a GM for 30+years. I don't think I've used that "superpower" once. 

With great power comes great responsibility;  so GREAT, evidently, that some of us fear to use their superpower at all - for good or evil.


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## Garthanos (Apr 21, 2010)

ExploderWizard said:


> My chosen character failed, but I didn't have to sit on my hands because of it.




Certainly possible and directly related to what I said above. But that is a mighty dramatic change and for many going  from centered on my character which I have a lot invested in and his allies to playing the enemy and conspiring against those same might not be seen as acceptable point of view switch.


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## Celebrim (Apr 21, 2010)

wedgeski said:


> *Even if* all I did was use an attack power on my turn; even if I didn't want to move, or spend an action point, or take advantage of an Opportunity Attack, or use actions gifted to me by the decisions of my comrades. Even if I didn't want to do any of these things (which is, in my experience, actually quite rare) I'm still doing much more than rolling a d20 and hoping for a 10.




The first thing to note is that you are immediately devaluing and shifting my argument by employing the verb 'want', implying that all the above decisions are choices.  However, that doesn't have to be the case.  You might not actually have any of those choices, or - to the extent that you do have them - they might be meaningless choices, actions you undertake purely to show you could do them, and not because any of them lead to significant changes in the game state.  

So far, everyone is attempting to dismiss my point by arguing against some alternate construction.  Let's make it very clear.  Yes, I do agree that failing a save and failing an attack are not _always_ the same thing.  However, that has never been my point.  My point is that in a quite common situation, they are the same thing.



> I'm engaged in strategic thinking. I'm observing the actions of the party, looking for advantageous tactics, and thinking of ways in which they might need help. I have to decide between my Dailies, my Encounters, and my At-Wills. I have to judge how long I can keep what I'm doing without getting killed, or without letting one of my friends get killed. I'm engaged with *the game* on a much greater level than if I'm essentially dying and making Death Saving Throws, where all I would be doing is rolling a d20 and hoping for a 10 (or more to the point, a 20).




And my answer to this is simply 'maybe'.  It may be the case that this is true, but frequently it is not.  I think the problem people are having with my argument is instead of comparing the two things I'm comparing, people are comparing the general case of being stunned versus the general case of being not stunned.  Obviously, in the general case of being not stunned, you have more options than in the general case of being not stunned.  But in the particular cases of being not stunned that I'm comparing, that isn't true.   Yes, the general case of a round where you can act offers more oppurtunities than the general case of a round where you can't act, but in many cases even when you can in theory act your entire participation in the round is rolling the dice and then passing it to the next player.   That shouldn't even be contriversial.  I'm not sure how you could be a gamer and not have had the experience of a meaningless turn because of a dice failure.



> If you were to say my engagement with the *system* amounted to the same (roll a d20, add modifiers, higher is better), then I'd agree. But the game is not just the system, it's also the collaboration with your party, and your OP after all is not entitled "System Fundamentals".




Now this is a very interesting follow up to what you wrote above, because suddenly you not only agree with me but you also are moving on to a point I wanted to make later - participation in the game and victory within the game aren't necessarily defined mechanically.  You don't have to define the game totally within these very tight video game like action-reward feedback loops.  In my last session, the point in the game I think may have been enjoyed the most was when half of the party was unconscious and bleeding to death, and the important point is that on the whole I think the players of the characters who didnt' even have a turn at that point enjoyed that part of the game more than any other time in it.  If we define 'participation' and 'victory' entirely in these action-reward feedback loops, its impossible to explain that.  If we define 'participation' and 'victory' in ways that include social collaboration and collaborative story telling, then suddenly that begins to make sense.  People were deriving enjoyment vicarously, and the excitement was greater precisely because status effects that had deprived them of actions had led them to a point where they had more invested in the scene.  Failure was fun.  That is not something that mechanistic theories of Pavlovian gaming can explain, but its critical to understanding how PnP games manage to deliver 'The Illusion of Accomplishment' in a way that lets them compete as modes of entertainment with Bejeweled Blizt, WoW, etc.


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## Garthanos (Apr 21, 2010)

Celebrim said:


> The first thing to note is that you are immediately devaluing and shifting my argument by employing the verb 'want', implying that all the above decisions are choices.  However, that doesn't have to be the case.  You might not actually have any of those choices, or - to the extent that you do have them - they might be meaningless choices, actions you undertake purely to show you could do them, and not because any of them lead to significant changes in the game state.




Could this have edition differences... 
Movement and similar actions seem far more useful and far closer to usually a possible choice in 4th edition than in previous versions of the game... similarly everyone having possible dailies and encounters makes for everyone at the table having more choices that are viable not meaningless... so it sounds more like you are arguing a special case not necessarily that common. At-wills are very often not the default choice .... and become less so as the game progresses to higher levels.


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## Obryn (Apr 21, 2010)

ExploderWizard said:


> For example, my character rolls poorly for a save early in a large battle involving ghouls. The _character_ will be out of action for the duration of the battle.
> The DM then hands me a card with the stats of the ghast leader of the pack and invites me to continue participating in the action in the role of bad guy.
> 
> Am I still participating in the game? I say yes. I have something interesting to do and am not reduced to snack muncher for the rest of the fight.
> ...



Heck yes, absolutely.  You're still participating in the game and engaging with both the system and the players.

This is a very good example of a distinction between participation and success.  By having the player take over an NPC, you're still keeping everyone at the table engaged and playing.

-O


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## Celebrim (Apr 21, 2010)

Starfox said:


> There is a huge difference here, in that making an attack involves making a decision - to attack, who to attack, using what attack, and to not run away. Rolling a single dice on your turn involves no decisions. It is just a mechanic timer over which you have no effect whatsoever, and can easily be delegated to a computer. In fact, I find my players prefer non-interactive unconsciousness - this is where you go make a new pot of tea and let some of the tension out you your system. Making rolls each turn does not make a situation involving as long as this roll does not involve any choices, any tactics.




Of all the attempts at rebuttle, this is by far the strongest.  My only responce is to say that while that is true, in many cases making an attack involves a trivial decision.  Indeed, often the decision is so trivial as to be perfunctery and made without thought.  One of the things 4e tried to do (and opinions will vary on how successful it was in achieving this) was create a system in which the moments where the decision to attack was trivial was minimized precisely to avoid this 'slog' problem I'm discussing.  One point I have raised thus far is that in many cases, your participation in the system in a slog is so minimal that your turn amounts to rolling the dice and passing it to a player whether or not you succeeded in the task.  In this case, the participation is failing to provide the illusion of accomplishment even when nominal success is achieved, because the player has nothing invested in the moment and percieves that his participation is rote and meaningless.



> I know the thread passed over this topic and there were some answers along this line, but I still want to stress that participation is about choices - not merely die rolls.




But this in my opinion only leads us back to the original point I was trying to make.  People are defining participation in such a way that it excludes certain types of participation, and despite protests the contrary I still insist that when you start taking apart that definition it ends up meaning 'participation where I can achieve a meaningful degree of success (even if ultimately we fail in the challenge)'.   You want to say, "Well, it's not just participation, it's participation with choices."  But I simply respond to that by saying, "When you say choices, you mean choices where there is a reasonable chance of success and where there is an expectation of success at least some of the time.  If we played the game with a rigged die such that we could gaurantee that each of yourr choices ended in failure, the people who are protesting that they don't mean 'success' they just mean 'participation' will then complain that those aren't 'real choices'."

You keep trying to obfuscate the meaning by shifting from one word to the next, but so long as you retain the orginal within the implication of your new word, you aren't making any progress.   In the context they are being used, you can't divorse participation or choices from success.  



> And that is a big issue with mechanics like (the original 4E) skill challenge rules - once you've identified the skill to use, there is no further need of choices, there is only mechanics in the form of dice rolling. This is the point where my players lose interest. Keeping their interest trough a 18-roll skill challenge (complexity 5) is just not possible once they analyze the situation.




Agreed.  See my comments on the slog problem, and my disemboweling of the idea of a 'skill challenge' in various threads before the mechanic was introduced.   

In the introduction to my new campaign, the very first scene (first 13 or so rounds of the game) was a tsunami smashing through a coastal town.  The scene involved skill checks by virtually every player virtually every round, balance, climb, jump, diplomacy, animal handling, tumble, escape artist - I ran the gambit as I threw various obstacles in front of the fleeing players.  But it differed from a 4e skill challenge in that each choice was immediate and had immediate consequences.


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## ExploderWizard (Apr 21, 2010)

Garthanos said:


> Certainly possible and directly related to what I said above. But that is a mighty dramatic change and for many going from centered on my character which I have a lot invested in and his allies to playing the enemy and conspiring against those same might not be seen as acceptable point of view switch.




For a campaign it may be too much, but for a single battle? If participating differently for that amount of time becomes a problem due to investment issues then perhaps the game has become far too much "sewious business" and lost some of that elusive fun that we shouldn't have to work too hard for.


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## Dausuul (Apr 21, 2010)

Celebrim said:


> So, although I'd like to keep a specific discussion of 4e out of it, since you keep referring back to another thread, let me address this in those terms.
> 
> In 4e, suppose you are unconscious until you make a saving throw.  Each turn then, what happens to you as a player?  Well, each turn you have an important task to undertake.  You must throw a dice and determine if you can wake your character up from their torpid state.  As a player, you are participating.  However, if you fail in your save, you as a character and you as a player don't get the oppurtunity to contribute toward success.
> 
> You claim that you can fundamentally distinguish a situation where you as a player roll a die and fail to wake your character up, and you as a player roll a die and fail to hit the target.  But, from a play perspective, you the player participated in the exact same amount and in the exact same way and contributed the exact same thing to the game state in both cases.




Not at all. In the first case, I as a player contributed exactly nothing. My activity could be performed by a trained monkey, and in fact I often see players of unconscious characters say, "I'm going to the bathroom/to have a cigarette/to get a beer, somebody roll for me when my turn comes around."

In the second case, I have to decide whether to attack or do something else; what type of attack to use; which enemy to attack; whether to apply any special one-shot bonuses I have lying around; et cetera, et cetera.

It is of course possible that my attack will miss after all this planning; but even then, my decision had an effect, because I could have used that round to do something other than attack--I could have run away, or maneuvered for a better position, chugged a potion, or Done Something Cool that's not covered by the rules.

To me, at least, participation means making decisions that affect the outcome. Rolling dice is not, in and of itself, participating.

(Edit: Looks like this has already been hashed out... that's what happens when you reply before reading the whole thread.)


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## Janx (Apr 21, 2010)

What was the point and objective again?

victory is an illusion because the DM allows it.  Check.
rolling to wake up is boring. check.
rounds where you just attack the same critter again are like rolling to wake up.  check.
Players hate failing to hit or wake up. check.
Some choices aren't Choices. check.


Per the title of the OP, players like to succeed.  On a per round, or per encounter, or per adventure basis, they like to feel they came out ahead.

If you got rid of attack rolls, and had them just roll damage, players would then complain about rolling low damage as the new "miss"

I'm not sure if Celebrim's talking about a new game to account for this, part of his discussion seems to be about product and marketting to WoW type players.

I'm also not sure if it's my job to fix the players who are too win-focussed, or eject them.  I think that's a complex ball of worms.


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## Garthanos (Apr 21, 2010)

ExploderWizard said:


> For a campaign it may be too much, but for a single battle? If participating differently for that amount of time becomes a problem due to investment issues then perhaps the game has become far too much "sewious business" and lost some of that elusive fun that we shouldn't have to work too hard for.



I both agree and dont agree... 
I only play the bad guys by intentionally losing any sense of this is me doing it ... as a player that isn't why I play ... just like some people wouldnt like  the idea of using less personal abilities to influence the battle... probably the same problem. I can see how being the hand of fate choosing a flash back of the good times a fellow pc an I had to inspire a fellow willing pc into a useful frenzy could create a disconnect for some players.


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## ggroy (Apr 21, 2010)

Janx said:


> If you got rid of attack rolls, and had them just roll damage, players would then complain about rolling low damage as the new "miss"




Give them an inch, they'll take a mile.  The never ending spiral?


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## Dausuul (Apr 21, 2010)

Celebrim said:


> If we define 'participation' and 'victory'  entirely in these action-reward feedback loops, its impossible to  explain that.  If we define 'participation' and 'victory' in ways that  include social collaboration and collaborative story telling, then  suddenly that begins to make sense.  People were deriving enjoyment  vicarously, and the excitement was greater precisely because status  effects that had deprived them of actions had led them to a point where  they had more invested in the scene.  Failure was fun.  That is not  something that mechanistic theories of Pavlovian gaming can explain, but  its critical to understanding how PnP games manage to deliver 'The  Illusion of Accomplishment' in a way that lets them compete as modes of  entertainment with Bejeweled Blizt, WoW, etc.




This is a very good point, and one to consider. The same players who get  annoyed at being stunned turn after turn during a regular fight, are  suddenly hanging breathlessly on every die roll (and having a blast)  when half the party is unconscious and the other half is desperately  fighting to pull out a victory or at least an escape, with the threat of  TPK looming.


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## The Shaman (Apr 21, 2010)

Janx said:


> If you got rid of attack rolls, and had them just roll damage, players would then complain about rolling low damage as the new "miss."



Some players, definitely.







Dausuul said:


> The same players who get  annoyed at being stunned turn after turn during a regular fight, are  suddenly hanging breathlessly on every die roll (and having a blast)  when half the party is unconscious and the other half is desperately  fighting to pull out a victory or at least an escape, with the threat of  TPK looming.



While the latter half certainly fits my experience, I've not encountered a problem with players complaining about being bored when their characters are _paralyzed_ or otherwise incapacitated - on the off-chance they're not running henchman or hirelings or running an opponent on behalf of the referee, mostly they're cracking jokes and kibbitzing and hoping the ghouls don't haul off their character for a snack.

Then again, I avoid systems where anything less than the most epic battle takes hours to resolve, too.


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## wedgeski (Apr 21, 2010)

Celebrim said:


> That shouldn't even be contriversial.  I'm not sure how you could be a gamer and not have had the experience of a meaningless turn because of a dice failure.



I've had those experiences, of course I have. However, and I know this discussion is attempting to define a more general case than editions of one particular game, but my experience with 4E D&D is *dramatically* different than previous editions, and many other games entirely, and pointedly flies in the face of your supposition that an active round of combat is in "most" or "many" cases as meaningless as a save to wake up from an impotent state.

If I undertake a strategy at the table and it fails for whatever reason (unlucky dice, poor communication, incorrect assumptions, whatever), you bet it sucks, but it's a more rewarding failure than simply not waking up that turn. I'm engaging the design, working it, trying to use and exploit the tools it's given me.


> Now this is a very interesting follow up to what you wrote above, because suddenly you not only agree with me <snip>



No, I can assure you I don't.


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## Celebrim (Apr 21, 2010)

wedgeski said:


> No, I can assure you I don't.




My apologies.  The part where you restated what I'd said and then said you agreed with that confused me.



> If you were to say my engagement with the *system* amounted to the same (roll a d20, add modifiers, higher is better), then I'd agree. But the game is not just the system, it's also the collaboration with your party, and your OP after all is not entitled "System Fundamentals"...






> ...but it's a more rewarding failure than simply not waking up that turn. [Because] I'm engaging the design, working it, trying to use and exploit the tools it's given me.




Ok, now I'm really confused.  Given how much difficulty I'm having understanding your nuances, maybe its just for the best that I refrain from commenting.


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## Raven Crowking (Apr 21, 2010)

Celebrim said:


> So its probably not a big secret that one of the attractions of gaming is that through a game you recieve the illusion of having accomplished something.




I have to disagree with this part of your reasoning.  One does accomplish something by doing well at a game -- one accomplishes "doing well".

As I said in another thread, if one accepts that chess is a battlefield simulation, then winning at chess does not mean that you have won a real battle. It does, however, mean that you won at chess. That is a real accomplishment.

Getting the Gold Crown of Hoopla from the sinister dragon Hufflepup doesn't give you a real crown in the real world. But neither does it need to in order to be an accomplishment.

IOW, rpgs don't grant you the illusion of accomplishment; they grant you the accomplishment of illusions.


RC


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## Steel_Wind (Apr 21, 2010)

Raven Crowking said:


> IOW, rpgs don't grant you the illusion of accomplishment; they grant you the accomplishment of illusions.




Now our point of disagreement aside, the above line is a roll of 20 without confirmation of the crit. _Almost_ quotable in a sig.


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## Obryn (Apr 21, 2010)

Celebrim said:


> So far, everyone is attempting to dismiss my point by arguing against some alternate construction.  Let's make it very clear.  Yes, I do agree that failing a save and failing an attack are not _always_ the same thing.  However, that has never been my point.  My point is that in a quite common situation, they are the same thing.



So, then, make it more concrete.  I think people aren't so much trying to create alternate constructions of your thesis, as being confused because there aren't any examples.  What are some recent changes in game design which indicate the designers are catering to ego-gamers at the expense of DMs?

-O


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## Mallus (Apr 21, 2010)

Obryn said:


> What are some recent changes in game design which indicate the designers are catering to ego-gamers at the expense of DMs?



I'd like some concrete examples, too. I _think_ there's something interesting to discuss here, but without examples all we have is some insightful observations by Celebrim leading to what sure as heck looks like a straw-stuffed conclusion.

I mean, whiners and sore losers we have always had with us in RPG-land. I don't see any major shifts in game design meant to appease them. That sounds silly. 

What I do see are design changes vis a vis reward structures that seem to reflect a shrinking and aging player base which has less and less leisure time to devote to the hobby. For most of us, the days of 52 long gaming sessions a year are long gone. Ditto are old-school campaigns with multiple parties exploring a single persistent campaign setting, struggling for months to get a PC off 1st level.

I see this time-pressure as leading to more rapid leveling, new abilities at each level or so, more durable starting characters, fewer single rolls that can take the player out of the action for a large part of the session, less emphasis on time-intensive play elements like mapping, more reliance on big set pieces, or any of the other trends in the current game I _think_ Celebrim is talking about, but aren't exactly sure of, since he hasn't provided enough examples.

What I _don't_ see is the game being any easier these days. Or any less of a power-fantasy (which is always was). It is (somewhat) faster-paced. Is that what we're really talking about? Pacing? I mean, the game is _about_ taking on a heroic persona and performing outrageous things. Is there too much of that going on nowadays and is it happening too soon? 

Also, re: sore losers... my feeling is, so long as D&D relies on an authority figure whose role combines referee, player action adjudicator, and adversary (ie, the DM), there will be a few sore losers. It's not like losing at chess. When you lose at D&D, it's often because the chap with authority over you at the time says, in so many words, 'you lose'. And what makes _that_ palatable is _trusting_ said chap w/the authority -- which isn't sometimes the formal rules system can supply.  

Some people really chafe at authority figures... even the ones wearing wolf shirts, Cheeto dust, and Viking hats...


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## Celebrim (Apr 21, 2010)

Obryn said:


> So, then, make it more concrete.  I think people aren't so much trying to create alternate constructions of your thesis, as being confused because there aren't any examples.  What are some recent changes in game design which indicate the designers are catering to ego-gamers at the expense of DMs?
> 
> -O




I've really not want to go toward concrete examples, because I'm afraid to create an edition war.

However, the recent Chris Sims thread where he considers going from d20 to 3d6 for the expressed purpose of increasing the odds of hitting to avoid the stinging pain of failure, would be a concrete case in point.  As would 4e decision to remove long term status effects, followed by complaints that the existing status effects are too burdensome.   All of these threads point toward design built around the assumption that good design constitutes giving the player immediate, repetitive, and relatively assured accomplishments with as small of wait between accomplishments as possible.


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## SKyOdin (Apr 21, 2010)

I think that the theory put forward in this thread is simply terrible and full of logical holes. Not to mention, it is downright insulting to a wide range of gamers.

As far as I can tell, Celebrim is saying that there exists a class of gamer called "ego gamers" who play games simply to experience the "illusion of accomplishment". Furthermore, almost all of these "ego gamers" don't really enjoy being challenged, and just want to steamroll over things with ease. These gamers are also a major source of problem players who are prone to temper tantrums. Celebrim also claims that game developers have recently been trying to cater to this group of players.

Honestly, the whole thing stinks of a thinly veiled attack on 4E's game design by fabricating a false image of 4E's intended audience.

Most of all, this entire argument is based on terminology with shaky definitions, no concrete examples, and no evidence outside of Celebrim's own perceptions. I see no reason to even accept the definition of an "ego gamer" as being a valid thing that even exists in reality.

Furthermore, it seems to me that Celebrim is putting gamers who enjoy social experiences on a higher pedestal than gamers who enjoy pure gameplay and challenge. This can be seen in the rather disparaging description of the pride someone feels in overcoming a game challenge as the "illusion of accomplishment". As someone who does pride himself in his ability to overcome difficult challenges in videogames and other kinds of games, I find that rather insulting. Being able to accomplish a difficult task in a videogame is a real accomplishment. For example, I am very proud of the fact that I beat the original Mega Man without cheating. Why? Because beating that game is _hard_; it took me weeks to beat the first fortress boss, and then I had to spend the rest of an entire day struggling through the final stage. The elation felt by doing something like that is very real, and is a perfectly valid reason to want to play a game.

In fact, that emotion, the elation from overcoming difficulty, is something that can't be found in forms of passive entertainment such as watching TV or reading a book. It is a key reason why many people choose to play games instead of watch movies. In a professional study done to examine the emotions people experience while playing games and why they choose to play games, this emotion was refereed to as Fiero, and was found to be the underlying emotion behind one of the four reasons people play videogames. The study can be found here:
http://www.xeodesign.com/xeodesign_whyweplaygames.pdf

I simply can't see how anyone can say that gamers who primarily play D&D in order to enjoy overcoming challenges are bad gamers. The idea that game companies shouldn't pursue that audience is even more nonsensical. A great game can and _should_ appeal to all kinds of gamer, particularly a game as versatile and adjustable as D&D.


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## Celebrim (Apr 21, 2010)

Mallus said:


> I see this time-pressure as leading to more rapid leveling, new abilities at each level or so, more durable starting characters, fewer single rolls that can take the player out of the action for a large part of the session, less emphasis on time-intensive play elements like mapping, more reliance on big set pieces, or any of the other trends in the current game I _think_ Celebrim is talking about, but aren't exactly sure of, since he hasn't provided enough examples.




Those would be examples, yes.  In general, I see this as a trend away from delayed gratification and toward immediate gratification.  I don't have any way to prove this, but I don't believe that this trend is the result of a player base with a shrinking ability to commit time primarily because this trend in PnP gaming seems to parallel shifts in delayed gratification toward immediate gratification in other areas of gaming, larger society etc.  Your theory that it has to do with something specific within the PnP community wouldn't explain the larger social trend.  I'm suggesting that the PnP communities move toward all these things you list is part of a larger design trend which PnP designers are taking inspiration from. 



> What I _don't_ see is the game being any easier these days. Or any less of a power-fantasy (which is always was). It is (somewhat) faster-paced. Is that what we're really talking about? Pacing?




In essence, yeah, you could think about it being an issue of pacing in that theories that require there to be minimal times between rewards are forcing on the game toward pacing where periods of failure are minimized.  It's probably fairly obvious that I'm going to end up arguing that as the period of failure approaches zero length, the meaningfulness and the satisfaction of the reward is reduced to zero.  The tolerance players have for reducing the failure period (or risk, as an alternate way of looking at the problem) depends on the player's personality.  'Ego Gamers'/'Achievement Driven Gamers' derive more satisfaction from the short wait period relative to gamers with different primary goals in the game, because they are in it for that immediate sense of accomplishment.  

Also I'd like to argue that the smaller the period of failure, and the lower the risk, the more infrequently failure occurs, counterintuitively, the more any particular failure 'stings'.  If you expect to hit 50% of the time, missing doesn't seem like an unlucky fluke.  It's something you prepare yourself for.  But if you expect to hit 90% of the time, missing sucks because you didn't expect failure as a possible outcome.   An example of this I'm very familiar with is in Bloodbowl, where the failures when you move the Agility 4 or Agility 5 player are more frustrating than the ones when you are taking actions with the expectation that they might fail.


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## Obryn (Apr 21, 2010)

Celebrim said:


> I've really not want to go toward concrete examples, because I'm afraid to create an edition war.



You can make comparisons and contrasts without being edition warry.  It's a matter of presentation, and making sure your presented facts aren't ... well, counterfactual.



> As would 4e decision to remove long term status effects, followed by complaints that the existing status effects are too burdensome.



So... what I was using as a point of reference, and which you told me wasn't an example of what you're talking about and an entirely separate issue, actually _is _an example of what you're talking about? 

Um.  I guess I'll just refer you back to my first post on the dangers of conflating "desire to succeed" with "desire to participate" then.

-O


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## Celebrim (Apr 21, 2010)

SKyOdin said:


> I think that the theory put forward in this thread is simply terrible and full of logical holes. Not to mention, it is downright insulting to a wide range of gamers.




I sense outrage.



> As far as I can tell, Celebrim is saying that there exists a class of gamer called "ego gamers" who play games simply to experience the "illusion of accomplishment".




I believe I stated at the outset that all gamers play games principally to enjoy the 'illusion of accomplishment'.  I think if you missed that much of my argument, you probably aren't reading me very closely.



> Furthermore, almost all of these "ego gamers" don't really enjoy being challenged, and just want to steamroll over things with ease.




That would be the salient trait, yes.



> These gamers are also a major source of problem players who are prone to temper tantrums.




Well, yes, but I was also careful to point out that they weren't the only source of problem players.



> Celebrim also claims that game developers have recently been trying to cater to this group of players.




Yes.  I've been seeing alot of posts lately along the lines of 'failure is bad'.



> Honestly, the whole thing stinks of a thinly veiled attack on 4E's game design by fabricating a false image of 4E's intended audience.




I believe that 4e's intended audience is gamers.  I believe that with varying degrees of success, they achieved that.  



> Most of all, this entire argument is based on terminology with shaky definitions, no concrete examples, and no evidence outside of Celebrim's own perceptions. I see no reason to even accept the definition of an "ego gamer" as being a valid thing that even exists in reality.
> 
> Furthermore, it seems to me that Celebrim is putting gamers who enjoy social experiences on a higher pedestal than gamers who enjoy pure gameplay and challenge.




In my original post I believe I made an aside specifically to state that this was not what I was saying.  I am not putting other goals of play on a higher pedestal than 'achievement'.  Achievement is a great goal and all of us to one extent or another are invested in it. I'm making comments on how achievements ought to be designed.



> This can be seen in the rather disparaging description of the pride someone feels in overcoming a game challenge as the "illusion of accomplishment". As someone who does pride himself in his ability to overcome difficult challenges in videogames and other kinds of games, I find that rather insulting.




If you want to be insulted, I can't stop you from feeling insulted.  It was not my intention, nor is it in any way my intention to disparage skillful game play.  I'm a self-identified gamer and I believe all games are based on and require the 'illusion of accomplishment'.  I specifically stated I wasn't disparaging game attainments.   I'm quite happy to adopt terms like the 'accomplishment of illusion' or whatever would make you feel better here.



> In fact, that emotion, the elation from overcoming difficulty, is something that can't be found in forms of passive entertainment such as watching TV or reading a book. It is a key reason why many people choose to play games instead of watch movies. In a professional study done to examine the emotions people experience while playing games and why they choose to play games, this emotion was refereed to as Fiero, and was found to be the underlying emotion behind one of the four reasons people play videogames. The study can be found here:
> http://www.xeodesign.com/xeodesign_whyweplaygames.pdf




I'm fine with you calling it 'Fiero' too.  As I said, I'm a self-identified 'gamer' and a passionate defender of my hobby.  I play classic board games, modern board games, CCG's, card games, RPGs, video games, and sports.  Do you think I'm trying to insult myself?



> I simply can't see how anyone can say that gamers who primarily play D&D in order to enjoy overcoming challenges are bad gamers. The idea that game companies shouldn't pursue that audience is even more nonsensical. A great game can and _should_ appeal to all kinds of gamer, particularly a game as versatile and adjustable as D&D.




If you can't see how anyone can say that, then step back and consider whether I actually said it.


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## wedgeski (Apr 21, 2010)

Celebrim said:


> My apologies.  The part where you restated what I'd said and then said you agreed with that confused me.



Whether we agree or not, I'm sure it's possible to argue your case without greasing the floor with this kind of sarcasm.


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## Garthanos (Apr 21, 2010)

Raven Crowking said:


> IOW, rpgs don't grant you the illusion of accomplishment; they grant you the accomplishment of illusions.




Heh I knew there was a reason to keep you around! fine quote. And I dont need the kidney ... yet anyway.


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## haakon1 (Apr 22, 2010)

Celebrim said:


> missing point is that virtually all game masters are 'lifestyle gamers', and by the very nature of game mastery, virtually all good game masters are 'lifestyle gamers'.  The success of your PnP game depends on something which has no real parallel in other types of gaming.  It doesn't really matter at all how many players you have; it only matters how many game masters you have.  Your goal as a game creator isn't to get players.  The base of players is comparitively infinite.  The limited resources you are try to compete for and expand is game masters, because if you have GM's, then you'll have players.
> 
> . . .
> 
> Looking at just my own situation, when D&D chased me from there game by abandoning me . . .  I've economically become my own game publishing company for the moment, WotC is locked out of my local market.   I'm the 'retailer' in this equation, not even the esteemed but humble LFGS.  I'm the one determining whether the product gets sold.  If I don't play, they don't reach my market.  If I don't buy, they don't reach my market.




Good point (I've given Celebrim too many XP's and can't give him any more right now!).

Your situation is very similar to my own.  Since 4e came out, I've bought one PHB and a set of power cards from WOTC (because I'm a player in a 4e game).

For the two 3.5e campaigns I actually run, with 12 total players, there's been basically $0 in WOTC sales since 4e came out.  What I've bought is Out of Print 3/3.5e material (old issues of Dungeon, old modules, etc.) and Paizo material (though slowing considerably in the Pathfinder era).  That's got to be several hundred dollars in lost sales for WOTC.

But more importantly, the latest player I brought into the game -- another player called his friend and told him he HAD to come over the try it, mid-game -- hasn't been ABLE to find a 3.5e PHB, so he's borrowed one of mine (I stocked up, knowing this would happen if I kept running 3.5e).  Definitely a loss of sale there for WOTC, and sadly for my FLGS, as I'm now the distributor.


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## SKyOdin (Apr 22, 2010)

Celebrim, I would response to your response to my last post, but I hate line-by-line quoting, since that causes the important details to quickly be lost amidst quibbling over minutia. Overall though, I don't think you really said anything of substance in response to my comments.

As it stands, you have yet to prove in any way that "ego gamers" you are talking about even exist, or that there is any trend in game design that is designed to appease them. Until you produce an example of a game that caters to these players, there really isn't anything meaningful to talk about in this thread.

However, I get the general impression that you are talking about 4E and its general design decision that the majority of attacks and skill checks performed by players should succeed. If that is the case, then that is a terrible example for your argument.

Success in a game like D&D is not based on round by round results; success comes at the end of the encounter if the party is still alive and the enemy party is defeated. A single die roll isn't sufficient to give a feeling of accomplishment on its own. All the die roll can do is contribute to a general sense of dread or excitement.

Furthermore, even if a game system was designed such that every attack a character made hit 100% of the time, that doesn't mean that the game is easy or built for instant gratification. Take the videogame Final Fantasy IV for example. Just about every physical attack your characters make will hit for consistent damage, and magic is guaranteed to work. However, Final Fantasy IV is a notoriously hard game (especially in its DS remake). The player's party can easily have two characters die in a battle against mooks, and boss fights can be frustrating experiences that involve numerous retries. Just landing a hit in combat won't evoke Fiero, particularly in prolonged fights where one hit's success isn't significant.

If you want to make the case that game design is leading towards instant gratification and easy success, you need to prove that there is a game system where it is consistently the case that the players will always easily win every fight, regardless of variables. I don't think that is the case for 4E D&D or any other modern RPG.


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## ggroy (Apr 22, 2010)

SKyOdin said:


> Celebrim, I would response to your response to my last post, but I hate line-by-line quoting, since that causes the important details to quickly be lost amidst quibbling over minutia. Overall though, I don't think you really said anything of substance in response to my comments.
> 
> As it stands, you have yet to prove in any way that "ego gamers" you are talking about even exist, or that there is any trend in game design that is designed to appease them. Until you produce an example of a game that caters to these players, there really isn't anything meaningful to talk about in this thread.
> 
> ...




There's one obvious example of an "ego-gamer", but in the video game area:  the person who ALWAYS plays in "god mode" in a computer or console game.


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## SKyOdin (Apr 22, 2010)

ggroy said:


> There's one obvious example of an "ego-gamer", but in the video game area:  the person who ALWAYS plays in "god mode" in a computer or console game.




I actually don't agree. The reasons why someone might play in god-mode can be compleicated and varied.

When someone is playing a game with a god-mode cheat, they aren't playing the game in order to experience Fiero. If the game doesn't provide a challenge, it can't create any sense of accomplishment. However, the pride of accomplishment is only one of several reasons for playing a game. Typically someone who is using a god-mode cheat is doing so in order to get a different kind of experience out of the game.

Here I will admit to liberally using the "power overwhelming" cheat in Starcraft and its equivalent in Warcraft II. Yes, I did play through most of Starcraft using a godmode cheat. I did so because I wasn't very good at it, and I still wanted to experience the story. I didn't get much of a sense of accomplishment for doing so, but that is irrelevant to why I did it. On the other hand, I did get a great sense of accomplishment for beating Warcraft III without resorting to cheats.

There are other reasons for using cheats as well: I have seen people mess around with godmode cheats in games like Grand Theft Auto simply to play around with how ridiculous the game behaves with them active, often with friends around to watch it with. This is more of simple social activity, far removed from any sense of accomplishment.

This whole line of though does bring something to mind though: people shouldn't make assumptions about the motivations of others, especially in cases where they don't understand the behavior. What some people might call an "ego-gamer" might have very different motivations and desires than what is ascribed to them. Celebrim, did you actually _ask_ these "ego-gamers" you hated so much why they were playing the way they did?


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## ggroy (Apr 22, 2010)

If Celebrim's definition of "ego-gamer" is what I think it is, then I'm willing to admit that I was an "ego-gamer" when it came to certain arcade video games back in the day.

There was one shoot-em-up game I use to play a lot back in the day, which had a bug in the game's programming.  This particular bug could be exploited such that all the enemy space aliens in the game would stop firing altogether for an entire game.  Without the cheat, I was only able to play through about a dozen or two waves until all my men were killed.  Exploiting the cheat, I was able to play for over a hundred or so waves and rolling over the points, until game over.  Each wave was more or less identical in a repetitive manner after about level 20 or so.

My motivation back then, was largely to score the highest number of  points as possible and rolling the points over several times.


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## innerdude (Apr 22, 2010)

Celebrim, I think I understand fundamentally what you are saying. I think some people are missing the "forest for the trees" in trying to pin down the minute definition of "useful" vs. "not useful" actions. The real point Celebrim is making is that a certain type of game system can, due to its design, inherently reward more "immediate gratification of achievement" types of players than not. 

Here's an example--

I am a massively committed PC Gamer. I can't count the number of PC game titles I've purchased and played over the years. I'm also a massive RPG player, both on the PC and pen and paper. Yet in all my years of gaming, I never, ever once played any of the _Diablo_ PC games. It just never appealed to me, based on what everyone said it was--"You adventure....and kill stuff....and level up....and you do it some more!" 

Yet a few weeks ago, I picked up the game _Torchlight_ on Steam for a mere 5 bucks, because it had gotten generally positive reviews, and a bunch of my friends played it. Well, as far as I can tell, if _Torchlight_ is fundamentally the same as _Diablo_ (and by all accounts it is), then I do understand why _Diablo _I and II remained popular for so long. _Diablo/Torchlight_ are classic cases of "achievement reinforcing gratification." Yes, there is some "strategy" involved in building your character, and utilizing the attributes/skills/powers/traps/magic in the most effective ways based on the encounter and terrain. But the real "reward" of playing _Torchlight_ is the ongoing sense of "achievement leveling." I'm waiting for the next big weapon, the next big armor piece, the next gold stash so I can "enchant" my weapon to be more powerful, etc. Yeah, there's supposedly a plot thrown in about some evil underneath the mines, but it's really just an excuse to throw a bunch of bad guys in front of you constantly--and reward the player for successfully conquering them. 

Now, is _Torchlight_ an FRPG? Well, by most definitions, yes--it has character customized stats, it contains "leveling," it uses fantasy tropes, there's magic and orcs and goblins and monsters. 

Yet the type of enjoyment I get out of _Torchlight_ is much, much different than the reward I get out of something like _Knights of the Old Republic_. Yes, there's combat in _KOTOR_, but the downtime between combats is significant. In _KOTOR_, you're expected to engage with the NPCs in the game world in more interested fashion, you're given choices (however rudimentary) that actually affect the fate of those NPCs. Yet, here's the catch--the reward cycle of _KOTOR_ is much, much longer. There's an investment of time in _KOTOR_ to get that sense of achievement. I think the sense of accomplishment is greater in _KOTOR_ when you really do achieve one of the major goals, but the fact of the matter is, doing a single large-scale quest in _KOTOR _is a 2 or 3 hour ordeal. Yet I can hop into _Torchlight_, and within 5 minutes, I'm having "achievement gratification." 

Now, is either way of approaching an "RPG" bad? No, not intrinsically; they're both valid ways of receiving "achievement gratification." But if a rules system is designed to push the "gratification cycle" into a shorter or longer time frame, then some players may be dissatisfied, depending on the experience they were expecting. 

And I do think Celebrim is right in saying that it's a dangerous proposition to push pen-and-paper RPGs too far in the direction of "short-cycle achievement gratification," because ultimately that's a losing battle. The very nature and features of pen-and-paper RPGs make them ill-suited to heavy doses of "short-cycle achievement gratification." You have to get together in one location, read notes, discuss play ideas together, socialize, use tactics collaboratively, etc. All of which inherently push against the intrinsic need of a gamer who's looking for immediate, "short-cycle achievement gratification." Seriously, video games and other forms of entertainment do "short-cycle achievement gratification" better than pen-and-paper RPGs ever will. They're multimedia, they have lights, sounds, flashing colors, you can see your avatar on the screen with the biggest, baddest weapon, whereas in RPGs you're just imagining it. And you don't have to have a "GM" to keep pushing encounters at you; the computer just keeps sending the baddies your way, and you tactically respond. One could almost say that the entire point of pen-and-paper RPGs is provide a longer, more satisfying reward cycle, to provide a sense of enjoyment that cannot be obtained through other means.


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## Starfox (Apr 22, 2010)

S'mon said:


> Success in a game of skill *is* an accomplishment - maybe a trivial accomplishment, but real, not illusory.  Winning a game of chess is an accomplishment.  Winning a game of Warhammer Battles is an accomplishment.  Succeeding in a D&D session through player skill is an accomplishment.




I think you're shooting beside the target here. For me, the "Illusion of Accomplishment" is where you begin at 1st level fighting goblins that take you 3 round to kill, then advance to level 30 to fight balors that take you three rounds to kill with similar mechanics. Effectively, you have been re-skinned from 1 to 30 and the goblin has been re-skinned as a balor, but nothing really happened. Winning a difficult battle is not in itself an illusory accomplishment. But if the only result of winning said battle is that all numbers are inflated by 10% for the next battle, THAT is an illusion of accomplishment to me. 

The key is how we use the word "accomplishment" - you use it to mean a task achieved, I use it to mean a reward garnered trough achieving said task. Yours might be better English, but the way I understand the use of "illusion of accomplishment" among gamers, I think my reading is the more common one and the one Celebrim is using (Celebrim, please correct me if I am way off)



innerdude said:


> Yet a few weeks ago, I picked up the game _Torchlight_ [...] as far as I can tell, if _Torchlight_ is fundamentally the same as _Diablo_ (and by all accounts it is), then I do understand why _Diablo _I and II remained popular for so long. _Diablo/Torchlight_ are classic cases of "achievement reinforcing gratification." Yes, there is some "strategy" involved in building your character, and utilizing the attributes/skills/powers/traps/magic in the most effective ways based on the encounter and terrain. But the real "reward" of playing _Torchlight_ is the ongoing sense of "achievement leveling." I'm waiting for the next big weapon, the next big armor piece, the next gold stash so I can "enchant" my weapon to be more powerful, etc. Yeah, there's supposedly a plot thrown in about some evil underneath the mines, but it's really just an excuse to throw a bunch of bad guys in front of you constantly--and reward the player for successfully conquering them.




This is a VERY good illustration of the point I am trying to make here. And games like Torchlight can be very good entertainment - as long as you bye in on the illusion of achievement it provides. Which is in a way a good thing - we feel empowered, entertained, and can relax playing such games. 


Which leads me to my next point. Using my definition of "illusion of achievement", all gaming is really about this illusion, the difference is only if we accept the illusion or not. To seem real, accomplishment has to bring some qualitative change, not just a quantitative change. For me, qualitative change generally involves a story change - the goblins are a local threat, the balors a global treat. For others it might be the difference between burning hands and meteor storm. For yet others it is a tactic in Chess or Go that is carried out well. But if this qualitative change is felt to be not real, then you've seen trough the illusion of achievement and lost the magic of the game. Because none of these rewards are tangible and real in the way a pay raise or a new car is. (the real-ness of such material rewards can of course also be discussed, especially if you go into religion. Lets not go there.) We have to bye in on the illusion to make them real or it all becomes just useless die rolling.

This whole post is kind of tangential to the main discussion and Celebrim's original thesis. But the problem with such a big issue as this is that you have to define the terms you are using quite precisely - this is what I've been trying to help to do here.


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## Starfox (Apr 22, 2010)

In replying here, I have to contradict you for the sake of the discussion. I don't do that from contrariness or because I think your thesis as a whole is wrong, but because I find it interesting and worthy of discussion. I just wanted to say this so that my adverse stance to details is not take as a refusal of the basic premise - which I find interesting but unproven, certainly worthy of discussion and consideration.

I was off on a tangent at the start, responding to Celebrim's response to Obryn's post rather than to the original post- and yet such a complex argument as Celebrim makes stands and falls with its base assumptions.



Celebrim said:


> Of all the attempts at rebuttle, this is by far the strongest.  My only responce is to say that while that is true, in many cases making an attack involves a trivial decision.  Indeed, often the decision is so trivial as to be perfunctery and made without thought.




The point when this is true is the point where I lose interest in the game.



Celebrim said:


> But this in my opinion only leads us back to the original point I was trying to make.  People are defining participation in such a way that it excludes certain types of participation, and despite protests the contrary I still insist that when you start taking apart that definition it ends up meaning 'participation where I can achieve a meaningful degree of success (even if ultimately we fail in the challenge)'.   You want to say, "Well, it's not just participation, it's participation with choices."  But I simply respond to that by saying, "When you say choices, you mean choices where there is a reasonable chance of success and where there is an expectation of success at least some of the time.  If we played the game with a rigged die such that we could gaurantee that each of yourr choices ended in failure, the people who are protesting that they don't mean 'success' they just mean 'participation' will then complain that those aren't 'real choices'."
> 
> You keep trying to obfuscate the meaning by shifting from one word to the next, but so long as you retain the orginal within the implication of your new word, you aren't making any progress.   In the context they are being used, you can't divorse participation or choices from success.




Basically, I agree with this rebuttal.  I agree that in general a role-playing session is about resolving an event successfully. I only submit that in order to be fun to me, a game must have meaningful choices. If it isn't fun, the whole discussion is moot.

(Yes, it is possible to have a "doomed" story/game, where the task of the players is to portray their characters response to the inevitable and unavoidable doom - and to make their play more exiting, the inevitably of failure could be hidden from the players. This sounds like a convention scenario at a typical Swedish gaming convention from the 1990s - D&D and problem resolution scenarios were not big at Swedish conventions. But this is a special case and could be said to be a "bait and switch" trick pulled by the GM.)


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## Chrono22 (Apr 22, 2010)

innerdude said:


> Seriously, video games and other forms of entertainment do "short-cycle achievement gratification" better than pen-and-paper RPGs ever will. They're multimedia, they have lights, sounds, flashing colors, you can see your avatar on the screen with the biggest, baddest weapon, whereas in RPGs you're just imagining it. And you don't have to have a "GM" to keep pushing encounters at you; the computer just keeps sending the baddies your way, and you tactically respond. One could almost say that the entire point of pen-and-paper RPGs is provide a longer, more satisfying reward cycle, to provide a sense of enjoyment that cannot be obtained through other means.



This, this 1000 times. *rep*
Making pen and paper RPGs mimic video games in regards to challenges/rewards/gratification is a losing battle.
This is a slippery slope- but I don't really consider this a fallacy... seen as a continuum from super-dedicated gamers to super-casual gamers, appealing to more casual players will certainly broaden the player base, but only temporarily. So, to continue to increase the income from your product you continue to broaden the base... the thing is, casual players aren't dedicated customers- they stop buying your stuff and go somewhere else eventually. A PnP RPG can't do video games as well as video games without becoming one itself. Which is no problem- unless your selling point for the RPG is that the excitement happens in your imagination. When the game is reduced to a tactical-strategic combat game, the only difference between it and a video game competitor is that the competitor has better graphics and a larger player base. Your casual players have to expend time and effort imagining actions that your competitor's software can represent visually. Why would customers continue paying money for a comparatively inferior product? Goodwill and nostalgia can only get you so far.


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## Bluenose (Apr 22, 2010)

SKyOdin said:


> However, I get the general impression that you are talking about 4E and its general design decision that the majority of attacks and skill checks performed by players should succeed. If that is the case, then that is a terrible example for your argument.
> 
> snip
> 
> If you want to make the case that game design is leading towards instant gratification and easy success, you need to prove that there is a game system where it is consistently the case that the players will always easily win every fight, regardless of variables. I don't think that is the case for 4E D&D or any other modern RPG.




Considering some of the arguments being made in the thread, "Why must numbers go up", where people are specifically criticising 4th edition for not creating a situation where their melee attacks are nearly always successful, it seems 4E can't possibly be the game in question.


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## Ariosto (Apr 22, 2010)

The criticism of 4e in "Why must numbers go up?" is actually directed at 4e's making things _consistently about the same_. See the first part of Starfox's post #76 above for a statement of this concept of "illusory accomplishment".

In other words, not creating a situation -- at high levels, _as in TSR-D&D_ -- in which the _monsters'_ attacks nearly always hit, whereas everyone *misses* most of the time at low levels, is just as much the issue.

What is wanted is a clear sense of progression, of change. The very consistency that is so central to the 4e design is under fire.


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## Bluenose (Apr 22, 2010)

Ariosto said:


> The criticism of 4e in "Why must numbers go up?" is actually directed at 4e's making things _consistently about the same_. See the first part of Starfox's post #76 above for a statement of this concept of "illusory accomplishment".
> 
> In other words, not creating a situation -- at high levels, _as in TSR-D&D_ -- in which the _monsters'_ attacks nearly always hit, whereas everyone *misses* most of the time at low levels, is just as much the issue.
> 
> What is wanted is a clear sense of progression, of change. The very consistency that is so central to the 4e design is under fire.




Yet the implication, quite clearly, is that 4e is less a game where attacks nearly always hit than previous editions. Which rather contradicts any suggestion that it's more suited for people who the OP defines as ego-gamers. If anything, the implication is that older editions of D&D are more suited for them.


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## S'mon (Apr 22, 2010)

Starfox said:


> The key is how we use the word "accomplishment" - you use it to mean a task achieved, I use it to mean a reward garnered trough achieving said task. Yours might be better English




Yes.  

Edit:  Also, my use of the word is in accordance with the OP's use of it - ie 'sense of accomplishment'.  Yours isn't.


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## Woas (Apr 22, 2010)

innerdude said:


> Seriously, video games and other forms of entertainment do "short-cycle achievement gratification" better than pen-and-paper RPGs ever will. They're multimedia, they have lights, sounds, flashing colors, you can see your avatar on the screen with the biggest, baddest weapon, whereas in RPGs you're just imagining it.





So you feel that a television or computer monitor is more satisfying and powerful than ones own imagination and minds eye?


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## Celebrim (Apr 22, 2010)

Starfox said:


> Which leads me to my next point. Using my definition of "illusion of achievement", all gaming is really about this illusion, the difference is only if we accept the illusion or not.




When 'Diablo I' came out, all my friends were playing, and taking there machines over to each others houses to play together.  It was this big deal, so I picked up a copy and started playing.  I found it pretty engrossing, and played each of the three classes up to wear I beat the game on Hell level.  

But then I kept playing.  The game was beat and there was nothing more to see or do, but I was still playing to get 'phat l00t' and kill the next mini-boss.  

Then I downloaded a trainer for the game.  I could give myself any thing I wanted.

I never played the game again.  I never even played with my new stuff.  The 'illusion of accomplishment' had been destroyed.  I realized I wasn't actually doing anything any more.   I played through Diablo II once with one character.  I couldn't even manage to push myself to go through the game a second time.  Unlike Diablo I, Diablo II had lost its dynamic elements.  The game had been pared down to its action/reward essentials, and the trainer which let me get whatever I wanted had pushed me to see through that and I couldn't regain that illusion.

I don't have a problem with someone who enjoys Diablo II.  I play 5-10 minutes of Bejeweled Blitz almost every night as a way to unwind and decompress.  It's basically the same thing; heck, for a participation perspective, it's almost the same game.  However, for me, my particular personality quirks gives me a relatively low tolerance for Diablo style games.  If I get addicted to some action/reward loop, it tends to be to games where there is a higher illusion of personal skill and less investment in the character skill.  Or, to put it in RPG terms, I'm not that particular sort of power gamer who enjoys the thrill of a min/maxed character wading with ease through the opposition with his degenerately powerful optimized build.  I'm closer to a puzzle solver, who likes defeating the obstacles irrespective of the numbers on my character sheet.

But I've seen those players.  They are the sort of players whose enjoyment of the game not only depends on playing the ubermensch, but having built a character that can defeat anything in a round or two, also cheats on the initiative throw so that they can be sure to be able to do so unhindered.  I've met, not one, but several of these players over the years, as well as a few 'Teflon Billy' style gamers who get off on always beating the DM more or less fairly.  And before anyone gets sidetracked again, I often enjoy playing with them.  Sometimes, it's really nice both as a DM and a player to know that there is this crazy killing machine in the game that can always be counted to get the party out of whatever that's thrown at them.   As I said earlier, as a DM I always prefer a mixture of power gamers, roleplayers, goofs, and puzzle solvers at the table because I like 'the whole game' and when one sort of player is missing it tends to leave a hole in the play experience.   So this is not about 'roleplayers are better than roll players' or any of that crap.


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## Garthanos (Apr 22, 2010)

Woas said:


> So you feel that a television or computer monitor is more satisfying and powerful than ones own imagination and minds eye?




Well it sure is easier... but way too nailed down... I can envision my characters abilities many different ways when roleplaying (not so in WoW).  4e actively encourages players to do this ... wonder why? its something imagination games are better at.


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## Hussar (Apr 22, 2010)

I guess the question becomes, for me anyway, what's too short?  How do we define a too short gratification cycle?  

There's another point here too - perception.  Take leveling.  There are people on this board who swear up and down that leveling in one edition was FAR slower than in other editions.  There are others who claim that the leveling is actually pretty close.  Who's right?  Well, it depends on who you ask.  Both are pretty solidly convinced of their own interpretations, so, it all comes down to dueling anecdotes.

I think here it comes down to very much the same.  Celebrim's claims about 4e and the number of choices in a round, and the idea that it is common to have rounds where you don't move, and only make one attack option, is completely different from my experience.  I'll admit, I'm pretty new to 4e, but, between two campaigns, I've participated in a dozen or so combats, spread across probably something close to 75 rounds, and I don't recall a single combat where I stood still and made a single attack roll.  I'm sure it happened, but, not too often.

And, if you doubt me, here are the transcripts for at least one campaign:  Raiders of Oakhurst 

So, it comes down to Celebrim's perception of the problem.  For which he has actually not provided any concrete proof, other than a vague feeling that he has.  

I think there might be something interesting here, but, to be honest, I think it's so tightly tied up in Celebrim's own experiences, that the facts are pretty difficult to separate out.


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## Hussar (Apr 22, 2010)

Celebrim said:
			
		

> But I've seen those players. They are the sort of players whose enjoyment of the game not only depends on playing the ubermensch, but having built a character that can defeat anything in a round or two, also cheats on the initiative throw so that they can be sure to be able to do so unhindered. I've met, not one, but several of these players over the years, as well as a few 'Teflon Billy' style gamers who get off on always beating the DM more or less fairly. And before anyone gets sidetracked again, I often enjoy playing with them. Sometimes, it's really nice both as a DM and a player to know that there is this crazy killing machine in the game that can always be counted to get the party out of whatever that's thrown at them. As I said earlier, as a DM I always prefer a mixture of power gamers, roleplayers, goofs, and puzzle solvers at the table because I like 'the whole game' and when one sort of player is missing it tends to leave a hole in the play experience. So this is not about 'roleplayers are better than roll players' or any of that crap.




But, problem players are problem players, period.  Are you actually trying to argue that this sort of player is the new target market?


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## Celebrim (Apr 22, 2010)

Bluenose said:


> Considering some of the arguments being made in the thread, "Why must numbers go up", where people are specifically criticising 4th edition for not creating a situation where their melee attacks are nearly always successful, it seems 4E can't possibly be the game in question.




No, it's not.  Which is one of the reasons I don't want to make this an edition war.  

However, while 4e is not 'that game', 4e is more in that direction than earlier editions of the game.   To list just a few examples, 4e scales everything with level, 4e has no long term status effects, 4e cures pretty much everything with a single long rest, 4e tried to speed combat as a primary goal, 4e gives everyone self healing, greatly boosts power at 1st level so that everyone starts with 'the awesome' immediately, 4e 'fixes the math' (or at least attempted to do so) in the same sort of way games like Diablo fix the math (hense the complaint about 'must numbers always go up?'), 4e refreshes most of your powers on an encounter cycle, 4e tries to make everyone's turn have more options and more interaction, etc.   Now, just so we don't get sidetracked again, I'm not here criticizing any of those things.  That's not my focus.  That's not my goal.   Though I am one of the earliest 4e critics, literally launching against it from the very first preview, I have never though 4e got it all wrong.  In fact, some of the sacred cow slaying forced me to rethink my own reasoning and there are somethings in my game that are 4e inspired.  So let's not make this an edition war, because I'm past that now.

4e is not that game, but 4e went in that direction, and both IRL and on the boards I'm hearing increased complaints from 4e gamers that the problem is that 4e didn't go far enough in that direction.   Morrus is saying, "Status's suck and they make the game unfun for the players because they force the player to actually or effectively lose a turn (extending the wait between action and reward).  What can we do about that?"  Chris Simms is saying, "Missing your attack sucks.  In WoW you have the expectation of hitting 90% of the time, and the action/reward cycle in D&D is even slower than in WoW, so missing stings more.  We need to find ways to reduce the chances of missing."   Lots of players are saying, "We need to find ways to make sure that there is less slog/grind in 4e, what can we do to make each round of a long fight have more tension?"  

And this thread is about examining the underlying assumptions of what makes a game 'fun', and see if there might be other ways of creating a satisfying 'illusion of accomplishment' than to continue to decrease the time involved in the action/reward loop such that PnP games better mimic popular video games.


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## Celebrim (Apr 22, 2010)

Hussar said:


> But, problem players are problem players, period.  Are you actually trying to argue that this sort of player is the new target market?




I'm not trying to argue that 'ego gamers' are inherently problem players at all.  While I do feel that 'ego gamers' often are problem players and more often the problem player than RPGers with different vested interests in the game, I now regret even bringing that up because its got us sidetracked.

For these purposes, the ego gamer is the sort of gamer who responds emotionally most strongly in a positive way to immediate gratification in responce to their choices, and responds emotionally most strongly in a negative way when the reward that they believe they deserve is withheld.  They are gamers that put an emotional stake in always winning, so that they see failure in terms of very short cycles.  That is, while some gamer might be happy if the group overcomes the challenge, or defeats the adventure path, the ego gamer tends to chafe if during the challenge he even failed an attack roll.

I'm trying to argue that there is a trend in the high level thinking about RPG design that is more and more accepting of the assumption that the gratification cycle 'ego gamers' respond most strongly to relative to other types of players is the natural cycle all gamers respond most strongly too and that one of the goals in RPG design should be to maximize this gratification cycle.  As a result of this thinking, I think that mainstream PnP games are trending to one degree or the other toward designs which are more heavily geared to satisfying ego gamers.


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## Hussar (Apr 22, 2010)

I'll buy that Celebrim.

My next question is, why is this a bad thing?

Granted, we can take this to the extreme where the cycle is measured in miliseconds.  Fine, but, let's not go there.  Keep it reasonable.

Why is the previous period between challenge and reward better than now?  Why is delayed gratification better?


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## Celebrim (Apr 22, 2010)

Hussar said:


> Why is the previous period between challenge and reward better than now?  Why is delayed gratification better?




I don't know that I would say that delayed gratification is better, because that would be like saying 'RPG's are better than video games' or something like that.  It's just an opinion.

But I will say that a PnP designer chasing after an immediate gratification cycle like you have in a video game is on fool's errand because you can never really compete with a video game on that level.  You are playing against the strengths of a PnP game and into its weaknesses.   If PnP games are to start offering comparable experiences to video games as a goal of design, they are going to lose out to video games every time.

To give an obvious example, in multiplayer video games no one necessarily needs to wait for his turn.  It's always your 'turn' in a real time video game.   There is no wait to return to when the attention is on you.  But in a PnP game, there is no way that the referee can give his attention to every player simultaneously.  Chasing after the experience that is the side effect of it always being your turn as in a video game at best will never get there, and at worst will end up with mechanics ill-suited to the tools and needs of play in a PnP game

Just as bad, when you gear your game toward offering that experience, you are almost invariably going to create an experience which is invariably inferior to that can be offered by video games.  If you look at the big RPG boom in the late 70's and early 80's, RPGs actually offered the best 'ego gamer' experience that was widely available.  Computer RPGs either weren't available because of the entry fees and rarity, or they were primitive solo games, or they were non-primative adventure games (like the classic Infocom games) that weren't primarily offering the short feedback cycles you got with 'swing and hit' from oD&D, AD&D, etc but which tried to offer PnP's 'puzzle solving' experience (from which we get terms like 'pixel bitching').  But that isn't the situation now.  If you try to compete with modern video games now on there terms, with the massive processing power we have now and the hundreds of man years of artwork involved you are going to lose.  A play group that moves into RPGs now without mentoring is going to percieve the PnP game as an inferior computer game - an experience obseleted and outdated by modern technology.  

If I really wanted to criticize WotC's handling of 4e, it wouldn't be over the mechanics - even though I think those mechanics moved away from where I wanted to go.   The real criticism I would offer of 4e is the same one I think is the biggest single problem with 3e - WotC did not seem to believe that modules were important and IMO invested far too little into them.  If people start listing great modules, they invariably end up listing primarily old school stuff and if not, then they list third party products (by Paizo, for example).  But even though you can't make alot of money on modules, they are the heart and soul of building up a player base because the module is what builds new game masters.   I'm increasingly of the opinion that D&D's historical dominance is D&D's association with the lowly and sometimes deprecated art of module writing.  I can't think of another game system that is in the same league when it comes to offering products that, in isolation from a mentor, help tutor up and inspire game masters.

What's 4e got in the module department that is memorable?  What did late 2e do or late 3e do but recycle the great modules of the past?  This almost deserves its own thread and I'm probably side tracking the conversation again, but I'm bringing it up here because its part of this whole notion of 'game mastery' which is core to the PnP experience and which I think is increasingly depricated in the design of games.  Part of the problem with the whole notion of 'what makes a game fun' is that the whole short action/reward cycle assumes that everyone important at the table _is a player_.


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## Bluenose (Apr 22, 2010)

Celebrim said:


> However, while 4e is not 'that game', 4e is more in that direction than earlier editions of the game. To list just a few examples, 4e scales everything with level, 4e has no long term status effects, 4e cures pretty much everything with a single long rest, 4e tried to speed combat as a primary goal, 4e gives everyone self healing, greatly boosts power at 1st level so that everyone starts with 'the awesome' immediately, 4e 'fixes the math' (or at least attempted to do so) in the same sort of way games like Diablo fix the math (hense the complaint about 'must numbers always go up?'), 4e refreshes most of your powers on an encounter cycle, 4e tries to make everyone's turn have more options and more interaction, etc.




In earlier editions of the game, saving throws went up constantly so that by high levels most characters were highly unlikely to fail a save (OK, that's not the same in 3e). In earlier editions of the game, THAC0/BAB went up faster than the AC they targeted, making misses less and less likely as levels got higher.  In earlier editions of the game, spellcasters got both increased power and increased versatility as they gained levels. One thing scaling the maths by level does is ensure that people are failing at high level as often as they fail at low level, assuming opponents are relatively the same level. It doesn't seem to me that 4e goes any more in the direction you dislike compared to earlier editions. In some ways it does, but in others it's almost exactly the opposite.


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## Celebrim (Apr 22, 2010)

Bluenose said:


> In earlier editions of the game, saving throws went up constantly so that by high levels most characters were highly unlikely to fail a save (OK, that's not the same in 3e). In earlier editions of the game, THAC0/BAB went up faster than the AC they targeted, making misses less and less likely as levels got higher.  In earlier editions of the game, spellcasters got both increased power and increased versatility as they gained levels. One thing scaling the maths by level does is ensure that people are failing at high level as often as they fail at low level, assuming opponents are relatively the same level. It doesn't seem to me that 4e goes any more in the direction you dislike compared to earlier editions. In some ways it does, but in others it's almost exactly the opposite.




Oh good lord, can we stop trying to turn this into an edition war??  Just once??  I mean, I know we all have deep emotional stakes now in defending our favorite edition, but can we just assume that I'm perfectly happy to let anyone play what they enjoy?  If I could divorse this from concrete examples and just make this a completely theoretical conversation about how you could approach game design and the different direction you could take completely theoretical games, I would, but people then criticize me for not offering 'proof' and 'concrete examples' as if this was a formalized study like geometry or something.  I certainly haven't spent the last five years or so compiling references in preparation for this thread, nor do I intend to spend several months collecting such evidence.  If my treatis doesn't seem like scientific proof, its because I never intended and don't intend to provide you with it.

If I told you that in my 'version of D&D' (based off 3e), saving throws go up faster than DC's so that high level characters are (much like in 1e) increasingly less likely to fail a save, would it do anything to convince you that you might be missing the point?  I don't want to get dragged to deeply into a discussion of 4e's particular design because then its just going to be another 4e vs. earlier editions thread, and I'm trying to ask people to consider the possibilities of PnP games in a holistic manner.  So stretch out a bit, ok?


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## Garthanos (Apr 22, 2010)

Bluenose said:


> One thing scaling the maths by level does is ensure that people are failing at high level as often as they fail at low level, assuming opponents are relatively the same level. It doesn't seem to me that 4e goes any more in the direction you dislike compared to earlier editions. In some ways it does, but in others it's almost exactly the opposite.



If you dont scale the adversaries and challenges ... then the  accomplishments feel inconsequential in real life.

I find it quite realistic as my abilities have progressed throughout my life. The challenges that I remember and find most noticeable and become a part of my lifes story are not .... lesser non-challenges that used to be challenges I dont even remember/bother with those anymore I dont take a simplistic job by choice... my abiity is most definitely enhanced.... but life hasnt gotten easier.  

Perhaps its a fantasy that growing up makes things easier... but if that were true I wouldn't find life as rewarding.. well maybe it might be rewarding in some sense but definitely not as interesting.


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## Dausuul (Apr 22, 2010)

Celebrim said:


> I never played the game again.  I never even played with my new stuff.  The 'illusion of accomplishment' had been destroyed.  I realized I wasn't actually doing anything any more.   I played through Diablo II once with one character.  I couldn't even manage to push myself to go through the game a second time.




A few months ago, I started playing Diablo II again after a long hiatus - started building up an account's worth of characters from scratch. I'm finding that I play a character for exactly as long as there are new and interesting challenges. My pattern has been to take a character of each class through Hell difficulty, beat Baal on Hell, and then never play that character again. Every so often I find a different type of challenge (trading for runes on the Realms, magic finding) and do that for a bit; but once I feel I've mastered whatever it is, I get bored with it. Sometime in the not too distant future, I'm going to give away all my high-powered gear, delete all my characters, and quit the game for another few years, until enough time and patches have passed to make things seem new again*.

I think this is instructive for PnP, because it illustrates one of the places where tabletop gaming can really shine. A tabletop game offers the _potential_ for near-infinite variation, endless new challenges, because it's got a human DM and human players testing one another's skills. The question is, how can D&D (or any tabletop game) best nurture that potential?

4E has made great strides in this area in some regards. The clarity of the underlying math, and access to tools such as the Monster Builder, are a godsend for the homebrewing DM.

At the same time, I think the drive to "standardize" mechanical systems - especially combat mechanics - is a dangerous road to go down. There has been a steady push across the editions toward putting everything into the basic encounter/hit point model, where all combats boil down to a single challenge: Grind away all of the enemy's hit points before the enemy can grind away all of yours. Challenges that don't fit into that model, from long-duration status effects to monsters that don't care if you hit them with a sword, are minimized or eliminated.

I've recently come to believe that, while this is perfectly workable as a "standard model," trying to shoehorn _every_ combat into that model is a Bad, Bad Thing. I'm doing a lot of thinking now about alternative challenges... swarms modeled as terrain hazards, golems with resist all 50 (effectively immune to attack damage) that must be lured into deadfalls or pushed off cliffs, incorporeal undead that vanish when you hit them but reappear a couple rounds later unless you destroy the object to which they are bound.

I would like to see some stuff like this in WotC published materials. More than that, however, I would like to see tools and guidelines for building this sort of thing, to help _me_ create new and exciting content for my group**. D&D's greatest strength has always been the creativity of DMs and players. The game should strive to build up that strength.

And of course that's just the combat side. There are still immense opportunities for growth on the exploration and social-encounter fronts. 4E took a few tentative steps in this direction with skill challenges, but the mechanic as written takes a _lot_ of hand-tuning to make it work in play.

[SIZE=-2]*Or, more likely, till Diablo 3 comes out.
**Please note: I am NOT claiming that I am not perfectly capable of doing this stuff on my own. But WotC has a whole staff of professional designers; I would like the benefit of their professional expertise while I'm homebrewing.
[/SIZE]


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## Fifth Element (Apr 22, 2010)

Celebrim said:


> Oh good lord, can we stop trying to turn this into an edition war??  Just once??  I mean, I know we all have deep emotional stakes now in defending our favorite edition, but can we just assume that I'm perfectly happy to let anyone play what they enjoy?



Wow. I don't read Bluenose's post as edition-warry at all, unless you consider your post that he was responding to to also be edition-warry. Which I don't.


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## STAT (Apr 22, 2010)

Celebrim said:


> If I could divorse this from concrete examples and just make this a completely theoretical conversation about how you could approach game design and the different direction you could take completely theoretical games, I would, but people then criticize me for not offering 'proof' and 'concrete examples' as if this was a formalized study like geometry or something.  I certainly haven't spent the last five years or so compiling references in preparation for this thread, nor do I intend to spend several months collecting such evidence.  If my treatis doesn't seem like scientific proof, its because I never intended and don't intend to provide you with it.




You want to know why people are asking for proof?  It's because you claim there's a trend in gaming towards instant gratification.  If there isn't actually a trend towards instant gratification gaming then you're trying to solve a problem that doesn't exist.  That would be a somewhat silly thing to do.  So if people are asking you for examples of this trend it's because you've anchored the whole discussion to whether it exists or not.


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## Bluenose (Apr 22, 2010)

Celebrim said:


> Oh good lord, can we stop trying to turn this into an edition war??  Just once??  I mean, I know we all have deep emotional stakes now in defending our favorite edition, but can we just assume that I'm perfectly happy to let anyone play what they enjoy?  If I could divorse this from concrete examples and just make this a completely theoretical conversation about how you could approach game design and the different direction you could take completely theoretical games, I would, but people then criticize me for not offering 'proof' and 'concrete examples' as if this was a formalized study like geometry or something.  I certainly haven't spent the last five years or so compiling references in preparation for this thread, nor do I intend to spend several months collecting such evidence.  If my treatis doesn't seem like scientific proof, its because I never intended and don't intend to provide you with it.
> 
> If I told you that in my 'version of D&D' (based off 3e), saving throws go up faster than DC's so that high level characters are (much like in 1e) increasingly less likely to fail a save, would it do anything to convince you that you might be missing the point?  I don't want to get dragged to deeply into a discussion of 4e's particular design because then its just going to be another 4e vs. earlier editions thread, and I'm trying to ask people to consider the possibilities of PnP games in a holistic manner.  So stretch out a bit, ok?




Fair enough. Let's disregard all versions of D&D in this question and only consider other RPGs. I think that the trend you believe you see exists only in your mind. That regardless of whether the RPG is new or old the range of competence among characters is just as variable as it always was. I can pull out Runequest or Traveller editions from the 1970s where starting characters succeed (at the things they're good at) most of the time, and do exactly the same thing with the current versions. To persuade me that there's any trend towards personal gratification in modern RPGs that wasn't there in older ones, you need to show multiple related data points, and you need to be able to show that older games didn't do the same sort of things.


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## SKyOdin (Apr 22, 2010)

As it is, this entire discussion is rather pointless. All of the theorizing in the world is pretty empty unless it can be backed up by concrete proof and then be used to suggest concrete changes. Celebrim, unless you actually suggest something like "5E should have such and such features", then your arguments on this thread will remain empty and pointless. Furthermore, it is only when concrete examples and suggestions have been made that people can actually start to discuss things in a constructive manner.

As far as game design is concerned, abstract theorizing about vaguely defined things like "cycles of gratification" (a phenomena I have _never_ heard brought up in actual game design discussions) is useless. Besides, even a game that follows a sound theory perfectly can still end up being bad due to poor execution, and games that follow bad theory can still be surprisingly fun.


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## Benimoto (Apr 22, 2010)

Celebrim said:


> However, while 4e is not 'that game', 4e is more in that direction than earlier editions of the game.   To list just a few examples, 4e scales everything with level, 4e has no long term status effects, 4e cures pretty much everything with a single long rest, 4e tried to speed combat as a primary goal, 4e gives everyone self healing, greatly boosts power at 1st level so that everyone starts with 'the awesome' immediately, 4e 'fixes the math' (or at least attempted to do so) in the same sort of way games like Diablo fix the math (hense the complaint about 'must numbers always go up?'), 4e refreshes most of your powers on an encounter cycle, 4e tries to make everyone's turn have more options and more interaction, etc.




I'd like to rebut these things point by point for the record, since they're a good example of how misconceptions of 4e drive things down the edition war road.

4e does not scale everything by level, and certainly does not do so in the way Diablo does.  4e scales hit points, attack bonus, saving throws (now called defenses) and AC by level.  It does so largely in the same way as 3rd edition does, with the exception of AC.

Furthermore character depth increases by level (in a non-linear way).  To give an example, at 1st level the PCs may be fighting goblins that that take 3 rounds to defeat and at 28th they may be fighting Balors that work similarly, but that's because the Balor is a brute, which is designed to be the simplest part of an encounter.  For a contrasting example, look at the Pit Fiend.  The Pit Fiend, just by itself (and it's only one part of the encounter) is a flying monster with a damage aura, an attack debuff aura, a minor-action attack that lowers defenses severely, the ability to summon 2-8 more creatures, and fairly standard leader-type and melee-type abilities.  So in a typical Pit Fiend encounter, the Pit Fiend will be flying out of melee reach, letting its passive auras damage and debuff most of the party, while spending it's actions both teleporting allies to advantageous positions and severely weakening the defenses of anything that can threaten it.  Since it isn't the only part of the encounter, typically the controller it's grouped with will lock down one or two of the PCs with weakened defenses, while the summoned War Devils will move leaders or strikers out of the defender's sphere of influence so that the monster skirmishers can pick them off with little interference.  It's a machine that, even if the numbers were appropriate, would generally annihilate 1st level PCs.  1st level PCs lack the resistances, the flight capability, and most importantly the depth of resources needed to take on such a threat.

Back to the point-by-point, 4e does have long-term effects in the way of diseases (and the "death penalty" for being raised from the dead).  I find these generally last as long as 3e long-term effects such as curses or ability damage, and have most of the same effects (although they are rarer.)  What 4e is missing is the fixed-duration medium-term effects, like fear or paralysis, that lasted just long enough to remove a PC from the entire rest of the combat.  These aren't missing from the game mechanics entirely, as there's still support for rare effects that last the entire encounter.  They're just missing from the standard monster list, and hence from the "culture" that arises from it.  (The few effects like this that made it into the MM1, such as the Oni Night Haunter or the Night Hag's sleep effects were treated as errors and erased in game updates.)

4e does cure 99% of the conditions in a single long rest, but again in my 3e experience, wands of cure light wounds and a few "remove whatever" scrolls had the same effect.  You may have gamed with a group that frowned, or was completely unaware of such things, but that wasn't the system, it was the culture.

I had a home campaign for most of 3rd edition, but I also played a lot in RPGA games, typically as a convention judge (as, contrary to what my messageboard persona may project, in person I'm an easygoing, generally entertaining guy with a knack for system mastery and delivering authoritative rulings).  In the RPGA games, a sort of "best practices" developed, which involved the continual manufacture, acquisition, and replenishment of items such as cure wands or "remove condition" scrolls.  My players played at conventions occasionally too, and would take their favorites of these "best practices" home with them, or find them on message boards such as this one.  So even before 4e codified the culture shift against long-term negative effects into the default monster manual monsters, that cultural shift existed in at least some groups.

4e does give everyone some self healing, I can't refute that.

While you see 4e giving people 'the awesome' at 1st level, I see the designers trying to boost low-level survivability so that players can make characters and immediately become attached.  Again reflecting a culture shift away from the harem of interchangeable heroes that some people describe 1e as having and towards having a single, well-developed character from the start.  Which is something, that if I'm reading your posts right, I think you support.

The complaint again about 4e "fixing the math like Diablo" is, as I mentioned, a mischaracterization of 4e (and arguably not entirely accurate about Diablo even).

Your final points, about 4e refreshing powers on an encounter cycle and trying to make everyone's turn have more options and more interaction, etc. I have no particular objection to (but I'll try harder to come up with some if you'd like  )

Yay for one more wall of text in a wall-of-texty thread.


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## Doug McCrae (Apr 22, 2010)

Celebrim said:


> I'm increasingly of the opinion that D&D's historical dominance is D&D's association with the lowly and sometimes deprecated art of module writing.



I can't cite a source for this (I looked today and couldn't find anything to back it up) but I'm pretty sure I've seen a WotC employee or ex-employee saying their market research shows that D&D's dominance is 100% based on being first to market. D&D was the first rpg and people really, really don't like to learn new rpg systems. Apparently even many from WotC found this hard to believe, thinking there must surely be more to it than that, or perhaps being influenced by their strong positive feelings toward D&D.


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## ggroy (Apr 22, 2010)

Doug McCrae said:


> I can't cite a source for this (I looked today and couldn't find anything to back it up) but I'm pretty sure I've seen a WotC employee or ex-employee saying their market research shows that D&D's dominance is 100% based on being first to market. D&D was the first rpg and people really, really don't like to learn new rpg systems. Apparently even many from WotC found this hard to believe, thinking there must surely be more to it than that, or perhaps being influenced by their strong positive feelings toward D&D.




One could speculate that if SPI's DragonQuest was created and released back in 1970 (instead of 1980), would DragonQuest have become the market dominating rpg over the last 40 years?

I thought the first edition of DragonQuest looked sort of like a fantasy game designed by some hardcore wargamers.


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## Doug McCrae (Apr 22, 2010)

Benimoto said:


> While you see 4e giving people 'the awesome' at 1st level



Imo, 4e 1st lvl PCs are only awesome if the DM uses minions. If he doesn't then the party can be defeated by kobolds just as easily, in fact probably more easily, than in previous editions.


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## Celebrim (Apr 22, 2010)

Benimoto said:


> So even before 4e codified the culture shift against long-term negative effects into the default monster manual monsters, that cultural shift existed in at least some groups.




So, let's just assume for the moment that I've completely mischaracterized 4e.  Even with that as a given, you've just spent a whole lot of time disagreeing with the details while conceding in an rather offhanded way something far more central to my thesis.


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## MichaelSomething (Apr 22, 2010)

MichaelSomething said:


> Yes, you hate diamonds (players who play with the goal of achievement) and would rather play with hearts (people who play in order to socialize), spades (players who like to explore content) and maybe clubs (players who play to compete with others).
> 
> Now if only I could remember where those terms came from.




hate to quote myself but I finally found out the source of those types...

It's the Bartle Test for figuring out people's preferences in MMORPGs.  That was bugging me a bit.  Might we worth checking out since its related to the subject at hand.


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## Celebrim (Apr 22, 2010)

Doug McCrae said:


> I can't cite a source for this (I looked today and couldn't find anything to back it up) but I'm pretty sure I've seen a WotC employee or ex-employee saying their market research shows that D&D's dominance is 100% based on being first to market. D&D was the first rpg and people really, really don't like to learn new rpg systems. Apparently even many from WotC found this hard to believe, thinking there must surely be more to it than that, or perhaps being influenced by their strong positive feelings toward D&D.




That was my theory for the longest time as well, and the less positively I thought of D&D, the more strongly I was attracted to that theory.

But I also now have a hard time believing that theory, and not just because being first to market is only occassionally a path to market dominance and even morely leads to market dominance over decades while competing products are offered.  Over the last 10 years, I've had a oppurtunity to reassess my one time hatred toward 1e AD&D, and I've come almost full circle around from thinking I was a whole lot smarter than the guys who created D&D and thinking that there was almost nothing that they got wrong, to being absolutely amazed at how much they got right and how easy it is to miss the basics.

I've played quite a few RPGs over the years.  Many of them are quite fun.  But I have relatively desire to go back and create Star Wars capaigns, or Chill campaigns, or any of the other games which I have enjoyed participating in equally to D&D.  I'm certainly not still playing 'D&D' in a recognizable form because of my lack of desire to teach new systems or tinker with the rules or try new systems.


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## renau1g (Apr 22, 2010)

Doug McCrae said:


> Imo, 4e 1st lvl PCs are only awesome if the DM uses minions. If he doesn't then the party can be defeated by kobolds just as easily, in fact probably more easily, than in previous editions.




I agree with this, I've never had my PC's at the brink of a TPK with 4 kobolds in the past...


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## Celebrim (Apr 22, 2010)

Doug McCrae said:


> Imo, 4e 1st lvl PCs are only awesome if the DM uses minions. If he doesn't then the party can be defeated by kobolds just as easily, in fact probably more easily, than in previous editions.




This sorta misses the point in that you've defined up 'kobolds', and created a special case (its 1st lvl, but normal minion kobolds will be used).  

In 'earlier' editions, 1st level PC's could be sent up against 1st level non-commoner 'kobolds' to the exact same effect.  So you are comparing the minions of one edition to the non-minions of another edition, and saying in effect, "In 4e a 1st level character is relatively more threatened by a 4e non-minion than a 3rd edition character was threatened by a 3e minion."

Similarly, I could have painted a 1HD monster as a kobold in 1e and achieved the same thing that creating non-minion kobolds gets you in 4e.

But we don't have to do this sort of comparison.  Taken on its own, 4e 1st level characters bring more of 'the awesome' than 1st level characters of previous editions.  They have more than one effective HD, they have more abilities out of the gate, they have higher average ability scores.  In another context, I doubt that would even be contriversial.  People would be arguing how that was a feature rather than trying to deny its existance.  

And for the record, I don't even necessarily consider all of that a bug.  I adopted a portion of that (with different mechanics) into my own rules.


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## Chrono22 (Apr 22, 2010)

I find it ironic that the same people who consistently admonish others for creating edition wars seem intent on turning this thread into an edition war.
If you make your claims in loose terms, you are accused of lacking evidence. If you define your terms, you are accused of edition warring.
You can't win, Celebrim.


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## Obryn (Apr 22, 2010)

I'm not seeing anything edition-warry from either Celebrim or anyone else right now.  Am I missing it?

Generalized trends don't exist independent of their specifics.  You can't say there's a trend towards something without also showing specific examples which showcase it - or at least a few data points.  (And if it's supposedly a new trend, you probably should make sure the trendline doesn't trace back even further!)  I don't think it's unreasonable to ask for some of those examples.

What's more, if it's a trend in gaming overall, there should probably also be other games than 4e used for evidence. 

-O


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## Chrono22 (Apr 22, 2010)

But a trend in D&D _is_ a trend in gaming. Excluding D&D in discussions about gaming trends would be like excluding the US armed forces from discussions about global defense.


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## Obryn (Apr 22, 2010)

Chrono22 said:


> But a trend in D&D _is_ a trend in gaming. Excluding D&D in discussions about gaming trends would be like excluding the US armed forces from discussions about global defense.



If there's a trend in D&D, but you're not showing any evidence of a similar trend in other games, you probably shouldn't generalize the trend out to "gaming" as a whole, no matter what percentage of the gaming hobby D&D comprises.

In your example, if the U.S. Armed Forces started arming their soldiers with bunnies, saying "defense forces all around the world are arming their soldiers with bunnies" obscures the topic more than it enriches it.  It'd be better and clearer just to talk about the topics for which you have actual examples or evidence rather than trying to make unjustified generalizations.

-O


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## innerdude (Apr 22, 2010)

Celebrim said:


> Taken on its own, 4e 1st level characters bring more of 'the awesome' than 1st level characters of previous editions.  They have more than one effective HD, they have more abilities out of the gate, they have higher average ability scores.  In another context, I doubt that would even be contriversial.  People would be arguing how that was a feature rather than trying to deny its existance.
> 
> And for the record, I don't even necessarily consider all of that a bug.  I adopted a portion of that (with different mechanics) into my own rules.




No, this is exactly right--and depending on your gaming preference, it can be a good thing, or a bad thing. 

But, here's the real point--by filling a 1st-level character with more "win," this is an inherent concession to the perception that "fun" and "reward" for the individual players requires that characters must be effective in combat from the very second a campaign starts. Well, okay, but why is that any more fun than any other method? Is that inherently more "fun" or "rewarding" than a game where characters start out weaker, and must find unique and creative ways to A. either avoid combat entirely, or B. strategize in non-combat ways to maximize combat success? 

As a ruleset, 4th Edition has both good and bad points, and no edition of any RPG is perfect. But I also don't think it's a pejorative to say that 4th Edition's push to have 1st-level characters be more powerful, survivable, and combat-ready may be because _combat is one of the fastest, easiest ways to create short-cycle reward gratification._ For many groups of players, it's a lot harder to justify that "You'll appreciate the awesomeness of your character and the plot/story/hook 3 sessions from now" (even though that's often the type of gameplay I enjoy). It's much easier to say, "You'll appreciate your character's 'combat win' here, and now, and 3 times every gaming session from here on out." 

And as I stated in an earlier post, this may actually be a point in 4th Edition's favor when it comes to producing new "lifestyle" gamers and GMs. Because combat is a short-cycle reward, it doesn't take a fledgling RPG player 3 or 4 sessions to have a sense of accomplishment, and in many cases a fledgling GM can use that to his/her advantage until he/she is ready to tackle some of the longer-term world-building aspects (and this admission is from someone who doesn't really prefer the 4e rule system).

At this point, though, the question should not entirely focus on how D&D has historically set up short-cycle vs. long-cycle rewards, but rather how does any gaming mechanic in any other system do so? 

For example, I would be fascinated to hear from people who play the Serenity RPG how its intrinsic player action / reward system plays out.


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## Chrono22 (Apr 22, 2010)

Obryn said:


> If there's a trend in D&D, but you're not showing any evidence of a similar trend in other games, you probably shouldn't generalize the trend out to "gaming" as a whole, no matter what percentage of the gaming hobby D&D comprises.
> 
> In your example, if the U.S. Armed Forces started arming their soldiers with bunnies, saying "defense forces all around the world are arming their soldiers with bunnies" obscures the topic more than it enriches it.  It'd be better and clearer just to talk about the topics for which you have actual examples or evidence rather than trying to make unjustified generalizations.
> 
> -O



The thing is, your example would be a technical, literal and factual truth. The implication isn't false simply because the defense forces in question are solely American.
Instead of focusing on the minutiae of his positions in an attempt to discredit them, why not have some good faith and debate them directly?


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## Obryn (Apr 22, 2010)

Chrono22 said:


> The thing is, your example would be a technical, literal and factual truth. The implication isn't false simply because the defense forces in question are solely American.
> Instead of focusing on the minutiae of his positions in an attempt to discredit them, why not have some good faith and debate them directly?



I don't really want to derail this thread any further, so this is the last I'll say on this topic.  A trend's value is predictive.  In order for a trend to say something useful about the predicted course of games other than D&D, it should include data points on games other than D&D.  Otherwise, any generalization of that trend to games other than D&D is unjustified, regardless of what percentage of the hobby D&D comprises.  It lets us say, "D&D is moving in this direction," not "Games X, Y, and Z are moving in this direction."  Saying "D&D's game design is moving in this direction, and therefore the hobby's game design is moving in this direction" doesn't add anything more to the conversation; in fact, it serves to confuse the issue by effectively ignoring all game design trends which haven't taken place in D&D.

It's okay to say we're talking about D&D.  Not every discussion of D&D has to turn into an edition war.

-O


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## awesomeocalypse (Apr 22, 2010)

I have to say, I don't find the argument that video games are better at delivering instant gratification and rewards than PnP to be a compelling one.

I mean, obviously they're better at providing _certain kinds_ of gratification and rewards. Constant mechanical engagement (i.e. not needing to take turns) is a big one, as are graphics and sound. Writing a higher level on my character sheet is simply not going to be as viscerally satisfying as having holy light shine down on my character while triumphant music plays.

But I think that comparison ignores the sort of gratification and rewards that PnP actually do much better than video games. For one thing, social gratification. The social rewards of single player video games are nonexistant--when I do something awesome in Dragon Age, there's nobody there with me, benefiting from my awesomeness and congratulating or thanking me for it. Multiplayer games are inherantly more social than single player games, but are hampered by the incredibly fractured and largely anonymous nature of the internet--success in an online game may get my screenname onto a leaderboard or earn me a special title or something, but at best all I've done is marginally impress a bunch of strangers who have no idea who I really am (and, since so many people play these games, any one person's success will be both completely relative, and utterly commonplace. anyone who has ever played an MMORPG with titles quickly realizes that when everyone has an "awesome" title, they stop seeming impressive or awesome). The closest online games come to the PNP social experience are close-knit guilds, but even those are typically more anonymous than PNP, less likely to overlap with real-life social circles, and lack the visceral appeal of face-to-face interaction. Someone telling you it was awesome how you killed the dragon is nice when they do it through voicechat, but its better when they're right there telling you to your face.

PNP, on the other hand, is terrific at setting up social rewards. You're right there, playing face to face with your friends and people who actually overlap with your social circle and who know who you are. Moreover, success is typically defined in such a way that those friends will all benefit the more successful you are. Which means that each time you do something cool, although you may not get the nifty graphics, you get something that is, to my mind, even better: all of your friends cheering you on, high fiving you, and telling you how awesome you are. For an "ego-driven" gamer, what could be better?

The other form of gratification/reward that PNP is terrific at are story/setting rewards, i.e. giving your actions significance to the plot and to the world around you. Here, multiplayer games lag behind single player, for the most part--because characters share a world, even with instancing/phasing there are limits to how much any one character can change that world. And since so many people are playing, its impossible for one player or group of players to be "the heroes", because everyone is one of "the heroes". Being the savior of the world doesn't feel quite as badass when you're surrounded by thousands of people who are also world saviors. "Yeah, I know this NPC is telling me I'm terrific for killing that dragon, but if I log in with my alt he's gonna tell him the same thing". Single player games are better about this, but even they offer far less freedom to shape the world than PNP can. A PNP game can be literally shaped around its characters and everything they do, so that when they accomplish something heroic, the story and world acknowledge it and react to it. For an ego-driven gamer, saving the world is a lot cooler when you're the only one doing it and, when you do save the world, the world reacts to that and rewards you for it by treating you like the awesome hero you are. The more single player games try to simulate this, the more likely they are to become either railroady (sure you change the world, provided you do it in this one specificn way) or generic ("Thanks for saving the world [blank]. Your awesome [insert class here] powers really saved the day" isn't as cool as an interaction built around your specific character).

Basically, I think PNP are still better at providing social gratification than even the most social MMORPGs, and I think they're still better at offering up a satisfying story shaped around the protagonist's choices than even the most well-crafted single player RPG. To me, those are two powerful mechanisms of reward and gratification, and as a player who does play in part out of ego and the desire to feel awesome all the time, I find them to be significantly more appealing than the rewards offered by video games.


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## Thornir Alekeg (Apr 22, 2010)

innerdude said:


> As a ruleset, 4th Edition has both good and bad points, and no edition of any RPG is perfect. But I also don't think it's a pejorative to say that 4th Edition's push to have 1st-level characters be more powerful, survivable, and combat-ready may be because _combat is one of the fastest, easiest ways to create short-cycle reward gratification._ For many groups of players, it's a lot harder to justify that "You'll appreciate the awesomeness of your character and the plot/story/hook 3 sessions from now" (even though that's often the type of gameplay I enjoy). It's much easier to say, "You'll appreciate your character's 'combat win' here, and now, and 3 times every gaming session from here on out."
> 
> Now for some players, the "short-cycle reward" nature of combat is either not inherently satisfying, or is only satisfying for a short period of time. These players want a different sense of "reward gratification." Does this mean that their playstyle is any better or worse than someone who is wholly content with a shorter term reward cycle? Of course not. But it's easy to see why a rule system--any rule system--that revolves around short-cycle rewards is going to probably lose players that want a different length/type of reward cycle.



But does a rule system that revolves around a short-cycle reward system preclude middle or long term rewards, or does it just not emphasize it?  I would say that nothing prevents the system from having additional rewards cycle lengths.  You will still get the short cycle "fix," but as with certain addictions those may become routine and no longer be as satisfying.  As a result the game has to be able to take it to the next level, providing new and interesting challenges and rewards.  If this were to hold true, then the perfect scenario for a game design company would be to start things out with the short-cycle, but over time introduce new rules, levels of complexity and suggestions for longer cycle rewards.  

A more positive way of looking at this would be maturing the rules as time goes on.  By doing so in supplements, the quicker, more easily-gratifying rules are still available as the "base" system, with the more comlpex aspects provided later.  

When it comes to things like a new edition of an existing game, the problem comes from the players who are already at the "mature" level of play, and want the new edition to meet all of their needs and wants immediately.


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## innerdude (Apr 22, 2010)

awesomeocalypse said:


> I have to say, I don't find the argument that video games are better at delivering *instant* gratification and rewards than PnP to be a compelling one.




I disagree, but only in the use of the word "instant" here. If you're talking about immediate, nearly instantaneous reward feedback, PnP is NEVER going to touch a video game. Ever. It just can't; the nature of a PnP game itself prevents it. There's no "Boot up in minutes and, oooooh, look at the flashy!" in pen and paper. 

However--most of the ideas you posit are not what I consider to be _instant_ gratification. They're longer-term, more intrinsic to the nature of the types of challenges that a PnP RPG can present. And to me, these are the types of rewards that _can't_ be duplicated by short-cycle achievements (like finding "phat lewt" in a dungeon when playing _Diablo_). 

I think what Celebrim has been saying all along, and I totally agree with him, is that the pen-and-paper gaming industry has to be careful not to sacrifice the longer-lasting, more satisfying long-term rewards simply to try and capture more of the "phat lewt" audience. Not that the demographics are mutually exclusive, mind you, only that it's going to be very difficult to satisfy both halves of the demographic totally successfully. And I also think Celebrim is right in saying that ultimately, the success or failure of the pen-and-paper RPG industry hinges on companies' ability to cater to the long-term reward cycle "lifestyle gamers," than to the short-cycle gamers.


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## awesomeocalypse (Apr 22, 2010)

> I disagree, but only in the use of the word "instant" here. If you're talking about immediate, nearly instantaneous reward feedback, PnP is NEVER going to touch a video game. Ever. It just can't; the nature of a PnP game itself prevents it. There's no "Boot up in minutes and, oooooh, look at the flashy!" in pen and paper.
> 
> However--most of the ideas you posit are not what I consider to be _instant_ gratification. They're longer-term, more intrinsic to the nature of the types of challenges that a PnP RPG can present. And to me, these are the types of rewards that _can't_ be duplicated by short-cycle achievements (like finding "phat lewt" in a dungeon when playing _Diablo_).
> 
> I think what Celebrim has been saying all along, and I totally agree with him, is that the pen-and-paper gaming industry has to be careful not to sacrifice the longer-lasting, more satisfying long-term rewards simply to try and capture more of the "phat lewt" audience. Not that the demographics are mutually exclusive, mind you, only that it's going to be very difficult to satisfy both halves of the demographic totally successfully. And I also think Celebrim is right in saying that ultimately, the success or failure of the pen-and-paper RPG industry hinges on companies' ability to cater to the long-term reward cycle "lifestyle gamers," than to the short-cycle gamers.




And my argument is that, unless we're literally splitting fractions of a second here, the type of gratification PNP games are good at offering can be just as "instant" as in video games. No, there's no "look at the flashy", but that isn't the only kind of instantaneous reward.

When my friends and I are in a tough combat, and I land a critical hit, it may not come with flashy images and booming sound effects...but if it makes my friends jump up and yell "w00t! way to go awesomeocalypse!", then that is a more or less instantenous reward, and to my mind, one that is considerably more of an ego boost. If I pull off a cool stunt, I may not have the satisfaction of seeing it beautifully rendered in 3d. But if the DM has one of the minions I'm fighting go "oh my god, didja see how that guy ran up the wall and flipped over the dragon? there's no way we're taking this guy, run away!" then that is a viscerally satisfying immediate reward.

I've yet to see a convincing explanation as to why the sort of rewards PNP offers for the "ego-driven gamer" are inherantly delayed or less instantaneously gratifying. I have loads of great memories of doing awesome stuff in PNP, and having the more or less instantaneous gratification of the congratulations of my friends and the respect/awe of the characters in the world. No delayed, long cycle reward required.


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## innerdude (Apr 22, 2010)

Woas said:


> So you feel that a television or computer monitor is more satisfying and powerful than ones own imagination and minds eye?




Not universally, no. I'm merely saying that depending on the desired type and speed of reward feedback, a computer game is a far more easily accessible, instantaneous, and compelling way to get that type of reward feedback than a pen-and-paper RPG is. 

And Celebrim's point is that pen-and-paper RPGs often run into trouble when they try to duplicate that type of reward feedback in the same manner, frequency, and consistency as a computer RPG does. It's a hell of a lot harder for a pen-and-paper RPG to produce those levels of short-cycle reward feedback than it is for a computer game to do so.


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## Nifft (Apr 22, 2010)

innerdude said:


> Not universally, no. I'm merely saying that depending on the desired type and speed of reward feedback, a computer game is a far more easily accessible, instantaneous, and compelling way to get that type of reward feedback than a pen-and-paper RPG is.
> 
> And Celebrim's point is that pen-and-paper RPGs often run into trouble when they try to duplicate that type of reward feedback in the same manner, frequency, and consistency as a computer RPG does. It's a hell of a lot harder for a pen-and-paper RPG to produce those levels of short-cycle reward feedback than it is for a computer game to do so.



 Mmm. I actually wonder about that. In a face-to-face game, a reward can be instant, and can actually precede the success(!!) (or lack of success).

In specific, I'm thinking about "get-more-dice" systems like Exalted's stunts, or "get-more-resource" systems like WFRP 3e's group token pool. Using these systems, the DM can reward you for a creative solution many times over the course of a session.

Cheers, -- N


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## innerdude (Apr 22, 2010)

awesomeocalypse said:


> When my friends and I are in a tough combat, and I land a critical hit, it may not come with flashy images and booming sound effects...but if it makes my friends jump up and yell "w00t! way to go awesomeocalypse!", then that is a more or less instantenous reward, and to my mind, one that is considerably more of an ego boost. If I pull off a cool stunt, I may not have the satisfaction of seeing it beautifully rendered in 3d. But if the DM has one of the minions I'm fighting go "oh my god, didja see how that guy ran up the wall and flipped over the dragon? there's no way we're taking this guy, run away!" then that is a viscerally satisfying immediate reward.




I want to respond to your post, but I do find it interesting that when you talked about the "long term" rewards of pen-and-paper gaming, you talked about the social aspects, the world-building aspects, and the character-driven aspects. But when you wanted to talk about the "instantaneous Woot!" moments of an RPG, you talked about combat. Just an observation.  

 It's not necessarily the _type_ of reward that's different between computer and PnP RPGs--it's the manner, frequency, consistency, and might I add, _depth_ of the sense of reward that's different. If a player prefers constant, immediate, near-instantaneous reward feedback, a pen-and-paper RPG is the vastly inferior choice to a computer RPG, and that player is likely going to be frustrated when a pen-and-paper RPG isn't providing "enough" reward, and will likely try to push the game in directions that _will _provide those levels of reward. 

For example, in my recent Star Wars Saga game, my character talked a Grand Moff out of sending an entire squad of troops to a location where I knew the rest of my party would be. And as a player, I derived 1000 times more satisfaction from that moment than from any combat fight I've ever participated in, in _any _RPG. 

But the "reward feedback" for that moment took five or six sessions to create. The payoff for that moment took a lot more than my GM tossing a few minis on a battle mat and rolling for initiative. It took a GM willing to create interesting plot hooks, to integrate character actions into the flow of the story, it took setting up and managing an "acted role" on the fly, and then managing the consequences of the results of our interaction into the ensuing track of the campaign. 

Once again, it's not about the ability of computer RPGs vs. PnP RPGs to produce the same types of "reward feedback." It's about the player's expectation of how quickly, how often, and in what degree the reward comes.


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## I'm A Banana (Apr 22, 2010)

Flashing lights, loud noises, and jarring motion will always, always, always win out for "reward for accomplishing a task." 

It's biological. There's lizard-brain impulses at work here. They are better ways to satisfy the players' drive to succeed. 

PnP RPGs can offer other rewards, and, IMO, more diverse rewards, but they can't compare to a videogame's audio-visual stimulus. 

So _success_ can't really be the point, in a PnP RPG designed to take advantage of the medium. It'll be there, but it can't be the primary goal. If the player is seeking immediate success, they will be frustrated, because it does not come as fast or as potent as the reward for pushing X until your thumbs are sore. It can't compare.

Success can and should be part of the fun of a PnP RPG, but it cannot be the main or only thing the game offers, if the game hopes to favorably compete for a player's free time with other distractions.


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## awesomeocalypse (Apr 22, 2010)

> I want to respond to your post, but I do find it interesting that when  you talked about the "long term" rewards of pen-and-paper gaming, you  talked about the social aspects, the world-building aspects, and the  character-driven aspects. But when you wanted to talk about the  "instantaneous Woot!" moments of an RPG, you talked about combat. Just  an observation.




I think you're misunderstanding me. My original point had nothing to do with the long term rewards of pen and paper gaming. In fact, I was making the opposite point, that "story-driven" and "social" rewards can be just as instantaneously gratifying as the "ooh flashy" rewards of gaming, and I used combat to make my point, because combat is generally seen as the most immediate aspect of gaming. I don't believe that story rewards are exclusive to the longterm, I absolutely do not believe that social rewards are long term, and moreover, I don't draw a distinction between the social and story aspects of an rpg and combat. Combat is social, story can take place in combat, and the rewards of a PNP rpg can be just as instantaneous as those of a video game, albeit of a different nature. Story rewards can be longterm, multi-session dialogue...but they can also just be the DMing adapting on the fly to actions taken by characters in a way that makes them feel awesome. Social rewards can be arduously earned and codified, or they can be as simple and immediate as a high-five for a well-executed stunt. The idea that the only kind of immediate gratification available to games is either graphical or mechanical simply doesn't jive with my experience at all. Some of my favorite PNP gaming moments came in dungeon crawl oneshots with minimal overarching story, but where my character pulled off an awesome manuever that saved the day, earning me the congratulations and gratitude of my fellow party members, and affecting the encounter and world around me in a way that felt cool (which doesn't have to be some big overarching story thing--if my badassness makes my enemies run away in fear, thats an immediate story-based reward that can feel pretty gratifying).


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## innerdude (Apr 22, 2010)

Nifft said:


> Mmm. I actually wonder about that. In a face-to-face game, a reward can be instant, and can actually precede the success(!!) (or lack of success).




I think this is a slight mischaracterization of the point, which is not that players cannot feel an immediate sense of success, or accomplishment, in the moment of playing a PnP RPG. This is absolutely the case, and should be the entire reason we play RPGs at all. 

The actual point is that compared to a PnP RPG, a computer RPG _sets up far more situations, far more rapidly, and far more consistently for a player to receive positive feedback from their actions_. 

Unless your GM can literally throw 10 mobs of 25 monsters each in front of you, and have your party blow through them in 30 minutes flat (like you can in _WoW, Guild Wars_, et.al.), then a pen-and-paper RPG simply doesn't _provide as many opportunities_ to receive immediate reward feedback as a computer RPG does. It's just the simple truth. 

(To be fair, you might actually be able to accomplish this if all the monsters were 4th Ed. minions, and the PCs were rolling insanely well, but I digress LOL). 

It's not that the feedback itself is any more "immediate," or "less compelling" in one medium or the other. It's that one medium has the capacity to provide more opportunities to receive that reward feedback, and receive it faster. Thus, if as a player, your "reward feedback" loop is set to a very short amount of time between opportunities, then a pen-and-paper RPG may not be the best means of "scratching your gaming itch."


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## innerdude (Apr 22, 2010)

awesomeocalypse said:


> I think you're misunderstanding me. My original point had nothing to do with the long term rewards of pen and paper gaming. In fact, I was making the opposite point, that "story-driven" and "social" rewards can be just as instantaneously gratifying as the "ooh flashy" rewards of gaming, and I used combat to make my point, because combat is generally seen as the most immediate aspect of gaming.




Aaah, okay, I see the problem here. See my response to Nifft's point. I think the confusion comes not from the idea that player satisfaction doesn't happen as immediately and rewardingly in PnP games as it does in computer RPGs.

The real point is that a computer RPG has the ability to provide _far more opportunities to receive immediate feedback in the same amount of time_.


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## Ariosto (Apr 22, 2010)

I recall Gygax in an interview -- I think back in '76 or '77, before modules -- saying that D&D had a dominance no rival could contest because of sheer sales (300,000 units maybe, anyhow something pretty impressive). I think he chalked it up to being first to market, having not only pioneered the concept but had the field entirely to itself for a year before T&T came along.

Considering all the changes since, as well as an apparently still strong brand loyalty that I remember having extended more broadly to TSR Hobbies back in the day, I can see something to that.

On the other hand, the basic concept was a pretty brilliant success that I think influenced (and continues to influence) a lot of design in the computer-game field. That distinction has been greatly watered down not only by imitators but a trend to reverse the movement and have D&D become more like other games.

A potential problem there is that this means competing on ground where the D&D brand is the follower and someone else is the leader _conceptually_.


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## Nifft (Apr 23, 2010)

innerdude said:


> I think this is a slight mischaracterization of the point, which is not that players cannot feel an immediate sense of success, or accomplishment, in the moment of playing a PnP RPG. This is absolutely the case, and should be the entire reason we play RPGs at all.
> 
> The actual point is that compared to a PnP RPG, a computer RPG _sets up far more situations, far more rapidly, and far more consistently for a player to receive positive feedback from their actions_.
> 
> Unless your GM can literally throw 10 mobs of 25 monsters each in front of you, and have your party blow through them in 30 minutes flat (like you can in _WoW, Guild Wars_, et.al.), then a pen-and-paper RPG simply doesn't _provide as many opportunities_ to receive immediate reward feedback as a computer RPG does. It's just the simple truth.



 See, I'm going to disagree. At some point, "dropping a monster" is no longer a meaningful accomplishment, just as "scoring a hit" isn't a meaningful accomplishment in your framework.

Computer games can only reward appropriate reactions. Face-to-face games are allowed to reward novelty. Only the latter is infinite.




innerdude said:


> It's not that the feedback itself is any more "immediate," or "less compelling" in one medium or the other. It's that one medium has the capacity to provide more opportunities to receive that reward feedback, and receive it faster. Thus, if as a player, your "reward feedback" loop is set to a very short amount of time between opportunities, then a pen-and-paper RPG may not be the best means of "scratching your gaming itch."



 Ironically, I think that face-to-face gaming actually can provide faster -- and more frequent -- and even *more compelling* -- positive feedback.

Face-to-face gaming can give immediate rewards for creativity. IMHO this is a more rewarding kind of reward: it's an affirmation of something deeper than my skill at mastering any given system.

In any computer game I play, rewards for creativity are LONG delayed, if they're possible at all. (And they generally have to be: if you grant easy rewards for creativity in a computer game, you open the door to a lot of abuse.)

Cheers, -- N


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## Celebrim (Apr 23, 2010)

Ariosto said:


> On the other hand, the basic concept was a pretty brilliant success that I think influenced (and continues to influence) a lot of design in the computer-game field.




D&D got an amazing amount right.  I keep being tempted to fork the thread, but look at the things it got absolutely right.

Just for one, the gameplay that is described and promoted by the rules is naturally played by groups of people.  I don't know how many brilliant written RPG's informed by the best modern theories and practices I've read over the years that read so well, but which, on the whole describe and promote a gameplay which is not conducive to groups and which can only be achieved as described basically by one on one sessions between the DM and player.  Those games may still be played, but they are ultimately not played according to the stated intention of the designer.  Its the kind of thing that is so basic that we still often don't think about it, but because of D&D's organical evolved and adapted roots it just naturally gets this spot on.


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## wilrich (Apr 23, 2010)

nevermind


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## Saeviomagy (Apr 23, 2010)

Celebrim said:


> Morrus is saying, "Status's suck and they make the game unfun for the players because they force the player to actually or effectively lose a turn (extending the wait between action and reward).




According to your own argument, there's no difference in the action reward cycle for recovering from a save-ends stun and attacking a foe. Removing them from the game doesn't change the cycle at all, and does, in fact, simply add more non-pavlovian enjoyment: the enjoyment of taking meaningful choices.

I know I keep coming back to this one, but so do you, and it's really not fitting in with the rest of your argument.


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## amysrevenge (Apr 23, 2010)

Whew!  Just read the whole thread to here in one go (and have delayed bedtime by about an hour to do so!)

It took about half the thread, but I think I understand the premise of the OP, and can see where some people are arguing things that are not quite what is being aimed at here.

Looking at it from a scientist/engineer perspetive, my biggest problem is with the way that the trend of shorter-cycle gratification has been extrapolated.

The argument seems to me to be thus:  the reward cycle is shorter now than is was before, ergo it will continue to get shorter until it is effectively infinitely short, or at least is so short as to lose value to a large number of participants (ie. short_er_ besomes short_est_, and shortest is too short).

To my eye, that is only one way of extrapolating "shorter".  

For poops and chuckles I whipped out a fancy graph to show what I mean.  I realize that this is quantifying what is ultimately a qualitative factor, but humour me - I'm not assuming any sort of actual units here, only a sort of relative measure.  I literally fudged with numbers until I found lines that looked how I liked.











The blue line represents the "shorter -> shortest -> too short" line of reasoning.

The red line, however, represents a sort of "diminishing returns" sort of decay in the duration of the reward cycle.  Sure it's always getting shorter, but the incremental decay is smaller each time, until, if designed well, it reaches a stable "shorter" that might actually result in a fun and marketable game.


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## Celebrim (Apr 23, 2010)

Saeviomagy said:


> According to your own argument, there's no difference in the action reward cycle for recovering from a save-ends stun and attacking a foe.




Ok, first of all no.  According to my argument there is no difference in the action/reward cycle between failing to recover from a debilitating status that forces you to lose a turn and taking an action which results in failure.  In both cases, on your turn, you roll a dice, recieve no gratifying reward, and pass the dice to another player.  In both cases, the ego gamer likely does it unhappily.  



> Removing them from the game doesn't change the cycle at all, and does, in fact, simply add more non-pavlovian enjoyment: the enjoyment of taking meaningful choices.




I basically agree.  Removing both status effects that debilitated a character and misses from the game would in fact add more immediate gratification to the ego gamer.  Both are sources of irritation and frustration.  He doesn't like to miss.  He doesn't like to be stunned.  Both 'suck'.  

My point in comparing the situation where you are stunned to the situation where your turn was pointless because you accomplished nothing was to bring up the fact that you couldn't solve the problem by simply getting rid of 'stunned', because there would be similar situations that would annoy the sort of player who was particularly annoyed by being stunned.  I predicted that it wouldn't stop at 'getting rid of statuses'.  I predicted that quite quickly there would be a demand for 'getting rid of misses', and that prediction was born out very quickly when someone pointed out a thread where they were discussing that very thing.   

In fact, my assertion is that where all of this ends is 'getting rid of failure'.  The only way to tie the action/reward system tightly enough to satisfy the ego gamer is to make every action give a reward.  In a video game, at some level thats easy enough.  Every action is accompanied by satisfying sounds, bells, flashing lights, and so forth.  When the player is playing a game like Diablo II, he plays for hours on end, perhaps for days of time, _usually with no chance of meaningful failure at all_.  In fact, in a game like Diablo II, failure is defined down to a less than perfectly satisfying reward of treasure.  All that activity on the screen gives a small mental reward for the action and keeps the player engaged despite the repetitiveness of the activity.  Eventually though, by defining failure down far enough, you can destroy your illusion of accomplishment.


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## amysrevenge (Apr 23, 2010)

Celebrim said:


> The only way to tie the action/reward system tightly enough to satisfy the ego gamer is to make every action give a reward.





Press the button, get a food pellet.


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## Garthanos (Apr 23, 2010)

Celebrim said:


> Ok, first of all no.  According to my argument there is no difference in the action/reward cycle between failing to recover from a debilitating status that forces you to lose a turn and taking an action which results in failure.  In both cases, on your turn, you roll a dice, recieve no gratifying reward, and pass the dice to another player.  In both cases, the ego gamer likely does it unhappily.




Somebody can very much dislike the feel of choiceless-ness of the first without disliking the second at all...people rejecting the choiceless non-participation does not make them insisting on success... and from what I can tell feel insulted that you imply they are your "ego-gamers"

Note its possible to have your character be in a disabled state without being as a player disabled(lacking choices) for instance via meta tools  the player may have a choice to play an Action Point or Karma/Fate point to influence the action. They might be able to spend it to improve there characters recovery or influence the action via luck so that an ally can safely reach them or similar things.


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## SKyOdin (Apr 23, 2010)

You know, most of this thread's argument is based on the assumption that there are gamers out there who only play in order to experience a constant barrage of instant gratification and immediate rewards in terms of victories and loot. But do those gamers actually exist? So far, this is all empty theorizing based on assumptions that merely sound like they _could_ be true. Numerous people, most notably Freud, have created theories about human psychology that have sounded good, but were simply wrong. A psychological theory needs some kind of evidence in order to be validated, and I don't think many of the people in this thread actually have any scientific evidence to base their theorizing on.

Let's look at the XEODesign study I linked to earlier in the thread. For the sake of convience, you can find it here. The study focused on videogames, but since we are talking about instant gratification in videogames, it is completely relevent. In that study, they found four main reasons that gamers play videogames. These are:

1) Hard Difficulty
Overcoming challenges and Frustration in order to experience Fiero, the pride of achievement.
2) Easy Difficulty
Becoming immersed in a world or story. Associated with the emotions Wonder, Awe, and Mystery.
3) Altered States
Playing games in order to relax or to enjoy tan adrenaline rush. Characterized by Relief and Excitement.
4) The People Factor
Playing games in order to partake in social experiences. This can include joking with friends, watching someone you taught how to play do well, or gloating over defeated rivals.

Nowhere in the study did they mention people playing in order to receive some kind of instant gratification or something as nebulous as "the illusion of achievement". I think both of those concepts are just things people have made up in order to justify the behavior of other people that they don't like or understand.


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## Ariosto (Apr 23, 2010)

What Garthanos mentioned -- simply switching to a different but no smaller set of options when a PC is indisposed -- might well suffice, I think, for players who see a critical distinction between the one situation and the other.

To keep suggesting that a demographic that sees them as the same, and can be satisfied only with abolition of "failure" in every sense, is driving game design appears to me so far unwarranted.

It does not follow that such a demographic is nonexistent. I wonder, though, with what frequency it has appeared in this very thread, and what that might suggest?


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## Fifth Element (Apr 23, 2010)

Celebrim said:


> In both cases, on your turn, you roll a dice, recieve no gratifying reward, and pass the dice to another player.



Dude, you let other players touch your dice? Wow.


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## Starfox (Apr 24, 2010)

Garthanos said:


> Somebody can very much dislike the feel of choiceless-ness of the first without disliking the second at all...people rejecting the choiceless non-participation does not make them insisting on success... and from what I can tell feel insulted that you imply they are your "ego-gamers"




Give the thesis a break. The thread is about a theorized "ego gamer" that reacts in certain way and claims that this playstyle is on the rise and getting attention from gamemakers. Of course there are still many players that are not  "ego gamer", or are so to a lesser degree. That does not disprove the thesis.

I suppose that in a fluid market, an identified target group can be pretty small and it can still be worth pandering to, because customer types are so difficult to pin down. The sales people at WotC have to try and identify trends and play by them, even if they are seemingly weak, because a weak trend still gives better direction than no trend analysis at all.


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## Starfox (Apr 24, 2010)

SKyOdin said:


> Let's look at the XEODesign study [...] Nowhere in the study did they mention people playing in order to receive some kind of instant gratification or something as nebulous as "the illusion of achievement". I think both of those concepts are just things people have made up in order to justify the behavior of other people that they don't like or understand.




A good read on this topic: 5 Creepy Ways Video Games Are Trying to Get You Addicted | Cracked.com


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## Garthanos (Apr 24, 2010)

Starfox said:


> The sales people at WotC have to try and identify trends and play by them, even if they are seemingly weak, because a weak trend still gives better direction than no trend analysis at all.




Then lets look at a trend test ... There were roleplaying games and many of them even fairly early on that featured hardier more competent begining characters with abilities like magic controlled by mana points or similar allowing frequent use. hmmmmm? I don't even think Celebrim is some insulated youth who thinks there weren't do you?

It tells me we need to look to more normal motivations for game features that broadly implemented.  Real life people are complicated when analyzing people in GURPS for instance if you included every single skill a real person has it gets to be astounding.

Desire for detailed characters seems to also drive wanting them to be hardier, if you spend more time and effort making them then you expect them to be useful and interesting for a longer game time...


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## Garthanos (Apr 24, 2010)

Starfox said:


> A good read on this topic: 5 Creepy Ways Video Games Are Trying to Get You Addicted | Cracked.com




I didnt follow the link... but have you heard the reason why Freud is rejected by modern psychology almost every where ...  I hear it was two reasons the first isnt important ( because he just referbished a really old pop model... of mind body and soul with different names) ... the second reason is because he based everything on self avowed crazy french men generalizing and convincing himself it applied to normal folk pretty much without corroboration.


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## Garthanos (Apr 24, 2010)

amysrevenge said:


> Press the button, get a food pellet.




Comparing people who like things different than you do.. to rats pushing buttons for feed is so gracious I cant believe it and yes that is exactly the right analogy for this thread.


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## SKyOdin (Apr 24, 2010)

Starfox said:


> A good read on this topic: 5 Creepy Ways Video Games Are Trying to Get You Addicted | Cracked.com




I wouldn't call that a good read. Most of it is no different than the arm-chair psychology going on in this thread. The people at that site aren't professional psychologists, they are sensationalistic journalists. Most of that article has logical holes you can drive a truck through. It is also primarily talking about MMO design, which is a fair bit different beast than most other games or tabletop RPGs. Furthermore, the phenomena that article describes, and the limited psychological evidence it draws upon, have nothing to do with Celebrim's "ego-gamers are averse to failure" theory.


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## Hussar (Apr 24, 2010)

I've been mulling this one over for a bit.

I think there's an element missing from Celebrim's analysis and that's the presumed campaign length that has become fairly codified into D&D design.  The market research leading up to 3e showed that (of those that were queried) a campaign lasts about a year, year and a half on average.  Now, remember, this was of 2e players, primarily.  There's a quote floating around here somewhere from Gygax that stated something to the fact that 10 levels should take about a year of sessions (or so, give or take), which would put a "campaign" length at around the same ball park for earlier editions.

3e let that length strongly influence their design.  When you presume that a campaign will be about a year and a half, that's about 80 sessions (to pick and easy number, pick another, probably between 60 and 100 if it makes you feel better).  Once you make that decision AND you decide that within an average campaign, an average group should be able to hit the entire game, that gives you your advancement rate.

In 3e, that means you should bump about every four sessions.  Probably a bit quicker.  In 4e, that means you should bump better than every three sessions.  

Is this catering to a certain kind of gamer, or is it recognizing the realities of the player base and designing to that reality?  1e didn't really have a presumed campaign length and, I think, for most gamers, a large chunk of the rules when unused.  How many eighth level spells did you actually cast in 1e after all?

Once you make those two decisions - that a campaign will last about X number of sessions, and within those sessions, the players should have the opportunity to experience the entire game - you get your rate of reward.


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## Celebrim (Apr 24, 2010)

Hussar said:


> I think there's an element missing from Celebrim's analysis and that's the presumed campaign length that has become fairly codified into D&D design...
> 
> ...Is this catering to a certain kind of gamer, or is it recognizing the realities of the player base and designing to that reality?  1e didn't really have a presumed campaign length and, I think, for most gamers, a large chunk of the rules when unused.  How many eighth level spells did you actually cast in 1e after all?
> 
> Once you make those two decisions - that a campaign will last about X number of sessions, and within those sessions, the players should have the opportunity to experience the entire game - you get your rate of reward.




That's an interesting set of thoughts.  The longest campaign I was in went 4 or 5 years, and probably 120 sessions over that period (total play around 600 hours).  It went on for a bit after I left it, but when I left the players were 12th-13th level (or equivalent multiclassing).  Now that you mention it, I've never cast an 8th level spell in 1e, and maybe not even as the DM running an NPC.  I do remember casting 'Reverse Gravity' as a player, and few other similar spells, but those are I think 7th level.

When I started gaming, the default assumption was that all play was inherently open ended.  You might arbitrarily pick a place to stop, but there was no end.  The 1e AD&D character progression tables implied they didn't stop anywhere, and that the same rules set would extend out infinitely.  The 1e AD&D M-U table ended at something like 26th level or some such, but like every other table it carried instructions for going on.  There was no assumption you'd reach 'the end'.  In a way, D&D seems to me almost to have been the 'new games' version of the war game - open ended, cooperative, inclusive, and governed by a certain spirit of play (most manifestedly by the inclusion of 'rule zero', giving the referee the right to change the rules in the middle of play).  

As a player, it never occured to me that I was missing out on something by not having a 18th level M-U who could cast 'wish' and 'meteor swarm'.  Name level PC's were fantastically powerful people capable of overcoming many challenges on there own, and in cooperation could dominate just about anything in the game.

I'd be interested in knowing where the shift in expectations came from, or whether I was just unusual in not feeling cheated by not getting to be umpteenth level.  If there was a shift in expectations, the immediate - but perhaps incorrect - assumption I want to leap to is that this comes back into D&D from computer games, which, by necessity must be closed ended and which get nothing from offering content which is not directly experienced.


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## Doug McCrae (Apr 24, 2010)

Celebrim said:


> If there was a shift in expectations, the immediate - but perhaps incorrect - assumption I want to leap to is that this comes back into D&D from computer games, which, by necessity must be closed ended and which get nothing from offering content which is not directly experienced.



Most computer games do have a definite ending but MMOs, such as World of Warcraft, don't. Blizzard will keep producing new content for WoW, and increasing the maximum level, for as long as people keep paying.

Regarding early D&D, you're right to say that there's a lot of evidence that it's intended to be open-ended - very high level modules such as Isle of the Ape, open-ended charts (+3hp/lvl etc), the fact that Gary himself had PCs in the teens and so forth. But there are a few indicators that one is supposed to stop at name level. The OD&D tables only go up to 10th level for fighting men and clerics (16 for wizards, weirdly) and there's no indication that a PC can keep going beyond that. (Hit dice relative to level are much wonkier in OD&D than in AD&D so there's no easy way to extrapolate levelling.) These limits were increased in Supplement I, Greyhawk. Also, name level is when a PC 'settles down' in his stronghold. Another factor are the level limits for demi-humans, which were increased in Unearthed Arcana.

In fact the idea of where the limit is probably changed quite a bit in D&D's first ten years, as it became apparent that the hobby was going to stick around. People just wouldn't have looked that far ahead in 1974.


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## Steel_Wind (Apr 24, 2010)

Hussar said:


> There's a quote floating around here somewhere from Gygax that stated something to the fact that 10 levels should take about a year of sessions (or so, give or take), which would put a "campaign" length at around the same ball park for earlier editions.




Correct, but misleading.

What changed from between 1st ed ca. 1978-79 and 3.x ca. 2001 was not the "length" of the intended campaign in terms of the overall time of 12-18 months, but the frequency of sessions within that time span.

What changed in that 20+ years? Simple: the core audience of the players got older - a lot older - and we no longer had time to play 2, 3, or four times a week. Responsibilities: jobs, wives and families  interceded. Many people were now getting in one game a week - and still many others a game every other weekend, or less than that.

So that was the main change in 3.xx and the experience point rules. The number of campaign sessions that would be required to level a character was deliberately and significantly reduced in the XP design of 3.xx. 1st ed experience point system was aimed at slowing down level advancement - whereas 3.xx was aimed at speeding it up. Monte Cook wrote about this change and why it was done after the release of 3.xx. 

To suggest the average length of a campaign was about the same in 3.xx as it was in 1st or 2d ed is only superficially accurate. Under the hood - the XP reward crunch underwent a HUGE and deliberate change in the XP reward system, brought about largely by the aging of the core audience of the game.  The change was not a consequence of providing more and more doggie treats to the players - but in providing them often enough, given the decreasing # of game sessions most players were spending playing their characters during the course of a campaign and the reduction in frequency of actual game sessions.


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## pemerton (Apr 25, 2010)

innerdude said:


> I'm merely saying that depending on the desired type and speed of reward feedback, a computer game is a far more easily accessible, instantaneous, and compelling way to get that type of reward feedback than a pen-and-paper RPG is.
> 
> And Celebrim's point is that pen-and-paper RPGs often run into trouble when they try to duplicate that type of reward feedback in the same manner, frequency, and consistency as a computer RPG does. It's a hell of a lot harder for a pen-and-paper RPG to produce those levels of short-cycle reward feedback than it is for a computer game to do so.



Awesomeapocalypse has shown that this just isn't true - enjoyable face-to-face RPGs give immediate social and story rewards on a more-or-less continuous basis.



Nifft said:


> Mmm. I actually wonder about that. In a face-to-face game, a reward can be instant, and can actually precede the success(!!) (or lack of success).
> 
> In specific, I'm thinking about "get-more-dice" systems like Exalted's stunts, or "get-more-resource" systems like WFRP 3e's group token pool. Using these systems, the DM can reward you for a creative solution many times over the course of a session.



Good point about options for mechanical rewards. But I think awesomeapocalypse's point about social rewards is a deeper one. In a face-to-face RPG, I think the social rewards are probably the deeper source of player gratification.



Hussar said:


> Once you make those two decisions - that a campaign will last about X number of sessions, and within those sessions, the players should have the opportunity to experience the entire game - you get your rate of reward.



Lke Nifft, you're talking about the mechanical reward of XP/character development. This is one interesting aspect of the game, but not the crucial one (and in any event hard to compare between more modern games, where it tends to be built into the character development rules, and a game like AD&D where character development depends less on levelling and more on gaining access to magic items, castles etc - it seems plausible to me that players in traditional AD&D games get funky new magic items at something like the same rate that players in a 4e game get access to new powers).

I think awesomeapocalypse has identified the social rewards as the most fundamental, and the rate of delivery of these has not changed.



Garthanos said:


> Note its possible to have your character be in a disabled state without being as a player disabled(lacking choices) for instance via meta tools  the player may have a choice to play an Action Point or Karma/Fate point to influence the action. They might be able to spend it to improve there characters recovery or influence the action via luck so that an ally can safely reach them or similar things.



Agreed. It is a mistake to assume that adversity for the PC has to be correlated with adversity - as opposed to demanding gameplay - for the player. And once there is the demanding gameplay, there is the opportunity for social rewards . . .


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## Hussar (Apr 25, 2010)

Celebrim said:


> /snip
> 
> As a player, it never occured to me that I was missing out on something by not having a 18th level M-U who could cast 'wish' and 'meteor swarm'.  Name level PC's were fantastically powerful people capable of overcoming many challenges on there own, and in cooperation could dominate just about anything in the game.
> 
> I'd be interested in knowing where the shift in expectations came from, or whether I was just unusual in not feeling cheated by not getting to be umpteenth level.  If there was a shift in expectations, the immediate - but perhaps incorrect - assumption I want to leap to is that this comes back into D&D from computer games, which, by necessity must be closed ended and which get nothing from offering content which is not directly experienced.




Well, I know that I always WANTED to play those high level things, but, it just never happened.  I'll agree that I probably didn't feel cheated, but, when it was pointed out to me that I probably only used about 2/3 of the rule set, it did kinda "click" with me when 3e was released.

3e made it pretty explicit that the entire rule set was meant to be used.

Steel Wind - your assumption that the player base has aged considerably isn't really supportable.  For one, the readership of Dragon, for example, remained about 20ish for more than a few reader polls, including two done by Paizo.  The average age of a gamer isn't likely all that much different than it was twenty years ago.

Although, you'd think, if hte player base was much older than before, that more open ended campaigns would be the norm since isn't it generally thought that younger people lack the stability and attention span?


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## Steel_Wind (Apr 25, 2010)

Hussar said:


> Well, I know that I always WANTED to play those high level things, but, it just never happened.  I'll agree that I probably didn't feel cheated, but, when it was pointed out to me that I probably only used about 2/3 of the rule set, it did kinda "click" with me when 3e was released.
> 
> 3e made it pretty explicit that the entire rule set was meant to be used.
> 
> ...




Now? It has aged, yes, but not to the degree it had in the late 90s. The player acquisition model for AD&D was broken by M:TG in the mid to late 90s and new players dried up.  The average only has to change one or two years for the underlying demographic disaster to be higlighted. 

The gamers who were there got older and churnd out - and the ones coming in slowed to a trickle. And that was the end of TSR.

In order to restructure for 3.xx - they aimed to attract a mass of players who had left AD&D in first and 2nd ed back to the game - at the same time as re-starting their new player acquisition model.

It worked brilliantly.

Anyways - if you want to have this argument - go have it with Ryan Dancey and Monte Cook. They are the people who made the changes to the XP system for _precisely_ the reasons that I have described.


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## ggroy (Apr 25, 2010)

Steel_Wind said:


> Now? It has aged, yes, but not to the degree it had in the late 90s. The player acquisition model for AD&D was broken by M:TG in the mid to late 90s and new players dried up.  The average only has to change one or two years for the underlying demographic disaster to be higlighted.
> 
> The gamers who were there got older and churnd out - and the ones coming in slowed to a trickle. And that was the end of TSR.
> 
> In order to restructure for 3.xx - they aimed to attract a mass of players who had left AD&D in first and 2nd ed back to the game - at the same time as re-starting their new player acquisition model.




Today some may argue that their "new player acquisition model" may possibly be broken again, due to WoW and other MMORPGs.


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## Hussar (Apr 25, 2010)

Steel Wind said:
			
		

> Anyways - if you want to have this argument - go have it with Ryan Dancey and Monte Cook. They are the people who made the changes to the XP system for precisely the reasons that I have described.




Ryan Dancey specifically EXCLUDED older gamers from his model when designing 3e.  Anyone over 35 wasn't included in the market research.

When you say older, how much older are you talking about?  Do you mean teens to early 20's or teens to mid thirties?  If it's the former, then fine, I'll totally agree.  But, I'm not sure the player base really has aged all that much.

3e was designed around the idea of a campaign lasting 1-2 years because that's what they learned in the market research, that that was the average length of a campaign.  We don't really know what the average length or playtime was in 1981 because there's nothing but anecdotal evidence at best.



			
				Pemerton said:
			
		

> Lke Nifft, you're talking about the mechanical reward of XP/character development. This is one interesting aspect of the game, but not the crucial one (and in any event hard to compare between more modern games, where it tends to be built into the character development rules, and a game like AD&D where character development depends less on levelling and more on gaining access to magic items, castles etc - it seems plausible to me that players in traditional AD&D games get funky new magic items at something like the same rate that players in a 4e game get access to new powers).
> 
> I think awesomeapocalypse has identified the social rewards as the most fundamental, and the rate of delivery of these has not changed.




That I would likely agree with actually.  The thing is though, the thrust of the OP was about the mechanical awards of the system, not the social rewards.


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## Nifft (Apr 25, 2010)

pemerton said:


> Good point about options for mechanical rewards. But I think awesomeapocalypse's point about social rewards is a deeper one. In a face-to-face RPG, I think the social rewards are probably the deeper source of player gratification.



 Interestingly enough, the rewards I'm talking about -- Exalted's stunt system and the WFRP group reward system -- are both social and mechanical.

Your complaint about the superiority of one or the other is moot. You can have both.

There's no need to set up a false dichotomy.

Cheers, -- N


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## pemerton (Apr 26, 2010)

Nifft said:


> Interestingly enough, the rewards I'm talking about -- Exalted's stunt system and the WFRP group reward system -- are both social and mechanical.
> 
> Your complaint about the superiority of one or the other is moot. You can have both.
> 
> There's no need to set up a false dichotomy.



I wasn't meaning to. I was just suggesting that even in games without the sorts of mechanics you talk about, the social rewards can come thick and fast.

With the mechanics you're talking about, the social rewards are integrated with the mechanical system in a way that appeals to a particular set of player preferences - what I called upthread "engaging the mechanics to influence the gameworld". I think the OP has mistaken games that support this particular approach to play for games that are aimed to a peculiar extent at ego-gratification.


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## pemerton (Apr 26, 2010)

Hussar said:


> The thing is though, the thrust of the OP was about the mechanical awards of the system, not the social rewards.



Agreed, but I think the OP might be misunderstanding the rewards received from playing a P&P RPG.


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## jmucchiello (Apr 26, 2010)

Garthanos said:


> Comparing people who like things different than you do.. to rats pushing buttons for feed is so gracious I cant believe it and yes that is exactly the right analogy for this thread.



I think you taking this too literally. I don't there is a 100% Ego-Gamer in existence. There are just players for whom the "Ego-Gamer" tag is dominant among many other traits that make up "gamers". C'mon, are telling me you've never been at a game and just been in the mode to beat stuff up? I generally don't like a hack and slash game but sometimes, sometimes I show up to game in the mode for fast and furious combat. I've pressed the button. Everyone has.

Too many people in this thread are taking the premise of this thread as an absolute. 

Press the button! More Goblins, DM! My dice grow cold!


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## Ariosto (Apr 26, 2010)

> The 1e AD&D M-U table ended at something like 26th level or some such, but like every other table it carried instructions for going on.



Only to another 1 hit point per 375,000 experience points. The spell progression ended at 29th level, to-hit and saving-throw progressions at 21st.

In OD&D, "There is no theoretical limit to how high a character may progress" -- but the instructions for continuation range from arguably implied (or arguably implying something else), to absent, to possibly just more confusing than nothing at all. Supplement I added spell levels, among other things, with no statement that they were meant for high-level NPCs, but the word in _The Dragon_ was increasingly on keeping PC levels from getting too high.

That meant chiefly racking up the difficulty of gaining levels.


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## jmucchiello (Apr 26, 2010)

Celebrim said:


> Now that you mention it, I've never cast an 8th level spell in 1e, and maybe not even as the DM running an NPC.  I do remember casting 'Reverse Gravity' as a player, and few other similar spells, but those are I think 7th level.



Around when 3e came out I looked back on 1e and decided that 7th and higher level spells in 1e were supposed to be descriptive, there only to fill out the world and what magic "is". There was no expectation that players would ever cast those spells. They were just there to finish the spell system. In fact, I hope Gygax created them for the fun of creating them. Some of those spells are more whimsical than other Flaming Chariot of Sustare, the Bigsby spells, etc. They paint a definite picture of what high level magery is about. For folks who say D&D is its own genre, this is one of the key elements of old style D&D.

But player's casting them? Do you think anybody had cast even a handful of them in actual game play before the PHB was released in 78? I doubt it. The original systems always had charts with ellipses. That is where 3e dropped the ball. They assumed folks wanted to be able to play the whole game. But I think the game makes more sense when there is always more stuff beyond. At least 3e had the Epic Handbook, for better or for worse. What do you do when you hit 30th level in 4e? They removed the ellipses.

But I think I've gone off topic....


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## Hussar (Apr 26, 2010)

One man's ellipse is another man's oval.  

I see what you're saying, but, I can definitely understand the idea that the mechanics are there to be used.  What's the point of having them in the mechanics otherwise?  If they aren't meant to be used, they're basically forcing a particular setting upon the game.

Which is fine if the game is meant to be played in a single setting, but, D&D has always been generic enough that not everyone's setting should look the same (or sometimes even close).  Sure, a lot of those spells are iconic, but, like a lot of the iconic elements of D&D, they are very much background, rather than foreground.

I don't think either approach is particularly wrong.  Totally a different strokes thing.


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## Doug McCrae (Apr 26, 2010)

jmucchiello said:


> Do you think anybody had cast even a handful of them in actual game play before the PHB was released in 78? I doubt it.



Monty Haulism, gaming that goes well beyond the power and threat levels described in the rules, is mentioned often in the texts of the period - Dragon magazine, the intro to OD&D Supplement IV, the 1e DMG. In fact I'd say stamping out Monty Haulism was Gary's #1 concern in the mid to late 70s.

Strategic Review Vol 2 Issue 2


> There are no monsters to challenge the capabilities of 30th level lords, 40th level patriarchs, and so on. Now I know of the games played at CalTech where the rules have been expanded and changed to reflect incredibly high levels, comic book characters and spells, and so on. Okay. Different strokes for different folks, but that is not D & D. While D & D is pretty flexible, that sort of thing stretches it too far, and the boys out there are playing something entirely different — perhaps their own name “Dungeons & Beavers,” tells it best.




OD&D Supplement IV Gods, Demigods & Heroes


> This volume is something else, also: our last attempt to reach the "Monty Hall" DM's. Perhaps now some of the 'giveaway' campaigns will look as foolish as they truly are. This is our last attempt to delineate the absurdity of 40+ level characters. When Odin, the All-Father has only(?) 300 hit points, who can take a 44th level Lord seriously?




Dragon #26


> While D&D campaigns can be those which feature comic book spells,
> 43rd level balrogs as player characters, and include a plethora of trash
> from various and sundry sources, AD&D cannot be so composed.


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## Garthanos (Apr 26, 2010)

jmucchiello said:


> Too many people in this thread are taking the premise of this thread as an absolute!




The thesis fails on multiple points... not just when taken absolutely  

Even if we just hand wave a little and accept there is an element of ego gamer. ...is this new and is it being catered to?

Dougs point is very relevant It points to this element always existing...  the prevalence of "Monty Haul" DMs as a concept from Gygax himself way way back presumably these DMs were catering to folk with easy fast game rewards right? Is this a play style enhanced by newer games? Or have more recent games progressively done the opposite and provide a standard to follow (one which you can still choose to diverge from but you will now know what you are doing).


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## Saeviomagy (Apr 26, 2010)

Celebrim said:


> My point in comparing the situation where you are stunned to the situation where your turn was pointless because you accomplished nothing was to bring up the fact that you couldn't solve the problem by simply getting rid of 'stunned', because there would be similar situations that would annoy the sort of player who was particularly annoyed by being stunned.  I predicted that it wouldn't stop at 'getting rid of statuses'.  I predicted that quite quickly there would be a demand for 'getting rid of misses', and that prediction was born out very quickly when someone pointed out a thread where they were discussing that very thing.




And multiple people have responded to point out the fact that being stunned is removing more than just the flashing lights of rewards: it's removing the ability to choose what happens. When you start a turn normally, you get to choose what happens, to a limited degree, and even if you miss, you may well have accomplished something for good or ill. You might have occupied a crucial square, granted an ally a flank, provoked an AoO that damaged you, risked that same AoO and been missed or exposed yourself to the enemy. And then finally, that attack that missed was an attack that you chose to make, that may or may not have consumed resources, had follow on effects etc etc.

If you start a turn stunned, you don't do any of that. You roll the die and if you're lucky, then NEXT turn you might get to do some of that stuff. Replacing the stunned condition with "all of your attack and skill rolls fail" would still be a massive net improvement to most peoples experience.


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## Celebrim (Apr 26, 2010)

Saeviomagy said:


> And multiple people have responded to point out the fact that being stunned is removing more than just the flashing lights of rewards: it's removing the ability to choose what happens. When you start a turn normally, you get to choose what happens, to a limited degree, and even if you miss, you may well have accomplished something for good or ill. You might have occupied a crucial square, granted an ally a flank, provoked an AoO that damaged you, risked that same AoO and been missed or exposed yourself to the enemy. And then finally, that attack that missed was an attack that you chose to make, that may or may not have consumed resources, had follow on effects etc etc.




And, as I said, or not.  The choises could be trivial, and indeed the assumptions I've always made have implied that the conscious character's player had trivial choices.  I'm not even sure why people felt the need to point any of that out to me the first time, much less the second or third.  As I've said again and again, I'm not comparing the general case of not being stunned to the general case of being stunned.  I'm comparing the level of player participation in a round where you tried to roll for recovery (and failed) to the level of participation when you were slogging it out in a static fight and missed your attacks.  It's not necessary for my point that every case of not being stunned is as bad as every case of being stunned.

But as for this particular attempt to point out something to me, it fails harder than most of them because things like 'occupied a crucial square' and 'granted an ally a flank' don't in themselves increase the level of participation of the player.  Granting an ally a flanking bonus implies that the character is participating in the fight (ei, the character is not bored and is getting immediate feedback and drama), but it doesn't imply that the player is participating in the fight.  

There are times when I feel I'm failing to communicate my ideas well, and that's the reason people aren't understanding me.  But after a certain point, especially when I have people who understand (but may or may not fully agree), it becomes clear that explaining myself yet again is pointless.

This particular subthread, which was never even central to my discussion, has become an unamusing joke.  At first I found rather humorous the audacity of claiming that this experience I offhandedly mentioned had never happened to you and you couldn't relate to what I was saying.  What, you've never failed all of your attacks in a round, and passed your turn with a feeling of impotence?  Or, you've never cast a spell, had it fail to spell resistance, a successful saving throw, or some unknown immunity, and passed your turn with a feeling of impotence?  You've honestly never had a round were you felt that because of the dice you were missing out on the combat?  Don't give me this crap about, "Well I play 4e and that never happens.".   Even if I ignore the many threads about 4e that speak to the contrary and grant you that 4e is all awesome sauce, what about earlier editions?  You never experienced a turn which was effectively over and pointless when you failed an attack roll?  Really?


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## Celebrim (Apr 26, 2010)

pemerton said:


> Agreed, but I think the OP might be misunderstanding the rewards received from playing a P&P RPG.




I haven't really even discussed what I think the rewards from playing a PnP RPG should be directly.  I've hitherto mostly confined myself to discussing what they shouldn't be.  If you believe that there are other sorts of rewards available in gaming, then we are not likely to be in as much disagreement as you seem to think.


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## jmucchiello (Apr 26, 2010)

Garthanos said:


> Dougs point is very relevant It points to this element always existing...  the prevalence of "Monty Haul" DMs as a concept from Gygax himself way way back presumably these DMs were catering to folk with easy fast game rewards right? Is this a play style enhanced by newer games? Or have more recent games progressively done the opposite and provide a standard to follow (one which you can still choose to diverge from but you will now know what you are doing).




Monty Haulism is orthogonal to the OP. MH is ego-tripping, "I am a god" stuff. But that egoism has nothing to do with the egoism of Celebrim's Ego-Gamer. The EG is looking for instant and more importantly frequent gratification that he is winning. There is nothing in MH that requires frequently killing Odin and taking his stuff. In fact MH can destroy the EG. If the game gets to the point where Odin scrapes and fears the EG, then the EG will feel cheated and move on to a game where he can face danger and kill stuff again. The MH player wraps himself in the character. He is the character and the character is all-powerful. The EG player will change characters to find more thrills of victory. The current character is less important. In short: The MH seeks the shiny. The EG seeks the thrills.

Finally, Doug's proof that Monty Haulism was derided by "the powers that be" only reinforces my premise that the high level spells were not put there to be used. They were window dressing. If this is true, then 3e missed the point. Whether that has anything to do with WotC pushing a more Ego-Gamer style of play, I don't know. 

Personally, I'm convinced the EG players exist. I don't know that they are targeted specifically. I do know the target player for D&D changed between 3e and 4e. Did that change specifically go after the twitch player? Or did it target something else and the twitch maybe makes up some (significant) portion thereof? I think exploration in that direction would be more telling than trying to prove this narrow trait was targeted. I think a profile was targeted and this trait figures prominently in that profile. This trait is too narrow to look for because other traits of the profile that were targeted might have requirements that work against this trait sometimes. With the full profile you could say "everyone heals" goes to help player trait X and "at will abilities" goes to help player traits Y and Z. Etc. And then you could find what parts of the design targeted Ego Gamers or not.


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## Celebrim (Apr 26, 2010)

jmucchiello said:


> Monty Haulism is orthogonal to the OP.




I wouldn't quite go that far, but yeah, it's not directly on topic and there is no easy relationship between what I'm talking about and Monty Hall.  The closest I can get to a relationship is that cateering to an ego gamer all the time would eventually lead to Monte Hall, because the ego gamer dislikes setbacks, but you are right that Monty Hall doesn't necessarily provide the rewards the ego gamer is most interested in.

And for that matter, I've always been up front about the fact that PnP RPG's have always brought the ego-gamer experience to one extent or another.  I've mentioned that several times.

As for the rest, I'm not even going to address a thesis that begins with the statement that Gygax et al. weren't providing a standard of play.


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## Hussar (Apr 26, 2010)

That's an interesting point jmucchiello.  I would agree that the target focus shifted in 4e.  It shifted away from the world buildling DM towards the adventure building DM (IMO).  I think that would fit kinda well with the idea of the EG as well.  The EG isn't concerned with world building and whatnot - there's no thrill in that and it takes too damn long.  

Is it just that the shift was deliberate to target this audience, or a by product of the shift?  

I dunno.


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## Doug McCrae (Apr 26, 2010)

jmucchiello said:


> Finally, Doug's proof that Monty Haulism was derided by "the powers that be" only reinforces my premise that the high level spells were not put there to be used. They were window dressing. If this is true, then 3e missed the point. Whether that has anything to do with WotC pushing a more Ego-Gamer style of play, I don't know.



The sort of levels they are deriding - 30, 40 - are way higher than you need to be to cast the top level spells. In 1974 OD&D 5th and 6th level spells are the highest available, for clerics and magic-users respectively. A cleric gets 5th level spells at 7th level, a magic-user gets 6th level spells at 12th level.

OD&D Supplement I Greyhawk increases the max level spells. Magic-users can now cast 9th level spells, at 18th level, while clerics receive 7th level spells at 17th level. Demihuman level limits are increased, if the character has exceptional stats. For example an elf with 18 strength can now attain 6th level, where previously 4th level was the maximum. Unearthed Arcana did the same for AD&D, increasing demihuman level limits.

In a way it's paradoxical that the powers that be were deriding Monty Haulers for going beyond the limits of the game, while at the same time increasing those limits, and catering for the MHers. I believe Monty Haulers mostly regarded Gods, Demigods and Heroes as their Monster Manual. Hence the Odin-slaying.


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## Celebrim (Apr 26, 2010)

Doug McCrae said:


> The sort of levels they are deriding - 30, 40 - are way higher than you need to be to cast the top level spells.




Indeed.  However, assuming that EGG and company are asserting that 10th-15th level characters are reasonable high level gaming (and by extension 15th-30th is 'epic' in modern terms, and anything above that is a god), then it follows that against a party of 10th-15th level characters a spell-casting foe that provides a reasonable challenge has to be of higher level than the average members of the party.  Hense, a BBEG wizard or lich might need to be 18th level or higher in order to provide a really legimate challenge as a solo or semi-solo (BBEG + 'minions') encounter.   So, its quite possible to percieve a need for high level spells even if you don't anticipate them seeing much use by PC's.  Afterall, while it might be possible with a stretch to provide a challenge for a party of 10th-15th level characters, it doesn't necessarily hold true that with the same system you can provide a reasonable challenge for 18th-21st level characters.  At some point, you run out of easy scalability.

If you look at EGG's theories of play as a whole, I think what EGG was railing against wasn't so much 'high level play' as it was his perception that too many DM's were discouraging what EGG considered 'skillful play' by making attaining high level too easy.  The real heart of his complaint is I think that 'high level play' makes it easy to overcome all challenges with 'character skill' rather than the 'player skill' he thinks that the game should encourage.  EGG is railing against MHism because he thinks (coming from a competitive wargaming background) that ultimately, overcoming a challenge with character skill is less satisfying (and more likely to cause the majority of players to percieve the game as shallow and unrewarding) than overcoming it with player skill.  He's comparing MH to giving one player of a war game a very large army, and then placing him against a series of very weak armies.  And he's deriding the practice of playing the equivalent of 'very large armies' on the grounds that the game rules aren't designed to speedily accomodate, adjudicate, or balance the equivalent of running of 'armies' beyond a certain size.



> In a way it's paradoxical that the powers that be were deriding Monty Haulers for going beyond the limits of the game, while at the same time increasing those limits, and catering for the MHers.




I don't think that it follows that by providing more powerful foes, they were necessarily cateering to the MHers.  If you look at EGG's high level adventurers, they most certainly don't cateer to MH or the sort of players who would be satisfied by MH.


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## Doug McCrae (Apr 26, 2010)

Celebrim said:


> So, its quite possible to percieve a need for high level spells even if you don't anticipate them seeing much use by PC's.



Good point.  



Celebrim said:


> If you look at EGG's theories of play as a whole, I think what EGG was railing against wasn't so much 'high level play' as it was his perception that too many DM's were discouraging what EGG considered 'skillful play' by making attaining high level too easy.  The real heart of his complaint is I think that 'high level play' makes it easy to overcome all challenges with 'character skill' rather than the 'player skill' he thinks that the game should encourage.



I think he has two separate objections to MH:

1) The PCs go beyond the scope of the game as written too quickly. Monsters in the book aren't a challenge, the listed magic items are worthless as the PCs already have better. The game group gets bored of D&D after a short time, six months or so, maybe less. The same group could've got a much longer period of play out of the same product if advancement had been kept much slower.

2) Players under a MH GM are undeserving of their PC's power. The idea seems to be that having a high level character should mean something, it should be a respected badge of honor. Having a 10th level cleric, say, should indicate the same (high) level of player skill across different game groups. PC power should match player skill.

I don't think, otoh, that Gary has any problem with challenges that are overcome thru character power alone. D&D is full of those.


Quotes in support of the above:

1e DMG page 92


> Thoughtless placement of powerful magic items has been the
> ruination of many a campaign. Not only does this cheapen what should be
> rare and precious, it gives player characters undeserved advancement and
> empowers them to become virtual rulers of all they survey.
> ...




Strategic Review Vol 2 Issue 2


> It is often a temptation to the referee to turn his dungeons into a veritable gift shoppe of magical goodies, ripe for plucking by his players. Similarly, by a bit of fudging, outdoor expeditions become trips to the welfare department for heaps of loot. Monsters exist for the slaying of the adventurers — whether of the sort who “guard” treasure, or of the wandering variety. Experience points are heaped upon the undeserving heads of players, levels accumulate like dead leaves in autumn, and if players with standings in the 20’s, 30’s and 40’s of levels do not become bored, they typically become filled with an entirely false sense of accomplishment, they are puffed up with hubris. As they have not really earned their standings, and their actual ability has no reflection on their campaign level, they are easily deflated (killed) in a game which demands competence in proportionate measure to players’ levels.


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## Celebrim (Apr 26, 2010)

Doug McCrae said:


> I don't think, otoh, that Gary has any problem with challenges that are overcome thru character power alone. D&D is full of those.




I don't think we are really disagreeing here.  I think we might be quibbling over the best way to say something, but other than that, your quotes are exactly the sort of thing I had in mind when I wrote my post.

I don't think I have to claim that Gary has a problem with _some_ challenges being overcome thru character power alone.  He only objects to when character skill rather than player skill overcomes _all_ challenges.

I think however that its clear from what you quote and what you write that Gygax thinks character level is a reward for player skill rather than a substitute for it, and that the two should go together.  This is what I was trying to say.  Advancement in character skill, under the Gygax model, should not occur unless player skill has increased accordingly and further advancement would require yet more increases in player skill.

Or, to put it another way, Gygax has an expectation that failure is part of the fun of the game and argues (persuasively AFAIC) that without it rewards have a diminishing margin of return.  And here you get to the intersection of what I'm talking about with what Gygax was fighting against back in the day.  What it comes down to is that while I agree failure sucks, then only thing that is worse than the singificant possibility of failure is the impossibility of significant failure.  As much as regular doses of failure irritate the ego gamer short term and to a lesser extent (the extent that every gamer is to some degree achievement oriented) every gamer, they are necessary to the overall fun of the game in the long run.


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## Nifft (Apr 26, 2010)

Celebrim said:


> Advancement in character skill, under the Gygax model, should not occur unless player skill has increased accordingly and further advancement would require yet more increases in player skill.



 I could buy that.



Celebrim said:


> Or, to put it another way, Gygax has an expectation that failure is part of the fun of the game and argues (persuasively AFAIC) that without it rewards have a diminishing margin of return.  And here you get to the intersection of what I'm talking about with what Gygax was fighting against back in the day.  What it comes down to is that while I agree failure sucks, then only thing that is worse than the singificant possibility of failure is the impossibility of significant failure.  As much as regular doses of failure irritate the ego gamer short term and to a lesser extent (the extent that every gamer is to some degree achievement oriented) every gamer, they are necessary to the overall fun of the game in the long run.



 Sure, just like frustrating foes must be actually frustrating in order to generate such immense satisfaction at their messy deaths.

Cheers, -- N


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## jmucchiello (Apr 26, 2010)

Celebrim said:


> What it comes down to is that while I agree failure sucks, then only thing that is worse than the singificant possibility of failure is the impossibility of significant failure.  As much as regular doses of failure irritate the ego gamer short term and to a lesser extent (the extent that every gamer is to some degree achievement oriented) every gamer, they are necessary to the overall fun of the game in the long run.




This is the other place! Ahh, one of my favorite Twilight Zone episodes sums this up nicely. But the summary leaves out the part just before the "reveal" where Valentine tries to setup up a robbery where failure is an option but Pip implies there won't be failure unless it is specifically part of the plan.


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## pemerton (Apr 27, 2010)

Celebrim said:


> I haven't really even discussed what I think the rewards from playing a PnP RPG should be directly.  I've hitherto mostly confined myself to discussing what they shouldn't be.  If you believe that there are other sorts of rewards available in gaming, then we are not likely to be in as much disagreement as you seem to think.



That would be good.

I got the impression from your initial post, and some of the back-and-forth on the first few pages, that you thought some modern RPGs (including 4e) were designed to provide a certain sort of reward that you called "the illusion of accomplishment" - ie, the PC killing lots of things and successfully overcoming obstacles, from which the player draws vicarious pleasure - at an ever-increasing rate of turnover.

I think that the design of 4e and similar games is intended to do something else, namely, (i) to provide social rewards of the sort awesomeapocalypse suggested upthread (and in this respect it's not that different from earlier RPGs) and (ii) to cater to players who prefer to engage the mechanics of the game as the method of achieving those social rewards. So I don't see the same element of ego-gratification that you suggested in your initial post.

I'd be interested in your responses, especially to awesomeapocalyps.


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## Saeviomagy (Apr 27, 2010)

Celebrim said:


> There are times when I feel I'm failing to communicate my ideas well, and that's the reason people aren't understanding me.  But after a certain point, especially when I have people who understand (but may or may not fully agree), it becomes clear that explaining myself yet again is pointless.




The thing is, I DO understand, and even agree with your point, but the fact that you keep using this particular example makes me think that I'm actually misunderstanding you, because it doesn't jibe with the rest of what you're saying.

And yes, I have had rounds where I've felt impotent because I've missed: and despite them being by far the minority I'd like to see less of them. The way to do that, however, isn't to increase success chance, it's to increase the options available. The situation basically only occurs when you're in a slugfest on boring terrain with a single foe who has single-target effects that, for some reason or another, you have no means of avoiding. In any other situation you have non-trivial decisions to make (in the current incarnation of the game). In previous editions, sure, there was very little choice for a non-caster as soon as they were faced with a single foe. Even then, the most engaging fights had _something_ else to them.


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## pemerton (Apr 27, 2010)

Celebrim said:


> Or, to put it another way, Gygax has an expectation that failure is part of the fun of the game and argues (persuasively AFAIC) that without it rewards have a diminishing margin of return.



This may be true for some ways of playing the game. I'll try to explain why I doubt that it is true for all ways of playing the game.



Celebrim said:


> What it comes down to is that while I agree failure sucks, then only thing that is worse than the singificant possibility of failure is the impossibility of significant failure.



It depends on (i) what we mean by failure, and (ii) what the goals of play are.

Suppose that our goal in play is to have the PCs be participants in a fantasy adventure story which (i) is thematically compelling (a metagame goal) and (ii) changes the ingame world in a signficant way (an ingame goal). The possibility that we will fail at these two goals doesn't increase the fun of achieving them. It just gets in the way. If the mechanics make such failure a real possibility, we need to change games (eg to HeroQuest, The Dying Earth, Burning Wheel, or some similar modern game). The sort of mechanics that get in the way of the goal, and which are (by the standards of this goal) therefore candidates just to be bad mechanics, are "miss-a-turn" mechanics. Because they stop the players, at least temporarily, from driving the game in the desired direction.

On the other hand, it is quite consistent with success at our two goals to be guaranteed that there be a possibility of the PCs failing in their ingame endeavours - after all, it may be this very failure that brings about results (i) and (ii). So mechanics that result in the PCs failing are fine, _provided that_  they still allow the players to drive the game forward by engaging those mechanics. (HeroQuest and Burning Wheel are both full of advice to GMs about how to run a game that will work this way. DMG2 tries the same for 4e, but doesn't do as good a job of it, in my opinion.)

The sort of approach to play that I'm describing is therefore quite different from Gygaxian play, because it contemplates the possibilit of a strong divide between player success/failure and PC success/failure. But I don't think it is especially about ego-gaming.

EDIT: A comparison. When I used to play armies or cops and robbers at primary school, there was always a chance that a teacher would come into the playground and confiscate our toy guns. This chance of failure did not enhance the fun - it was just a pointless obstacle that got in the way. (Note that things would be different if the aim of the game was to play in spite of the teachers' prohibiting the game - but I never played this "deliberate disobedience" variation.)


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## pemerton (Apr 27, 2010)

Saeviomagy said:


> I have had rounds where I've felt impotent because I've missed: and despite them being by far the minority I'd like to see less of them. The way to do that, however, isn't to increase success chance, it's to increase the options available.



As best I can tell, this is exactly what I mean by engaging the mechanics of the game. For a certain type of player and playstyle, it's fun to do _even as part of playing out your PC's failure_. This isn't about ego, as far as I can tell. It's about a certain view of what it means to play a game.


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## jmucchiello (Apr 27, 2010)

pemerton said:


> This may be true for some ways of playing the game. I'll try to explain why I doubt that it is true for all ways of playing the game.



Isn't this an unnecessary diversion? The OP's thesis has nothing to do with "all" or even most styles of play. In fact, it only has to do with exactly one specific style of play: Fast, frequent ego-reward. At no time is this style of play deemed better or worse than any other style of play. All other styles of play have nothing to do with this conversation except where they belong to the set of all styles of play possibly being marginalized by the style being put forward as becoming dominant.


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## pemerton (Apr 27, 2010)

Jmucchiello, I don't think it's a diversion at all. The OP's thesis is that games are being designed to cater to the ego-gaming style. I'm pointing out that there is a different, non-ego-gaming style to which they cater, and furthermore it's a style found in games like HeroQuest (which I've never heard accused of being an ego-gaming RPG) which are obvious and acknowledged influences on the design of 4e.

It's possible, I guess, that the 4e designers have seen a hitherto unnoticed possibility of turning indie design into ego-gratifiying design. But I think it's just as likely that designers who have come out of the indie scene, like Mearls and Laws, have applied what they've learned about game design in that domain to the design of a more mainstream game like D&D 4e.


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## Nifft (Apr 27, 2010)

pemerton said:


> As best I can tell, this is exactly what I mean by engaging the mechanics of the game. For a certain type of player and playstyle, it's fun to do _even as part of playing out your PC's failure_. This isn't about ego, as far as I can tell. It's about a certain view of what it means to play a game.



 Nah, I'd cast "playing out failure" under the vast aegis of "delayed gratification".

It's the same reason players don't mind being enraged by frustrating villains: the satisfaction is all the sweeter when the PCs secure their surcease.

"_... with extreme prejudice_", -- N


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## pemerton (Apr 27, 2010)

Nifft, maybe you're right.

So I'm watching a thriller, and I'm deeply engrossed as the villain is (it seems) about to outwit the protagonist. I think I'm enjoying myself, but really I'm just delaying the gratification of seeing the villain defeated.

At this point "delayed gratification" is really a pretty vast aegis . . .


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## Garthanos (Apr 27, 2010)

pemerton said:


> Nifft, maybe you're right.
> 
> So I'm watching a thriller, and I'm deeply engrossed as the villain is (it seems) about to outwit the protagonist. I think I'm enjoying myself, but really I'm just delaying the gratification of seeing the villain defeated.
> 
> At this point "delayed gratification" is really a pretty vast aegis . . .




When all I am doing is watching something that might be true.. but for me rpgs are about... interacting with the game and navigating through it, I get something out of making those choices....( of course to be honest periodic the character is stunned and I am lacking in many choices doesn't really bother me much because it can heighten the feeling that I am the character - for me a fair trade as long as it isn't constant)


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## Jack7 (Apr 27, 2010)

*The Reality of the Illusion*

I've been on vacation this week, and this thread has received an awful lot of responses. I haven't read them all so if someone has already responded along the lines of my argument below then I apologize. It might have been on one of the pages I haven't read for lack of time.

But I'd like to respond in a  slightly different way than the responses I've read so far. I think that Celebrim made an interesting argument. I agree with some aspects of the original argument and disagree with others. But this assumption struck me as faulty (though maybe that was not the intent of the implication in the OP):



> So its probably not a big secret that one of the attractions of gaming _is that through a game you receive the illusion of having accomplished something_. Whether its Bejewelled Blitz, WoW, Settlers of Cataan, or D&D one of the reasons people play games is for the immediate affirmation of success and accomplishment which in real life generally occurs alot less often and requires alot more effort.





One may participate in a game and achieve many different types of success, some of which are even of benefit in real life. Now of course one does not practice to, *"Overthrow the Wyrm"* in real life. Not in the literal sense in any case. But through the game one does practice, mentally (and I think mental practice is as fundamental as physical practice to the mastery of some skills), and sometimes physically (mapping, note-taking, examination, observation, etc.), a number of skills which make real life success more, not less likely. This is what I like to refer to as _*Parallel or Indirect Development of Transferable Skills*_. (Through an activity, and it could be nearly any activity, one is developing real world skills through the medium of an artificial, imaginary, or simulated environment which demands or requires that one think, act, observe and problem solve as if one were attempting to problem solve a parallel problem in real life - the result being that one can transfer what one learns in the unreal or virtual environment and apply it to the real world.)

So whereas one will never encounter bugbears (not the game versions anyway) or a gelatinous cube in real life, and so will never need "bugbear killing tactics" in their real world and daily environment, one is learning an awful lot about problem solving and tactics and mapping and negotiation and psychological maneuver and typology (the basic assumption of the original argument is after all that one is observing the differences in psychological nature and behavior between various individuals - so the game provides opportunities for that function) and observational methods and a whole host of other skills which have a parallel application for real life and which will, if properly exploited, actually potentially increase the odds of real world success at real world endeavors. So I reject the underlying implication I see in the statement that through a game you receive the illusion of having accomplished something. Depending upon what you are practicing in a game (especially things like Role Playing games and Virtual Reality games and Alternative Reality games, etc.) and how, and depending upon the skill sets you need to practice in real life, there may be no "illusion of accomplishment" at all. But instead a very real and practical and pragmatic kind of accomplishment through the practice of in-game skill sets that can then be directly applied to the real world, or at least practiced in the real world in a parallel way that is extremely easy to adapt and exploit to actual success based upon one's previous gaming experience. 

(Much depends upon how one practices the game, of course, as to how well such skill sets and other benefits can then be applied directly or indirectly to the real world. A game may, for instance, hand-wave or even completely ignore things like mapping or the description of or practice of skill sets or demonstrations of capabilities, but I think that overall, most games at the very least allow for indirect practice of real world capabilities, even if one does not consciously think of such things in this way while so engaged.)

For instance today I am going geocaching. Skills learned as a kid through gaming (and not just through gaming, but at least sometimes learned through and definitely often practiced through gaming) have been of great benefit to me with geocaching. As but one example. Geocaching to me is just a hobby, but learned and/or practiced skills in gaming have been of enormous professional help to me as well in various careers I have had, everything from being a delivery driver (as a kid) to being a psychologist, a detective, and a writer. Gaming has assisted with my success, not only as regards a number of my other avocations, but as regards a number of my vocations as well. And it has been my personal observation that oftentimes gamers are far more innovative and flexible (not to mention dogged) when it comes to solving real world problems than those who do not or have not gamed. That observation may be anecdotal, but it does not mean it is not true.

Now to be absolutely fair to CB maybe he didn't mean the illusion of accomplishment statement to stand alone as an isolated phrase implying that gaming provides an illusion of accomplishment rather than the potential seed-bed for real accomplishments. Maybe he meant that phrase to harmonize with the surrounding statements so as not to imply that gaming accomplishments are illusory but rather a "_kind of illusion of accomplishment and success_" strictly in comparison to real world success. That I can agree with as a qualified statement. Gaming success does not lead directly to real world success. On the other hand gaming success need not be an illusion of success at all, either within the parameters of the game itself, or in relation to the larger, real world. The one type of proposition does not preclude or exclude the other type(s) of proposition(s). 

I'll also agree that gaming environments have a very compressed time-line and "experience base." Events occur in compressed and/or an accelerate format. So gaming accomplishments, game time-frames and deadlines, and gaming objectives and goals can be achieved relatively quickly in comparison to their real world counterparts. But that's not always the case. When in college I had buddies that played through a campaign (I did not participate) that started when they first embarked upon their academic careers, and concluded about the same time they graduated with bachelor degrees. So although they did not intend this consciously, the time frame for completing their campaign goals roughly equated to the same general time frames expended on achieving their basic collegiate careers. Generally speaking however I think it is at least likely, and certainly possible, to manipulate a gaming enviromement in such a way that it is much easier to achieve game and caiman "success objectives and goals" much more rapidly, and sometimes much more easily, than to do so in real life (where neither the individual nor those around him, such as bosses, superiors, etc. can so easily manipulate the surrounding environment or external conditions).

On the other hand one of the big lessons learned through gaming is how to beneficially manipulate a given environment and the various factors that influence that environment so that one more easily achieves in-game success. Those same basic skill and idea sets can then be applied to real world environments if one wishes to do so, or tries to do so, to make real world success either more likely, more rapid, or both. 

Now of course I've said nothing about the basic premise of CB's argument, as I understand it, which is that a certain type of psychology or outlook on the part of certain players can affect game play in a certain way. I'm sure that's probably been argued ad infinitum, with all sides probably making good points at certain points. The player psychology type is a totally different argument than the one I'm making. And maybe someone has already argued my point(s) and I missed it due to lack of time to read all responses. 

But it occurred to me, in reading the original post, that I could not agree with the idea that gaming leads to an illusion of accomplishment (or perhaps I should more accurately say, and maybe this is what CB really meant, only _an illusion of accomplishment and success_) or a kind of accomplishment which might be deemed, _only illusory_. I've seen the opposite demonstrated too often in real life to agree with that premise. (I have several buddies in the military and we have all discussed on more than one occasion how beneficial early gaming experiences have been to our various careers.) Again this may not be what was exactly intended in the OP, but it seemed to me an underlying and basic assumption or implication.

If it was an underlying implication then personally I disagree. If it was not really CB's real point but a sort of off-hand or secondary remark design to support another assumption about player psychology, then with the caveats I explained above, my position is that gaming accomplishment is not necessarily any type of illusion at all. It depends very much upon what type of accomplishment it is, and how that accomplishment and ability and capability is used and exploited, as to whether it will remain entirely illusory and substanceless, or whether it can be of real benefit to real world success of at least some kind or to some degree.

Well, I've got to return to my vacation. I'm going to a new geocache this morning.
And I'm going to devise a couple of my own.

See ya.


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## jmucchiello (Apr 27, 2010)

pemerton said:


> I'm pointing out that there is a different, non-ego-gaming style to which they cater, and furthermore it's a style found in games like HeroQuest (which I've never heard accused of being an ego-gaming RPG) which are obvious and acknowledged influences on the design of 4e.



And I'm pointing out that there is no need to point out that there are other styles of play. Their existence is self-evident from creating a distinction that ego-gamers exist and are catered to.

Additionally, as much as Celebrim is trying to avoid edition wars, can we admit that the "trend in RPGs" is really just a trend in D&D? Nothing going on in indie games has anything to do with this thread.



> But I think it's just as likely that designers who have come out of the indie scene, like Mearls and Laws, have applied what they've learned about game design in that domain to the design of a more mainstream game like D&D 4e.



Mearls was in the indie scene? What did he write that wasn't d20-based? Looking on pen-n-paper he has some White Wolf credits too. But I don't see anything indie on there.

And didn't Laws write Rune? I've never played Rune but from what I know of it Laws certainly knows something about the ego-gamer.


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## Celebrim (Apr 27, 2010)

pemerton said:


> Nifft, maybe you're right.
> 
> So I'm watching a thriller, and I'm deeply engrossed as the villain is (it seems) about to outwit the protagonist. I think I'm enjoying myself, but really I'm just delaying the gratification of seeing the villain defeated.
> 
> At this point "delayed gratification" is really a pretty vast aegis . . .




On one level yes, the story teller is delaying the gratification of seeing the villain defeated so that the villains ultimate defeat will have a greater payoff.  But on another perhaps more important level, that's a very bad analogy.  It's analogies like this that often lead to disfunctional role-playing game designs.

There is a very critical difference between watching a movie and participating in a role playing session.  Watching a movie, you are an observer.  Participating in role playing session, you are the protagonist.  

When you are watching a thriller, you can vicariously thrill with all of the protagonists struggles.  Heck, you can even get a vicarious thrill from the successes of the villain.  But if you are the protagonist within the story, the section of the plot where nothing is going right and the odds are getting stacked higher and higher against you isn't necessarily exciting - it's often frustrating.  The experience of the protagonist during this period is one seemingly unending period of defeat and setback in a situation beyond their control.  You have to be very careful about emulating that directly.  

This can be one of the differences between the experience of the game as a DM and as player.  For the DM, you are always in something of an observer role and can get vicarious excitement from both defeats and triumphs because you aren't personally vested in the outcome.   For the player though, events are happening to you.  This gets worse when the player percieves the DM as 'the villain', or if the DM starts to identify with the villains and puts an emotional stake in the villains success (in which case, validating the players impession of the DM as villain).


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## Celebrim (Apr 27, 2010)

jmucchiello said:


> Additionally, as much as Celebrim is trying to avoid edition wars, can we admit that the "trend in RPGs" is really just a trend in D&D? Nothing going on in indie games has anything to do with this thread.




Amongst iconic 'indie games' I think there might even be a reverse trend.  But that's not unusual in gaming history either.  Where 'mainstream' games tend to head off in one direction, there is usually some other set of games moving in the opposite direction to cater to those of different tastes.


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## pemerton (Apr 27, 2010)

Mearls and indie games - he was part of (among the founders of?) gaming outpost.

D&D 4e and indie games - the former obviously draws on elements of indie games design, and its designers have said as much (and the trend culminates with Robin Laws' contributions to DMG 2, which are a direct crib from his HeroQuest 2e rulebook).

So I don't agree that trends in indie games diverge from 4e and are irrelevant to this thread. Rather, I think that there is a quite different possible explanation for the design direction that 4e has headed in, and this is - to put it crudely - that the designers think that Ron Edwards, rather than Gary Gygax, has a better idea of how to make a game engaging to a modern (ie non-wargaming) audience of potential players.

It's not about catering to ego-gamers. It's about catering to those who don't want to play an RPG as a variant on a traditional wargame.


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## Nifft (Apr 27, 2010)

pemerton said:


> Nifft, maybe you're right.
> 
> So I'm watching a thriller, and I'm deeply engrossed as the villain is (it seems) about to outwit the protagonist. I think I'm enjoying myself, but really I'm just delaying the gratification of seeing the villain defeated.
> 
> At this point "delayed gratification" is really a pretty vast aegis . . .



 No, that's just a terrible analogy.

Watching a movie gives you a sense of accomplishment? What, are you grinding to level up your Passive Perception skill?

No. Watching a movie can be enjoyable no matter what the protagonist is doing. If he's winning or losing, that doesn't affect my "accomplishments" -- because I achieve zero accomplishments while passively watching a movie. The enjoyment of a movie is unlike the enjoyment of a game: it's entirely passive.

You can certainly steal ideas from movies and use those ideas in your game, but don't mistake your game for a movie.

Cheers, -- N


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## Garthanos (Apr 27, 2010)

pemerton said:


> It's not about catering to ego-gamers.




Agreed every feature so far claimed to be a catering to ego gamers has  better explanations (like the desire for well described people with  initial time investment leading to hardier characters) that are ignored  and every incident of something not conforming to the model
(like non-advancing relative chances) are similarly ignored.



pemerton said:


> It's about catering to those who don't want to play an RPG as a variant  on a traditional wargame.




The combat having healthy narrative / cinematic elements perhaps make it  non-traditional but it still very much owns up to its war game  heritage.


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## innerdude (Apr 27, 2010)

> Agreed every feature so far claimed to be a catering to ego  gamers has   better explanations (like the desire for well described people with   initial time investment leading to hardier characters) that are ignored   and every incident of something not conforming to the model (like  non-advancing relative chances) are similarly ignored.




I both agree and disagree. I don't think most designers' motives are to  directly please "ego gamers." I think most designers want to embrace  player diversity, and provide for a wide range of possible play styles,  and allow players to enjoy their chosen games in a multiplicity of ways.  

However, the fact that many design motivations _can_ reasonably be  attributed to motives other than "appeasing the ego gamers," doesn't  necessarily mean that the designers accounted for the "law of unseen  consequences." 

Just because you _thought_ that a particular gameplay style, or  mode of thought/gratification/reinforcement was what you wanted to  achieve, doesn't mean that it didn't have an unforeseen, or unintended  effect. I think this thread has at the very least identified some  evidences that D&D 4th Edition may, in fact, have had an unintended  "move" towards catering to "ego gaming" styles. As has already been  pointed out, the "Why Do Numbers Go Up?" and the "d20 vs 3d6" threads  are evidence that some players feel that 4th Edition didn't go quite _far  enough_ in the reward/gratification cycle based on the system's  inherent math probabilities. 

A more interesting question might be why someone would feel the need to  argue against it. If it's just an "unintended design consequence" of  D&D 4e, it just means that "it is what it is." Is it necessarily a  "bad thing?"

The interesting issue to me is _how far_ does a game go into this  reward/gratification "mode" or "playstyle" before it is no longer a  "game we want to play," or no longer wholly resembles what we perceive  to be a "role-playing game?" It's an interesting question to consider if  design decisions by WotC, Paizo, White Wolf, Palladium, et. al., take  this into account.


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## Doug McCrae (Apr 27, 2010)

It's not just D&D, everything's faster paced now. If you compare Dr Who today with Dr Who in the 70s, the earlier episodes are so slow moving, I practically find them unwatchable. And I used to love Dr Who when I was kid in the 70s.

EDIT: Though novels tend to be much longer, which scotches that theory.


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## Doug McCrae (Apr 27, 2010)

Nifft said:


> Watching a movie gives you a sense of accomplishment? What, are you grinding to level up your Passive Perception skill?



A few months ago, I set myself the task of watching every Woody Allen movie. I failed to complete this relatively simple assignment but even so, when I watched some of his (rightly) less well known films from the 80s - ones with no jokes like Another Woman and September - it sure felt like a grind.


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## Garthanos (Apr 27, 2010)

innerdude said:


> A more interesting question might be why someone would feel the need to  argue against it. If it's just an "unintended design consequence" of  D&D 4e, it just means that "it is what it is." Is it necessarily a  "bad thing?"




I don't know read the posts about people who like this design being mice pressing the button faster and faster for there easy rewards and think about it a little bit. The idea is inherent in post 1 OR are we adding something out of left field?


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## pemerton (Apr 28, 2010)

innerdude said:


> Just because you _thought_ that a particular gameplay style, or  mode of thought/gratification/reinforcement was what you wanted to  achieve, doesn't mean that it didn't have an unforeseen, or unintended  effect. I think this thread has at the very least identified some  evidences that D&D 4th Edition may, in fact, have had an unintended  "move" towards catering to "ego gaming" styles. As has already been  pointed out, the "Why Do Numbers Go Up?" and the "d20 vs 3d6" threads  are evidence that some players feel that 4th Edition didn't go quite _far  enough_ in the reward/gratification cycle based on the system's  inherent math probabilities.



Alternatively, maybe they think the game is boring when they don't get to engage the mechanics and prefer a game where _even if their PC is losing_, they as a player still get to do things in the game.

Is wanting to play the game by engaging the mechanics to affect the fate of my PC egoistic? No one's explained to me why this is so. And I'll reiterate - games like HeroQuest are designed to bring about exactly this sort of result - all game all the time - and no one has ever suggested that they are games for egoists. Why is 4e different?

What I'm seeing here is that some people prefer traditional to modern game designs - fair enough - but are then trying to explain their preferences by appealing to a contrast between mature and egoistic gamers. I just don't buy that.


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## pemerton (Apr 28, 2010)

Nifft said:


> Watching a movie can be enjoyable no matter what the protagonist is doing. If he's winning or losing, that doesn't affect my "accomplishments" -- because I achieve zero accomplishments while passively watching a movie. The enjoyment of a movie is unlike the enjoyment of a game: it's entirely passive.



I don't really agree that watching a movie is entirely passive. In my experience, if the movie is sophisticiated and interesting, then watching it involves intellectual engagement. In this respect watching a movie is like reading a book. Right now I'm reading Herman Hesse's _Journey to the East_- not a passive experience. Watching a typical Woody Allen movie - not a passive experience.

I also believe, from experience, that playing an RPG can also be enjoyable from moment to moment just like watching a movie. The pleasure from dealing with an intriguing and frustating villain in a game is not confined to the delayed gratification of victory. It can be the present gratification of participating in and shaping an interesting story and/or an interesting situation (tactical, narrative, whatever) at the game table.

When I think of delayed gratification, I think of marking essays and exams so I get paid next week, and so I get to move on to the more interesting part of my job. I think of saving now so I can buy something nice next week. If we move more into the realm of recreation, I think of practising scales now so I can play the instrument well in the future. But once I start playing for real, the pleasure is immediate.

I'm not an angler, but my understanding of the pleasure of angling (as opposed to survival or commercial fishing) is that there is pleasure (of a contemplative, or tactical, kind) from moment to moment - it's not mere delayed gratification of landing a fish. And I think this is probably true of most hobbies.

In the case of RPGs, unlike fishing or playing an instrument, there's very little start-up/practice time (except for the GM) and so in my view very little room for the working of delyaed gratification. A game that depends on delayed gratification - I get stunned now so I can beat the dragon on my next turn - sounds to me simply like a poorly-designed game, unless its _Protestant Ethic - the Immersive Game of Weberian Historical Sociology!_.


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## innerdude (Apr 28, 2010)

pemerton said:


> Alternatively, maybe they think the game is boring when they don't get to engage the mechanics and prefer a game where _even if their PC is losing_, they as a player still get to do things in the game.
> 
> Is wanting to play the game by engaging the mechanics to affect the fate of my PC egoistic? No one's explained to me why this is so. And I'll reiterate - games like HeroQuest are designed to bring about exactly this sort of result - all game all the time - and no one has ever suggested that they are games for egoists. Why is 4e different?
> 
> What I'm seeing here is that some people prefer traditional to modern game designs - fair enough - but are then trying to explain their preferences by appealing to a contrast between mature and egoistic gamers. I just don't buy that.




Well to me, at least, the difference lies in not that the player wants to _engage the mechanics_, it's that they want to engage the mechanics, and expect that the mechanics will _produce the effect they want_ (success, awesomeness, achievement, "Woot!")_ all the time. _They're not motivated by "greater story rewards," or "long-term satisfaction of accomplishment," they just want the next critical hit, the next piece of phat lewt, the next opportunity to do "the Awesome," and get mad at anyone/anything that gets in the way of their "enjoyment." 

I think a player who is willing to accept "losing" as a potential outcome, and that said outcome may actually lead to greater story rewards down the road, isn't really an "ego gamer."


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## Nifft (Apr 28, 2010)

pemerton said:


> I don't really agree that watching a movie is entirely passive. In my experience, if the movie is sophisticiated and interesting, then watching it involves intellectual engagement. In this respect watching a movie is like reading a book.



 "Sophisticated" (just fyi).

Reading a book is passive. So is watching baseball. You may find these things *stimulating*, but don't mistake stimulation for activity. Activity is when you do something.

If you honestly disagree that sitting silently on your butt in a dark room for over an hour while you stare at a screen is you being passive, then we may not have enough common concepts to discuss more complicated things.

Cheers, -- N


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## Hussar (Apr 28, 2010)

Doug McCrae said:


> It's not just D&D, everything's faster paced now. If you compare Dr Who today with Dr Who in the 70s, the earlier episodes are so slow moving, I practically find them unwatchable. And I used to love Dr Who when I was kid in the 70s.
> 
> EDIT: Though novels tend to be much longer, which scotches that theory.




Hrm, the Dr. Who thing is kinda interesting.  When you go back to those old Who series, each story is about three to four hours long.  They're not really TV shows, they're closer to a mini-series.  While the characters may continue between each one, pretty much each is self-contained.

Then take it to the new Who.  Each story is again self contained (mostly) but truncated down to about 45 minutes.

Does that mean that our attention spans are that much shorter?  Are they simply trying to appeal to a broader audience?  Or is it an improvement and they're realizing that the glacial pace of a lot of those old episodes were not as good as they could have been?

I really don't know.


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## ST (Apr 28, 2010)

This "Ego gamer" label kinda makes me queasy. I worry it's taking the most divisive elements of the GNS debate, the part about "are you playing wrong" that I never thought the theory implied, and making that the whole point? At least with GNS there's several different methods, but this seems like an on-off switch. 

Not to mention that "Ego" comes off as having a negative connotation. Maybe Accomplishment, but then again you have "Compared to what?" 

I guess it's certainly an open-ended topic, but at the end you end up with a bunch of things with an "Ego" label on them and what does that tell us that we can apply to actual gaming?


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## Garthanos (Apr 28, 2010)

Of course it comes off with negative connotation it is meant to... its an intellectually expressed rehashed edition war mantra... even thinking about it similar to GNS ought to induce something closer to full on belly on the floor my lunch is gone... cause that means you took a big bite.


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## steenan (Apr 28, 2010)

ST
I don't think anyone here (ok, maybe someone, but a definite minority) is trying to equate gamism with ego-gaming. It's perfectly possible to play in a goal-oriented manner, focused on achievement, without any pathologies. A lot of people do it.

A gamist wants to be faced with challenges that force him to fully use his wits to overcome them. He wants the risk and feels that success is only worth something if you need to fight for it. He wants the system and GM to be fair.

An ego-gamer does not want the game to be challenging; it should only create an illusion of challenge. He won't accept any meaningful disadvantage; will become frustrated by any failure. He wants the system and GM to let him win.

It's important to remember that the line between ego gamers and the rest of the world IS NOT the line between any two systems or editions, between people who play sandboxes and these who do not, between people who dislike PC death and who like lethal combat or anything similar.


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## Garthanos (Apr 28, 2010)

steenan said:


> An ego-gamer does not want the game to be challenging; it should only  create an illusion of challenge. He won't accept any meaningful  disadvantage; will become frustrated by any failure. He wants the system  and GM to let him win.




He is an imaginary construct contrary to evidence given by any reliable  psychological study.



steenan said:


> It's important to remember that the line between ego gamers and the rest  of the world IS NOT the line between any two systems or editions,  between people who play sandboxes and these who do not, between people  who dislike PC death and who like lethal combat or anything  similar.




The edition warring is an implied claim and a "guilt by association one"  that newer game designs will attract the imaginary creature and you  should avoid them if you dont want to be thought to be this rat pushing  his reward button or if you dont want to attract this rat pushing the  button to your table.

Pretense that it is any way civil by those upholding it ... is pretense.


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## clearstream (Apr 28, 2010)

Garthanos said:


> He is an imaginary construct contrary to evidence given by any reliable  psychological study.




An imaginary construct? It seems to describe a kind of player that I occasionally encounter, and an approach to rules design that I sometimes notice either obliquely (as seen in some splatbook rules) or explicitly (as seen in the way some D&D writers/designers describe their approach to their work).

For example, the always say 'yes' approach. I revile this approach: a well-placed 'no' can do much good work. My players rely on me to be fair, which means I think retaining challenge and disallowing imba or monte haul actions. Yet some writers seem to feel that frustrating the player's desires must not be done. They seem to feel that the limit of interesting experience is fun, and that fun occurs only in the context of win.

What is this psychological evidence of which you speak?

-vk


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## Xris Robin (Apr 28, 2010)

Hussar said:


> Hrm, the Dr. Who thing is kinda interesting.  When you go back to those old Who series, each story is about three to four hours long.  They're not really TV shows, they're closer to a mini-series.  While the characters may continue between each one, pretty much each is self-contained.
> 
> Then take it to the new Who.  Each story is again self contained (mostly) but truncated down to about 45 minutes.
> 
> ...



I think that's an exception rather than a rule.  Compared to when I was young (wait, when did I get old?), there's a lot more TV shows that take up a hour timeslot rather than a 30 minute one.  In fact, almost everything I watch on TV these days falls under that... Bones, House, Fringe, Law and Order, NCIS.  Or it seems that way to me, anyway.


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## Garthanos (Apr 28, 2010)

vonklaude said:


> For example, the always say 'yes' approach. I revile this approach:




You specifically do not understand  ...1 its not "always" 2 it is most frequently "yes, but" and  the but part is incredibly important because it encourages the yes part to be only partial and the introduction of new complications so as to progress the action/story etc.

That you think its "always" makes it sound like you are listening to rumors instead of actually reading about the concepts from the sources.

And note the first place I saw Yes, but?
It was in AD&D... "Yes, but", it was built in to hit points and how they work when you attacked a high level fighter ...hit points were the game mechanically saying yes but... and big time. There is nothing new under that sun out there.



vonklaude said:


> What is this psychological evidence of which you speak?



Specifically the "none" valid you or Cerebelim have provided that even claims it... I am not going to be pulled in to proving a negative... sorry it is your responsibility if you honestly want to claim people are so much like rats.

You might look up gaming theory ... and see if you can find mention of 
"the easy instant win"...without the word "dissatisfaction" next to it.


Upthread a link I like was posted by SkyOdin
http://www.enworld.org/forum/genera...s-illusion-accomplishment-10.html#post5161981


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## ST (Apr 28, 2010)

Okay, yeah, I think I get the ego gratification concept. 

I call BS on it, but I understand what they were _going_ for, anyway. 

I guess people have to find more and more involved ways to mask it when they say "My preference is better than yours". 

On the other hand, are there "ego gamers"? Well, duh, of course. In this world we see lots of people every day who live their lives pretty much in service of justifying their imagined self-image. Commercials that exploit this work very well. But that's a human failing, and not really specific to gaming or a particular style of play.


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## innerdude (Apr 28, 2010)

I don't think "ego gaming" is any edition, or any rule-system specific though. 

The one time our group took a small diversion from D&D and tried GURPS, the gamer in our group who took to it more than anyone else was the one guy who consistently "power gamed," and to me, "power gaming" is one form (albeit an easily recognizable form) of "ego gaming." 

Because GURPS is waaay more fiddly with numbers and stat assignments, he took it as a personal crusade to "break" his character, using ranged weapon combat focuses. For him, it was never about really "playing" the campaign/sessoins, it was all about getting put into situations where he could show his "awesomeness." The GURPS system fed into it; the problem was further exacerbated by the fact that the GM was totally unfamiliar with the rules system, and didn't really know how to counter it. In this context,  this particular player only wanted to "enjoy" the feeling of "being awesome/accomplishment." 

Now some of you may say, "Why do you let that guy play in your group?" Well, the answer is, he's a friend; I've known him for years, and the GM has too, and outside the game he's a funny, intelligent guy, but he's always been just "wired" this way when he plays RPGs. In D&D 3.x, the GM could keep it in check, for the most part, because the GM had an absolute mastery of the 3.x system. He's literally the kind of player that will have his character walk into a weapons shop, talk to the merchant, find out what the most valuable stuff in the place is, and then come back at night and either steal it, or just beat up the shopkeeper and take it.


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## Celebrim (Apr 28, 2010)

ST said:


> On the other hand, are there "ego gamers"? Well, duh, of course. In this world we see lots of people every day who live their lives pretty much in service of justifying their imagined self-image. Commercials that exploit this work very well. But that's a human failing, and not really specific to gaming or a particular style of play.




It's amazing how much better people understand me when they don't start with the assumption that I must be throwing around veiled insults.

I don't know how many times in this thread I assert that we are all as gamers at one time or the other 'ego gamers' or 'achievement driven', that that is part of the valid fun of the game, or that I wasn't setting out to diminish the value of the 'the illusion of accomplishment'.  I even said that the group dynamics on the whole are helped by having players who are more so than the average driven by the need for immediate success because otherwise, if no one is paying attention to 'winning' in the short term, it becomes more difficult to achieve longer term goals and harder for the DM to keep a story moving forward.  I have certainly no way accused 'ego gaming' of being badwrongfun, except to the extent that any single motivation can - when taken out of proportion and not moderated by the needs of social gaming - be bad for the table as a whole.

Yet, for reasons of there own, some people continue to be very grumpy little thread crappers repeating the same wild accusations and slanders in one short little trolling post after the other.  Geez, if you are going to disagree, at least put some effort into it, and better yet, disagree with something I actually said rather than something you want me to have said.

Mod Edit:
Folks, I should not have to remind anyone that name calling and personal attacks are not appropriate behavior.  If you don't like a post, report it, and then leave it be, please.


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## Celebrim (Apr 28, 2010)

innerdude said:


> The one time our group took a small diversion from D&D and tried GURPS, the gamer in our group who took to it more than anyone else was the one guy who consistently "power gamed," and to me, "power gaming" is one form (albeit an easily recognizable form) of "ego gaming."
> 
> Because GURPS is waaay more fiddly with numbers and stat assignments, he took it as a personal crusade to "break" his character, using ranged weapon combat focuses. For him, it was never about really "playing" the campaign/sessoins, it was all about getting put into situations where he could show his "awesomeness." The GURPS system fed into it; the problem was further exacerbated by the fact that the GM was totally unfamiliar with the rules system, and didn't really know how to counter it. In this context,  this particular player only wanted to "enjoy" the feeling of "being awesome/accomplishment."




You are actually explaining one of the two or three most important reasons I left GURPS for D20 (after having previously left AD&D for GURPS).  In practice, its point by system was worse in this regard than class based systems, which was not what I'd envisioned by opening up flexible character creation.



> Now some of you may say, "Why do you let that guy play in your group?" Well, the answer is, he's a friend; I've known him for years, and the GM has too, and outside the game he's a funny, intelligent guy, but he's always been just "wired" this way when he plays RPGs.




And besides being a friend, one of the worst 'ego gamers' I've ever played with - indeed for me the archetype of the concept - was also, when he put his mind to it, one of the better roleplayers I've ever played with.  He was frequently (sometimes very frequently) a problem player, but on the whole (especially taking into account his friendship) added something to the game even if there were times I wanted to strangle him.


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## Bluenose (Apr 28, 2010)

Celebrim said:


> It's amazing how much better people understand me when they don't start with the assumption that I must be throwing around veiled insults.
> 
> I don't know how many times in this thread I assert that we are all as gamers at one time or the other 'ego gamers' or 'achievement driven', that that is part of the valid fun of the game, or that I wasn't setting out to diminish the value of the 'the illusion of accomplishment'. I even said that the group dynamics on the whole are helped by having players who are more so than the average driven by the need for immediate success because otherwise, if no one is paying attention to 'winning' in the short term, it becomes more difficult to achieve longer term goals and harder for the DM to keep a story moving forward. I have certainly no way accused 'ego gaming' of being badwrongfun, except to the extent that any single motivation can - when taken out of proportion and not moderated by the needs of social gaming - be bad for the table as a whole.
> 
> Yet, for reasons of there own, some people continue to be very grumpy little thread crappers repeating the same wild accusations and slanders in one short little trolling post after the other. Geez, if you are going to disagree, at least put some effort into it, and better yet, disagree with something I actually said rather than something you want me to have said.




That wasn't all you said, though, was it? You didn't restrict it to talking about how some players can be a bloody nuisance and time their characters are having problems. You specifically said that you thought a current trend among game designers and game designs was to pander to such people.

Your first statement I'm perfectly willing to accept. Your second needs supporting evidence.


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## The Shaman (Apr 28, 2010)

Garthanos said:


> He is an imaginary construct contrary to evidence given by any reliable  psychological study.



And the reliable psychological studies you're citing to refute this are found where, exactly?

No need to quote them here; just a few links would be fine.







Garthanos said:


> The edition warring is an implied claim and a "guilt by association one"  that newer game designs will attract the imaginary creature and you  should avoid them if you dont want to be thought to be this rat pushing  his reward button or if you dont want to attract this rat pushing the  button to your table.



First, these aren't "newer game designs."

_Top Secret_ had Fame and Fortune points, a 'get-out-of-death-free' rule for a game with a very lethal combat system - that was 1980. _Marvel Super Heroes_ characters could be injured but rarely killed - that was 1984. In both cases these rules were designed to emulate their respective genres, in this instance elite spies and four-color superheroes, respectively.

Second, it's not "edition warring" to note that _D&D_'s mechanics changed over the years. It would take some pretty deep denial to say that World's Most Popular Roleplaying Game is the same now as it was in its early days, particularly if we compare it to one of its contemporaries, _Call of Cthulhu_. "Edition War!" seems as if it's a tag thrown out to dismiss any comparison between editions, now matter how benign or banal.

My personal opinion is that the genres _D&D_ was originally designed to emulate have changed, that the speculative fiction sources for the game are different than they were in the Seventies and that _D&D_ has become to some degree its own fantasy genre. Gamers are pushing the genre of _D&D_ away from its more lethal roots and toward something more four-color, from what I've observed over the years. That's _not_ a bad thing - it's just a thing.

Third and last, ego-gamers have been around as long as the hobby. I remember guys who'd howl and whine at any setback, who'd lie and cheat to gain an edge, back in 1978. They were a pain in the arse then, and they're a pain in the arse now.

Ego-gamers, in my opinion, represent a destructive side of the changing expectations in roleplaying games. I like games which work to emulate genres; _Top Secret_ remains one of my favorite spy games, and I enjoyed a fair amount of _MSH_ back in the day. But I don't want _every_ game to emulate superheroes.

Ego-gamers who whinge about how their characters are supposed to be _TEH AWSUM!_ every second of every game are arguing for a vanilla game experience, in my opinion. I don't care for the expectation that tabletop roleplaying games should be about hammering the "WIN!" button, because it turns every game experience into the same thing and genre becomes mere stage-dressing.

Ego-gamers are mercifully in the minority in our hobby, but they are vocal, so gamers who want something else from their games need to be just as vocal.


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## amysrevenge (Apr 28, 2010)

Hussar said:


> Then take it to the new Who.  Each story is again self contained (mostly) but truncated down to about 45 minutes.
> 
> Does that mean that our attention spans are that much shorter?





I keep getting the impression that "they" are telling _us_ that our attention spans are shorter, not that they necessarily are.


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## Celebrim (Apr 28, 2010)

Bluenose said:


> That wasn't all you said, though, was it? You didn't restrict it to talking about how some players can be a bloody nuisance and time their characters are having problems. You specifically said that you thought a current trend among game designers and game designs was to pander to such people.
> 
> Your first statement I'm perfectly willing to accept. Your second needs supporting evidence.




Ok, sure.  I thought I'd provided some evidence, but if you wanted more evidence of that there was such a trend, I can understand.  I'm not sure the evidence will be forth coming, because as I said, I'd need to spend hours googling up examples, and then having done that, I'd have to deal with people providing counter-examples and then we'd end up in an unwinnable debate based on impressions of something that can't be directly measured.  All that is however something I can understand as a reasonable objection or method of objection.

What I don't understand is people demanding I provide evidence of perfectly ordinary and generic RPG experiences.  That's were I've been stuck most of the thread.

As for the more reasonable objections, I don't think that there is much contriversy that both 3e and 4e designers said that they were taking some inspiration from video games (or that were it wasn't said it could be noticed), and I don't think that there is much contriversy that PnP game designers have frequently wrote articles in which they implied that PnP games were in a compitition with video games or that video games had something to teach PnP designers (whether you agree with the claim or not).  Likewise, I don't think there is much argument over the fact that increasingly video game design and PnP design is seen to overlap (by designers on both sides of the divide), and in fact, the only thing that might provoke argument in that claim is 'increasingly' because very clearly, video game design has been heavily influenced by and often outright attempts at emmulation of PnP games or at least some aspect thereof.  

Less clearly, but I think obviously, as cRPGs mature, they've been back pollenating the PnP games that inspired them.  I felt like there were obvious influences from Fallout (released 1997, the same year that WotC acquired TSR and started work on a new edition) in the rules of 3e D&D.   For a simple example, feats every 3 levels paralleled Fallout's perks every 3 levels.  I feel that trend has continued as 3e evolved and into 4e.   I can't prove that at all, because there is no way to measure this.  I could provide evidence, but I don't intend to because its more trouble than its worth.

Now, so far I've said nothing negative about the trend.  I don't really have anything against cRPG design inspiring aspects of PnP design so far as it goes.  Where I have problems is with attempting to get PnP's to capture the aspects of the play experience of cRPGs which are inherently superior to PnP's, and very high on that list would be the tight action/reward loops that cRPGs can provide.  Game theories that are perfectly applicable applied to creating Mrs. Pac Man or even WoW and providing entertainment in that medium, do not necessarily apply in the PnP world.  Therefore I cringe whenever I read some designer or blogger saying something like, "I was playing some video game and I noticed that I never had to wait for my reward, and I was always engaged, or how much it sucked to be stunned... and I was thinking how great it would be if I could apply this design lesson to the PnP world."  I think I've provided at least some recent examples of design ideas being floated in those terms.  I personally think that there is very little that can be directly ported between turn based designs and the real time designs that increasingly dominate cRPGs, and vica versa, and I think that in attempting to do so you decrease the competitiveness of the satisfaction PnP's provide with respect to that of cRPGs.


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## amysrevenge (Apr 28, 2010)

Celebrim said:


> I personally think that there is very little that can be directly ported between turn based designs and the real time designs that increasingly dominate cRPGs, and vica versa, and I think that in attempting to do so you decrease the competitiveness of the satisfaction PnP's provide with respect to that of cRPGs.





I think that there is a whole lot of wiggle room between the two, and that there are plenty of lessons from real-time designs that can be applied to turn-based games without simply porting one directly into the other.  But then, while I've seen plenty of lessons learned and new things tried, I don't see whole lot of cases where anyone has actually attempted to do such a direct porting.


Something as simple as the concepts of Attacks of Opportunity in 3E and Immediate Actions in 4E can move in a direction from strictly turn-based toward real-time without flipping from one to the other in a binary fashion.


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## Nifft (Apr 28, 2010)

Celebrim said:


> I personally think that there is very little that can be directly ported between turn based designs and the real time designs that increasingly dominate cRPGs, and vica versa, and I think that in attempting to do so you decrease the competitiveness of the satisfaction PnP's provide with respect to that of cRPGs.



 Maybe I should fork this to a new thread.

It's been said that RPGs are becoming more videogame-like. While that may or may not be true, it's certainly the case that video games have been becoming more RPG-like, and this trend started a long time ago. The first RPG-like video game that I remember was Gauntlet.

Gauntlet is interesting because it's also an attempt to bring RPG-like balance into video games. It's the first video game that I recall where you made a "character choice" which had mechanical effects on your game play: the parameters were pretty limited, because all you had were icon speed, attack speed, attack strength, and magic strength. But that seemed to be enough to get us to spend our hours and dollars on it.

Gauntlet was also neat in that it was a cooperative game, so the social perks we hold up as being a nice part of table top RPGs were available ("good job nailing that generator!").

It did both RPG-like balance and RPG-like social stuff, yet was real-time rather than turn-based. So, I'm not sure the turn-based thing is really a discriminating factor.

All I'm certain of is that ELF NEEDS FOOD BADLY.

Cheers, -- N


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## Celebrim (Apr 29, 2010)

Nifft said:


> Maybe I should fork this to a new thread.
> 
> It's been said that RPGs are becoming more videogame-like. While that may or may not be true, it's certainly the case that video games have been becoming more RPG-like, and this trend started a long time ago. The first RPG-like video game that I remember was Gauntlet.




That might be the first RPG-like _arcade game_, but so far as I know the first RPG video game was Dungeon.



> Gauntlet is interesting because it's also an attempt to bring RPG-like balance into video games. It's the first video game that I recall where you made a "character choice" which had mechanical effects on your game play: the parameters were pretty limited, because all you had were icon speed, attack speed, attack strength, and magic strength. But that seemed to be enough to get us to spend our hours and dollars on it.




Gauntlet is a pretty interesting entry in this thread because it pares the video game experience of an 'RPG' down to its essentials.  More later when I think about it some more.


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## MichaelSomething (Apr 29, 2010)

I'm surprised no one thought of this until now but isn't "ego-gamer" simply a new term for Munchkin?


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## pemerton (Apr 29, 2010)

Nifft said:


> "Sophisticated" (just fyi).



I can spell. I can't always type.



Nifft said:


> Reading a book is passive. So is watching baseball. You may find these things *stimulating*, but don't mistake stimulation for activity. Activity is when you do something.
> 
> If you honestly disagree that sitting silently on your butt in a dark room for over an hour while you stare at a screen is you being passive, then we may not have enough common concepts to discuss more complicated things.



I'm not following you here. Running and cycling and the like are active. Sitting down is passive. I get that. But when I roleplay, I sit down rather than run around. So that's passive to.

Or: adding up and subtracting and arguing and orating are active. And sleeping and being unconscious are passive. But when I read a book or watch a (good) movie I think much harder than when I add up a few one or two digit numbers. So reading or watching a movie is (intellectually) active. Maybe not as intellectually active all the time as RPGing. But more intellectually active some of the time than at least parts of RPGing.

I really don't see the relevance of activity/passivity to the contrast between RPGs and movies. Participation and creativity seem like the more relevant dimensions of contrast to me.

And I still don't see the relevance of delayed gratification either, for the reasons I stated upthread.


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## pemerton (Apr 29, 2010)

vonklaude said:


> For example, the always say 'yes' approach.



Garthanos already responded to this, but I'll add in my own two cents worth.

As far as I know, the first roleplaying book to include the slogan "say yes, or roll the dice" was Dogs in the Vineyard.

Not a game generally described as aimed at the ego-gamer.

The slogan is taken up in Burning Wheel (with attribution to DitV). Another game not generally described as aimed at the ego-gamer.

Then 4e, in one of the several ways it is influenced in its design by indie games, says "say yes or roll the dice" or "say yes, but". And suddenly it's all about ego-gamers.?

I'm still not getting it.


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## pemerton (Apr 29, 2010)

The Shaman said:


> Ego-gamers, in my opinion, represent a destructive side of the changing expectations in roleplaying games. I like games which work to emulate genres; _Top Secret_ remains one of my favorite spy games, and I enjoyed a fair amount of _MSH_ back in the day. But I don't want _every_ game to emulate superheroes.



I don't really follow this post either.

Some people want to play a fantasy RPG (not a superhero RPG) that plays less like a squad-level traditional wargame (eg the PCs - multiple per player - and their henchmen and hirelings scout out the dungeon and then slowly take it apart, room by room and level by level) and _in play_ is guaranteed to unfold more like an adventure story - with guaranteed dramatic highs and lows, but no meaningless protagonist death.

First, what does this desire for a gameplay experience have to do with ego?

Second, what is objectionable about designing fantasy RPG rulesets that (at least attempt to) satisfy it?


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## FireLance (Apr 29, 2010)

innerdude said:


> I both agree and disagree. I don't think most designers' motives are to  directly please "ego gamers." I think most designers want to embrace  player diversity, and provide for a wide range of possible play styles,  and allow players to enjoy their chosen games in a multiplicity of ways.



I think innerdude raises a point here that has not really been addressed so far: Would adding game elements that have a shorter action-reward cycle actually hurt the game if such game elements are not the _only_ ones in the game? Why would their presence detract from other game elements with longer action-reward cycles?

To me, being able (or mostly able) to positively affect the outcome of a fight each round (a fairly short action-reward cycle) would not diminish the satisfaction I get from using good tactics to eventually win the fight (a slightly longer action-reward cycle) or from using good strategies to eventually accomplish a long-term campaign goal (an even longer action-reward cycle).

It seems to me that as long as a game still rewards creativity, foresight and planning, it should not matter that it also provides regular doses of encouragement on a turn-by-turn basis.


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## On Puget Sound (Apr 29, 2010)

Failing can, in fact, be fun.  Or at least funny.  Just today my incredibly agile and sneaky halfling ranger/rogue confidently led the party on a stealthy assault across the rooftops.  Athletics d20+12 = 14, Stealth d20 +10 = 11.

Yep, a 2 and a 1.  Grabbed a rusty drainpipe, it broke off and i fell right onto my pet dinosaur, who yelped loudly enough to bring guards from two wards away.  And since that was after two other party members failed, the skill challenge was pretty much busted and now we're gonna be in a tough fight.  Would i rather have succeeded?  Sure.  But it definitely felt like I was participating, doing something, and being unconscious and failing to make a wake-up roll does not; there is a difference.

One of the things 4e has reinforced for me is the idea of describing and visualizing your successes and failures.  The dice do what the dice do, but the encouragement to fluff out the result of your attacks and powers really makes the game come alive.  To me, that's a much bigger effect of 4e than the "say yes" advice or the reduction of saveordie/ saveorsuck situations that some here interpret as "feeding the ego gamer".


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## jmucchiello (Apr 29, 2010)

MichaelSomething said:


> I'm surprised no one thought of this until now but isn't "ego-gamer" simply a new term for Munchkin?




No. Because there is nothing about the OPs description of the ego-gamer where we look down upon his desire for fast, frequent gratification. In fact, being an ego-gamer is not a permanent state. Most gamers feel this desire sometimes. 

The other main difference is that the ego-gamer is looking for WIN independent of the other players. The munchkin wants more WIN than the other players. The munchkin wants to be the best. And this is why the word "ego" in ego-gamer is a misnomer but no one has come up with a better word. The ego-gamer is not selfish, merely self-involved. He doesn't become depressed when you win or I win. He only becomes depressed when he fails. If everyone at the table is rolling 20s. The ego-gamer is just has happy as if only he were rolling 20s. The munchkin would enjoy the game more if he were the only player rolling 20s.

It is unfortunate that we are using the word "ego" at all. The fast and frequent requirement make me think "twitch-gamer" might be good. But I'm sure some other misunderstanding will stem from it.


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## Saeviomagy (Apr 29, 2010)

jmucchiello said:


> It is unfortunate that we are using the word "ego" at all. The fast and frequent requirement make me think "twitch-gamer" might be good. But I'm sure some other misunderstanding will stem from it.




We could go with pavlovian gamer perhaps?


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## Garthanos (Apr 29, 2010)

jmucchiello said:


> No. Because there is nothing about the OPs description of the ego-gamer where we look down upon his desire for fast, frequent gratification. In fact, being an ego-gamer is not a permanent state. Most gamers feel this desire sometimes.




I read the following as being exactly that.. its a fairly direct put down...  its not just fast and frequent it is supposed to be "easy" to the point of being completely unearned. They don't have to think about it. Its an intellectuals put down at every step of the description. 



			
				you know who said:
			
		

> The reason that this tended to become a problem is that the ego gamers I encountered generally defined a successful game as one where they defeated every obstacle put in front of them with as little effort as possible. Any temporary setback (like a fight they were losing), any momentary failure (like a run of bad dice), or any obstacle the DM placed in front of them (like an encounter requiring something other than a straight foward tactic), tended to be met with confusion, dismay, and often outright anger.




It sure seems to me like it is very much meant to be a horror story that these "new to D&D" design goals will build/encourage these unthinking monster gamers.

I had a player who cheated at rolls once. I attributed it to something pretty normal fear and trust issues. The games mechanics couldn't be trusted with a character which the player invested a lot emotionally in (and I was newly his GM). Sounds very human to me. I guess I could have thought he didn't want any challenges and just wanted an easy button.   I think that would have been me.. applying an easy button and not trying to understand  somebody else's motivations.


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## The Shaman (Apr 29, 2010)

pemerton said:


> Some people want to play a fantasy RPG (not a superhero RPG) that plays less like a squad-level traditional wargame (eg the PCs - multiple per player - and their henchmen and hirelings scout out the dungeon and then slowly take it apart, room by room and level by level) and _in play_ is guaranteed to unfold more like an adventure story - with guaranteed dramatic highs and lows, but no meaningless protagonist death.



There are an awful lot of assumptions here, hovering around the edges of a vast excluded middle.







pemerton said:


> First, what does this desire for a gameplay experience have to do with ego?



I think *Celebrim* pretty well covered this already, and I see no reason to belabor the point.







pemerton said:


> Second, what is objectionable about designing fantasy RPG rulesets that (at least attempt to) satisfy it?



What _I_ find objectionable, based on my personal preferences, you mean?


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## Celebrim (Apr 29, 2010)

Garthanos said:


> I had a player who cheated at rolls once. I attributed it to something pretty normal fear and trust issues. The games mechanics couldn't be trusted with a character which the player invested a lot emotionally in.




LOL.  I couldn't have said it better myself.



> Sounds very human to me.




Yes, me too.



> I guess I could have thought he didn't want any challenges and just wanted an easy button.




I think I can see where you'd be tempted to think that he couldn't trust challenges to deliver the outcomes which the player invested a lot emotionally in.    



> I think that would have been me.. applying an easy button and not trying to understand  somebody else's motivations.




Hmmmm...applicable here?  I wonder.


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## Starfox (Apr 29, 2010)

jmucchiello said:


> And didn't Laws write Rune? I've never played Rune but from what I know of it Laws certainly knows something about the ego-gamer.




I did play (in fact playtest) Rune. It five ways of horrible. I am a big Robin Laws fan, but I think Rune is a blot on his CV. The conditions under which that game was made were quite special. Lets just say that even game designers and game publishers have to pay the rent. 

Ego-gamey tough? Maybe if you are the gamemaster. A game where the GM has a "budget" to spend on smacking down the player and gets rewarded for doing so is incredibly hard to balance.


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## Starfox (Apr 29, 2010)

innerdude said:


> A more interesting question might be why someone would feel the need to argue against it. If it's just an "unintended design consequence" of D&D 4e, it just means that "it is what it is." Is it necessarily a "bad thing?"






Garthanos said:


> I don't know read the posts about people who like this design being mice pressing the button faster and faster for there easy rewards and think about it a little bit. The idea is inherent in post 1 OR are we adding something out of left field?




As the guy who submitted the link to where gamers were being compared to caged mice, I must say I don't think its a "bad thing". I didn't post that link to deride anyone. I just wanted to point out that the topic of a shortening reward cycle had been discussed in other forums than this and on other topics than PnP games - that the idea is not so very controversial. 

I found that article useful. I understand and accept that this mechanism is a part of what makes me play games - particularly my computer game of choice, City of Heroes. Having read the article gives me a greater understanding of the psychology involved, which makes me stronger and more able to see when I'm caught in the hamster wheel and going for rewards that are not really fun. Knowledge is power, and knowledge on yourself gives you power over yourself.

The article took a tendency in game design and extended it to infinity, showing it at its most extreme to illustrate a point. But it was written by gamers for gamers - people who know they have a gaming habit and trying to understand it and to master it. It was not really deriding anyone, it was just sensationalist writing (the way I read it).

I think the OP is doing the same thing; showing what he believes is a trend in gaming and trying very hard not to insult anyone by doing so.


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## Starfox (Apr 29, 2010)

Having some catching up to do on the tread; bear with me while I commoen on old posts.



pemerton said:


> I think that the design of 4e and similar games is intended to do something else, namely, [...]  (ii) to cater to players who prefer to engage the mechanics of the game as the method of achieving those social rewards.




This is very true and IMO one of the flaws of the system, but if I were to reply to it properly it would take a whole new thread. Just as a very short illustration, there are two ways of writing out a skill challenge for an adventure in 4E. One says "Players describe their own stunts; these skills make sense...". The other says "Players can use Diplomacy or Bluff. This happens when a PC succeeds at Diplomacy... This happens with Bluff..." In the second version, the role of the player is reduced to selecting which skill to use - then the scenario takes over and tells him what his PC is actually doing - which to me is "prefer to engage the mechanics of the game as the method of achieving those social rewards", a bad thing.


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## pemerton (Apr 29, 2010)

Starfox, I agree with you that method (i) of doing skill challenges is better than (ii) - I don't think WoTC has got either the mechanics or the presentation of skill challenges fully under control, especially when compared to the sorts of action resolution systems they are being inspired by (eg HeroQuest).

But even method (i) is still engaging the mechanics - having described your stunt, you have to roll for it in the fashion that the mechanics dictate. In this way 4e is more like Burning Wheel or HeroQuest and less like AD&D. And of course a good player will describe stunts keeping in mind how they will be mechanically resolved, and how this will fit with their PC's abilities.

I don't think it's a flaw, in the sense of an objective failing (whereas I think the poor presentation and development of skill challenges is a flaw, in that it is an objective failing in the rulebooks and modules). But I readily agree that it is not something that all players, especially those who prefer a traditional approach to fantasy RPGs (eg AD&D, RQ, hardcore RM) would enjoy.

But I don't see any reason for distinguishing these different preferences in playstyle in terms of "ego"  vs "delayed gratificaiton" (which is highly suggestive of infantile vs mature). I've tended to use "traditional" and ""modern" - if that's objectionable (and no one who prefers traditional to modern has yet indicated that it is) I'm very happy to look for another way of capturing what I think everyone agrees is a pretty significant difference in game design and game play.


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## pemerton (Apr 29, 2010)

*Delayed gratification and "ego gamers"*

I've never heard any admirer of good music tell me that, if I'm really going to enjoy (for example) Wagner and avoid being an immature ego-listener, then I have to dilute every hour of stirring Ring Cycle with three hours of tedious Abba.

Why would it be essential, then, in RPGing, to interrupt every hour of really engaging and inspiring play with periods of nothing happening, no dice being rolled, no story being progressed, etc?

Obviously, just as some like Abba better than Wagner, so some get more pleasure from some types of dice rolling, progressing the story etc, and others get pleasure from different approaches. For some, "miss a turn" mechanics aren't a problem because they, as a player, are still there watching, kibitzing, advising, playing an NPC etc. For others, they are a problem because their conception of play is none of these things, but rather affecting the gameworld via their PC via the game mechanics.

Different approaches to playing the game, sure. Different preferences in game design, undoubtedly. Different degrees of maturity, or ability to accept delayed gratification? I'm just not seeing it.


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## The Shaman (Apr 29, 2010)

pemerton said:


> I've never heard any admirer of good music tell me that, if I'm really going to enjoy (for example) Wagner and avoid being an immature ego-listener, then I have to dilute every hour of stirring Ring Cycle with three hours of tedious Abba.



Well, that's certainly a new way of packaging the "one hour of fun in four hours of gaming" canard.


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## Hussar (Apr 29, 2010)

Just a comment on the whole "WOTC D&D borrows from video games" thing.

There was a recent interview (and I've totally forgotten all the names involved - The Truth blog or something like that?) where the dev talked about how he had learned things from video games that can be applied to PnP games.  One of the big ones was the idea of learning curve.  Bear with me, because I do think this applies here.

As I understood things, the idea went like this.  In any given genre of video games, you have several fundamental basic mechanics.  If you are playing an FPS on a PC, then WASD controls your movement, the mouse controls your view, the numbers switch your weapons.  This is true of pretty much every FPS for a PC.  Once I've played any FPS on a PC, I can move over to another title and everything I learned from the first game ports over.

The same is true for almost every genre, whether cRPG, RTS, or whatever.  So long as a game falls into a given genre, you are likely going to know how the controls work after the first game.

4e has embraced this approach.  Once I learn how to use any character in the game, all other characters work EXACTLY the same way.  No one has radically different "controls" that I need to learn (like the spell/non spell caster division in previous editions forex - and even then, once I learn to cast like a wizard, that's different from casting like a Psion).  

Now, wheel this around to the idea of the ego-gamer.  Not having a new learning curve for every class means that I can choose any class and generally use it to a similar level of proficiency.  This in turn means that any class I play will reward my actions in roughly similar manner and rate.  Everyone hits roughly the same amount for roughly the same amount of damage (to use a purely combat example).

So, no matter what I play, I'm getting rewarded roughly as often as any other class.  This is a significant departure from earlier editions where I might have one spells per day and couldn't hit anything for any significant damage the rest of the time.  

Now, to me, the debate isn't over the idea of whether or not rewarding everyone equally is a good idea, but rather, what's the benefit of rewarding everyone at the table differently?  The fighter gets to do his thing for pretty much the entire campaign without too much in the way of sitting on his hands.  The wizard waits half the campaign doing not a whole lot, and then really comes into his own the other half.  

Does that mean that fighter players were ego-gamers in days of yore?  And now we're rewarding everyone just like the fighter used to be?

I don't have an answer and I'm trying really, really hard to maintain impartiality here.  Cos I don't have an answer.  I'm just bringing up ideas.


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## Bluenose (Apr 29, 2010)

Celebrim said:


> Ok, sure. I thought I'd provided some evidence, but if you wanted more evidence of that there was such a trend, I can understand. I'm not sure the evidence will be forth coming, because as I said, I'd need to spend hours googling up examples, and then having done that, I'd have to deal with people providing counter-examples and then we'd end up in an unwinnable debate based on impressions of something that can't be directly measured. All that is however something I can understand as a reasonable objection or method of objection.
> 
> What I don't understand is people demanding I provide evidence of perfectly ordinary and generic RPG experiences. That's were I've been stuck most of the thread.
> 
> ...




I would argue, quite strenuously, that what designers are talking about here is player involvement, unrelated to success or failure of their actions. As you identify, there are fundamental differences between the turn-based nature of a TRPG and the real-time nature of (most) cRPG systems. I don’t think it’s controversial to say that nearly all players prefer being involved in activity rather than present but with nothing to do. What I read into statements about learning from cRPGs with regard to effects like stun is not that designers wish to remove any risk of failure; rather, it’s that removing people from any form of decision-making/activity leads to frustration, and that if it’s done for too long this will tend to leave them frustrated with the game. It is, incidentally, something I do see having been partly implemented in 4th edition D&D, primarily but not solely the form of ‘interrupts’ of various sorts which allow people to act outside their own turns. I do not agree though that it in any reflects a dislike for failure as such. Both failure and success occur more frequently in a cRPG than they do at the tabletop, simply because the rate at which actions occur is faster. I have not seen any evidence that recent tRPG systems make failure less likely than old ones – though I think there’s some evidence that designers are starting to implement concepts of play where they wish people to remain involved in activity even when it’s not their ‘turn’. In my opinion, that’s actually a good thing.


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## jmucchiello (Apr 29, 2010)

Saeviomagy said:


> We could go with pavlovian gamer perhaps?




I have said many times in this thread that I have been the ego-gamer at times. Your reaction is why I think "ego" should be removed from the description. It has nothing to do with the conversation. You are just being insulting.


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## jmucchiello (Apr 29, 2010)

Garthanos said:


> It sure seems to me like it is very much meant to be a horror story that these "new to D&D" design goals will build/encourage these unthinking monster gamers.



I see nothing in that description that means the gamer is an unthinking brute. All I see is someone who wants gaming to be "lite". Nothing wrong with that play style.

The OP's horror story is that attempting to cater to this style is a dead end for PNP RPGs. CRPGs will always do it better. Celebrim is calling this a mistake not because he wants the style of play eradicated. Instead he calls it a mistake to not promote what PNP games do better than CRPGs. All of the diversions in this thread about psychology are missing the point.

Can't we go forward in this thread seeking to identify PNP's strengths and what can be done to strengthen them without impacting the twitch gamer's enjoyment as well?


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## jmucchiello (Apr 29, 2010)

pemerton said:


> Different approaches to playing the game, sure. Different preferences in game design, undoubtedly. Different degrees of maturity, or ability to accept delayed gratification? I'm just not seeing it.




What does maturity have to do with this thread? No one said twitch gamers are immature. No one said twitch gamers *can't* accept delayed gratification. What was said was these gamers prefer frequent gratification. You're just not seeing it because it isn't there.


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## Celebrim (Apr 29, 2010)

jmucchiello said:


> What does maturity have to do with this thread? No one said twitch gamers are immature. No one said twitch gamers *can't* accept delayed gratification..




In fact, I said the opposite.  I've been pretty much implying the whole time that chasing after more and more immediate gratification is pointless, both because it has a diminishing margin of return _and_ because even a gamer who is primarily a twitch gamer when he sits down in a PnP environment will accept delayed gratification if it comes along with the sort of ego fulfillment he's looking for.  For example, I gave an example from a recent campaign event of how being stunned could led to greater ego fulfillment than would be possible in a system without detrimental statuses.

Much of my problem with complaining about negative statuses and missed attacks and failure in general is that it creates perceptions in the player base that trust is being violated when failure happens.  This leaves the player feeling that he's been wronged when the system allows for failure, which in turn creates player expectations that interfere with the realization of long term enjoyment.  Ultimately, I was hoping to brainstorm on the subject of how you create a meaningful illusion of accomplishment in an RPG without resorting to designs that ultimately looked like Toon genera emmulation.

And it has nothing to do with maturity, because I've also said there are immature 'story gamers' and also that every gamer is in part or in some situations an ego gamer.  If you want to see a really serious ego gamer, play a game with a chess grand master or something similar.  Does anyone think that I'm claiming that chess is twitchy or immature or that playing chess competitively (and well) is somehow to be derided?  Yet I've no doubt in my mind that a chess grand master is going to naturally play an RPG 'to win', and I've little problem with that in and of itself.  It certainly can be problimatic, but it doesn't have to be.


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## Nifft (Apr 29, 2010)

Celebrim said:


> That might be the first RPG-like _arcade game_, but so far as I know the first RPG video game was Dungeon.



 Cool. I'm not sure how I'd file that.



Celebrim said:


> Gauntlet is a pretty interesting entry in this thread because it pares the video game experience of an 'RPG' down to its essentials.  More later when I think about it some more.



 Yeah, and it is a very early example of what we today think of as "party balance". Their Wizard had a great "daily" power, but lame At-Wills, while their Warrior was the opposite.

Also it was hella fun.



pemerton said:


> I'm not following you here. Running and cycling and the like are active. Sitting down is passive. I get that. But when I roleplay, I sit down rather than run around. So that's passive to.



 Wrong. Here's a less confusing example, so you won't get confused about physical activity vs. activity of participation:
- *Reading* a book is passive.
- *Writing* a book is active.

- *Watching* someone play a game is passive.
- *Playing* a game is active.

Cheers, -- N


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## Tuft (Apr 29, 2010)

jmucchiello said:


> The OP's horror story is that attempting to cater to this style is a dead end for PNP RPGs. CRPGs will always do it better. Celebrim is calling this a mistake not because he wants the style of play eradicated. Instead he calls it a mistake to not promote what PNP games do better than CRPGs. All of the diversions in this thread about psychology are missing the point.
> 
> Can't we go forward in this thread seeking to identify PNP's strengths and what can be done to strengthen them without impacting the twitch gamer's enjoyment as well?





*=PNP Strengths=*

Persistent, affectable, mutable world. When you catch that mugger in the alley, He stays caught, and you don't see him repeat his mugging everytime you pass. 

NPC interaction that goes beyond set selections - you can actually use arguments, logic and rethoric, instead of just select between options such as A: be diplomatic,  B: be intimidating, C:ignore.  (Or A: accept quest, B: ignore quest)

Can handle a curveball: "Can I make a refrigerator based on green slime? Can I open the door more sneakily if I lubricate it with a Grease spell?" You can be creative and go beyond the set parameters of the game. 

Meta-game influence: You can ask your GM to add things you like, remove things you dislike, and tweak the rules to everyone's (?) satisfaction.

Tailored challenges: The DM can on his own change things to give the players what he thinks they deserve - from designing a castle in someone's favorite color on their birthday, to simply tweak the monster To-Hit upwards when the PC's AC gets out of hand. 

*=MMO&CRPG Strengths=*

Lots of Flashy F/X. 

Reasonably fast-resolved button-mashing combat without lots of math. Well, fast-resolved unless it's an CoH AV fight. 

Predictable optimization against predictable, repeatable enemies. You can use your Character Builder program with exact DPS calculation to fine-tune your character, before going up against known enemies, and repeat it against exactly the same ones until you are satisfied with your tweaking. If you are the competitive type, you can compare optimizations against each others, using those predictable enemies.

Unlimited lives. That mean you can actually lose without having to start all over again - which in turn means that the fights do not have to be stacked that heavily in your favor. Well, out of habit most MMOs do stack them thataway anyway...


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## Celebrim (Apr 29, 2010)

pemerton said:


> *Delayed gratification and "ego gamers"*
> 
> I've never heard any admirer of good music tell me that, if I'm really going to enjoy (for example) Wagner and avoid being an immature ego-listener, then I have to dilute every hour of stirring Ring Cycle with three hours of tedious Abba.
> 
> Why would it be essential, then, in RPGing, to interrupt every hour of really engaging and inspiring play with periods of nothing happening, no dice being rolled, no story being progressed, etc?




I don't know, why would it be essential?  I'm curious, because so far as I know, you are the only one who has suggested such a thing.

I think you have a really bizarre understanding of what delayed gratification means if you honestly think any of that is what is being talked about here.

Since you bring up classical music, I'll go with your own self-inflicted bad analogy.  Keep in mind, this is your analogy.  I would have prefered not to go there.  In classical music, consider the way Mussorgsky's 'Pictures at an Exhibition' builds up the listeners excitement over the course of the peice with the various Promenade sections finally leading up to a grand crescendo.  Now, it would be quite possible and indeed satisfying to just listen to the promenade and crescendo movements in the peice.  That's the 'big payoff' where Mussorgsky is putting his most compelling, memorable, loudest, most intense music.  Taken on its own, it's still a great peice of music.  But, taken in context along with the interludes leading up to it, the excitement of the peice is even greater.   Mussorgsky continually wets the appetite of the hearer by foreshadowing his big finale, but then he withdraws into side themes for a while, temporarily cooling the excite.   This provides delayed gratification to the listener.

Delayed gratification is not about doing nothing for a while.  Delayed gratification is about not getting the 'big win' for a while so that when you do get the 'big win' its more meaningful.  Every game uses delayed gratification of one sort or another.  Even a game with a structure like 'God of War' which brings the awesome in the first act, has a structure that involves delayed gratification.  That wetting of the appetite in act one with an epic scene, makes you greater anticipate getting back to full strength when your powers are (temporarily) lost.

Delayed gratification is about doing something with a less immediate payoff for a while so that the payoff is bigger in the end.  Mechanically we might think of a delayed payoff as being, "I'll take an penalty on attacks for X rounds, so that I can get a bonus on attacks of 2X in the following round."  or "If I take damage for X rounds in a row, I get a big bonus in the following round."  I'm not saying that is good mechanic nor am I saying that its a good analogy for every sort of delayed, but it is at least an example of delaying gratification.  Sitting around doing nothing is not an example of delayed gratification.


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## pemerton (Apr 29, 2010)

Nifft said:


> Wrong. Here's a less confusing example, so you won't get confused about physical activity vs. activity of participation:
> - *Reading* a book is passive.
> - *Writing* a book is active.
> 
> ...



You probably noticed that, in the post you're replying to, I suggested creativity/participation vs non-participation as helpful _alternatives_ to the active/passive contrast. You want to use them as equivalents? Fine. I don't there's any confusion going on, but I do think we have a bit of a disagreement about the nature of aesthetic experience (ie I don't agree that it's passive - it's intellectual activity). But that's probably irrelevant to this thread.

Some players of RPGs want to act/participate by engaging the mechanics to affect the gameworld situation via their PCs. When the game impedes, in a signficant way (eg duration or degree of "miss a turn" effects) their ability to do so, their enjoyment of the game is reduced.

Other players are less conerned when this happens becase they are happy to act/participate in other ways eg by playing an NPC, by advising other players on strategy, etc. For these players, "miss a turn" mechanics don't reduce their enjoyment of the game so much, because although such mechanics affect their use of their PCs, they don't make them miss out on _other_ sorts of turns ie the ones you can take without using your PC, such as the above-mentioned advising other players etc.

Either sort of play can probably put up with a degree of absolute non-participation (spectating).

I don't see any issue here of playing to win. I don't see any issue here of delayed gratification (ie there is nothing analogous to working all week so I can party on the weekend, or living in penury now so I can save up and by something nice in 10 years time).


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## pemerton (Apr 29, 2010)

Celebrim, I think your two recent posts - about chess, and about the relationship between interlude and crescendo - are interesting, and put your OP in a somewhat different light.

You suggested that I inflicted myself with a bad analogy. I believe that you have done the same in your use of the phrase "delayed gratification". This is a notion used primarly to explain various economic and work practices that are characteristic of a modern economy. Saving (and hence, to an extent) suffering now so as to be able to afford something nice in X years time is the classic example.

There is nothing analogous to delayed gratification in listening to music with the sorts of contrasts you've described in your post. Rather, there is a type of contrast in experiences which makes the pleasure derived from one all the more powerful because of its relationship to the other. _But the whole experience is still a pleasurable one._ It's not as if listening to the interlude is suffering, or even an absence of pleasure.

As my posts in this thread have shown, I think that there is an explanation for the features of modern RPG design (and especially D&D 4e) that you are interested in, which does not appeal to the ego-gamer/delayed gratification notion. It is about the sort of experience that the game delivers to the participant. In talking about the ego-gamer you are correct to focus on the issue of taking pleasure in playing, but you are (in my opinion) looking at it in the wrong way.

The issue is not about wanting to shorten the reward cycle. It's about differences in what counts as rewarding (eg tactical vs operational concerns - OB/DB split vs iron rations). It's about different relationships to the PC as a vehicle for interacting with the gameworld. You haven't responded to my points about the obvious influence of indie design on 4e, but I think these are pretty crucial, because they suggest a strong alternative interpretation to the ego-gamer one that you have offered.

There is also a Ron Edwards essay that I have been reminded of by this thread:

How do Ouija boards work? People sit around a board with letters and numbers on it, all touching a legged planchette that can slide around on the board. They pretend that spectral forces are moving the planchette around to spell messages. What's happening is that, at any given moment, someone is guiding the planchette, and the point is to make sure that the planchette always appears to everyone else to be moving under its own power. 

Taking this idea to role-playing, the deluded notion is that Simulationist play will yield Story Now play without any specific attention on anyone's part to do so. The primary issue is to maintain the facade that "No one guides the planchette!" The participants must be devoted to the notion that stories don't need authors; they emerge from some ineffable confluence of Exploration per se. It's kind of a weird Illusionism perpetrated on one another, with everyone putting enormous value on maintaining the Black Curtain between them and everyone else. Typically, groups who play this way have been together for a very long time. 

My call is, you get what you play for. Can you address Premise this way? Sure, on the monkeys-might-fly-out-my-butt principle. But the key to un-premeditated artistry of this sort (cutup fiction, splatter painting, cinema verite) is to know what to throw out, and role-playing does not include that option, at least not very easily. Participants in Ouija-board play do so through selective remembering. I have observed many such role-players to refer to hours of unequivocally bored and contentious play as "awesome!" given a week or two for mental editing. 

What I see from such groups is the following: 

•They use a highly customized house-version of a given rules-set, usually AD&D, BRP, or an early edition of Champions; many of the customized details are unrecorded. 

•They employ a personalized set of subtle cues and expectations that arise out of their long-term friendships and habits of play. 

•The satisfaction-moments are rare to the extent of being perhaps a yearly event. "Nothing happened tonight" is typical, but the group believes that you don't legitimately get the cherished moments any other way. Such moments are treasured and carefully repeated among them. 

•Rarely, another person participates and (horrors!) actually overtly moves the planchette, or discusses how it's being moved. That person is instantly ejected, with cries of "powergamer!" and "pushy bastard!" 

•They're socially isolated from other role-players, as their play is so arcane and impenetrable that no one else can easily participate. If they go to cons, they go together, stay together, and leave together. One of them buys a new game that "looks good," and they rarely if ever try it, always rejecting it when they do. 

•They're socially isolated not only from gamers, but from everyone, insofar as their hobby is concerned. Forget social context; it's just these guys, aging, playing their tweaked versions of the game they discovered in high school, reminiscing about that one awesome time when character X did that awesome thing. 

Ouija-board groups vary in terms of how much fun they have, and I'll leave further discussion of the phenomenon to the forums.​
4e is clearly a game for those who don't object to overtly moving the planchette.


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## Hussar (Apr 30, 2010)

Celebrim, I do think Pemerton has a point here. 

Since delayed gratification in the sense that you're using it doesn't mean, "suffer now to reap rewards later" but rather just means, "have a bit less fun now to reap rewards later, but have fun all the time", doesn't appealing to the ego-gamer actually help this?

I was being a bit tongue in cheek before with the idea that now everyone is a fighter, but, really, I do think there's a point in there.  A fighter doesn't start slow and then get better - a fighter does what he does from the first second he hits the table.  While he gets better at doing what he does, there is no real significant difference at any point in his career between what he does now and what he does later.

A caster, OTOH, changes massively throughout his career.  The caster starts out very, very weak and then gets to the point where he's blowing spells every round because he has power to spare.  And it also gets applied out of combat as well - all the "screw the rogue" type spells that people lament about.  

It's the difference between a straight line power curve and an exponential one.  

Is the new paradigm really appealing to "twitch gamers" or simply trying to ensure that you engage everyone at the table as much as possible?  To end the whole "twenty minutes of fun wrapped up in four hours" that tends to characterize older games?

Or, to put it another way, is the shift in games not a recognition of a failure on the part of older games to engage players meaningfully for rather lengthy periods of time?


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## Celebrim (Apr 30, 2010)

pemerton said:


> You suggested that I inflicted myself with a bad analogy. I believe that you have done the same in your use of the phrase "delayed gratification". This is a notion used primarly to explain various economic and work practices that are characteristic of a modern economy. Saving (and hence, to an extent) suffering now so as to be able to afford something nice in X years time is the classic example.
> 
> There is nothing analogous to delayed gratification in listening to music with the sorts of contrasts you've described in your post. Rather, there is a type of contrast in experiences which makes the pleasure derived from one all the more powerful because of its relationship to the other. _But the whole experience is still a pleasurable one._ It's not as if listening to the interlude is suffering, or even an absence of pleasure.




I reject your contrast as a post-modernist construction which suggests that anything good for us, must somehow be bad.  I reject the notion that profitable work is suffering.  I reject the notion that study and scholarship are suffering.  I reject the notion that exercise and training are suffering.  Certainly, these things don't offer the same experience of gratification that the work leads up to, and certainly they all bear with them a certain measure of challenge and difficulty, but I present that they are gratifying, satisfying and even pleasurable things in and of themselves.  And therefore, I insist that they are perfectly comparable with what I've been talking about.  I refuse to accept the notion that anything hard must perforce be suffering, which is the assumption of your claim and the heart and soul of the whole matter.



> As my posts in this thread have shown, I think that there is an explanation for the features of modern RPG design (and especially D&D 4e) that you are interested in, which does not appeal to the ego-gamer/delayed gratification notion. It is about the sort of experience that the game delivers to the participant. In talking about the ego-gamer you are correct to focus on the issue of taking pleasure in playing, but you are (in my opinion) looking at it in the wrong way.
> 
> The issue is not about wanting to shorten the reward cycle. It's about differences in what counts as rewarding (eg tactical vs operational concerns - OB/DB split vs iron rations). It's about different relationships to the PC as a vehicle for interacting with the gameworld. You haven't responded to my points about the obvious influence of indie design on 4e, but I think these are pretty crucial, because they suggest a strong alternative interpretation to the ego-gamer one that you have offered.




I haven't responded to your points about the obvious influence of indie design on 4e, because I believe that there is no obvious influence of indie design on 4e and indeed I think it is pretty clear that 4e is wildly different in assumptions, goals, mechanics and techniques from an archetypal 'indie' game like 'Dogs in the Vineyard'.  The whole notion that 4e is some sort of 'indie' game is laughable on the face of it and I don't understand why you keep trying to push such a tenuous connection.

Salient features of 'Indie' games and the larger ilk of narrativist/story centered games include things like:

1) Combat occupies no special or exalted place in the rules either as a means of resolving challenges or a elevated and special skill.  In fact, physical combat may not be supported directly by the rules at all.
2) Very broad and unconstrained character creation.  Players have wide latitude to define the attributes of their character and the meaning of those attributes will have in the game.  
3) Fortune in the End
4) 'Alternative' fortune mechanics (other than traditional polyhedrals)
5) Either no defined setting at all beyond the nature of the characters created, or very titlely focused settings, especially wierd, provocative, or humorous settings (again defined by the sort of characters created).
6) Collaborative narration, often with concrete resources distributed to players and gamemasters alike that allow for direct narrative control, or rotating GMs.
7) Mechanical definitions and support of relationships between the character and other characters.  Heavy support for resolving social drama, often to the point of having more support for resolving social combat than they have for resolving combat (or resolving them with essentially identical mechanics, see #1) 

By contrast, 4e is a traditional squad based tactical fantasy RPG with heavy support for combat, tightly controlled and relatively inflexible character creation, a completely traditional GM, and otherwise completely traditional mechanics.  In some ways, 4e D&D is the most 'D&Dish' version of the game ever.  

Moreover, if you start looking at Indie games you'll see lots and lots of support for the sterotypical 'roleplayer' who thinks that its more mature to play characters with lots of flaws and internal conflicts and who wants to roleplay out buying a basket of apples or chatting with the neighbor as they wash their clothes in the appartment buildings basement and other low drama story centered things.  What you won't find is the traditional ego fulfillment paraphenalia - loot, experience points, repetitive tactical combat, etc.  By contrast, 4e is the game that has so defined down what it means to have flaws, that races no longer carry penalties to attributes and you are allowed to effectively substitute intelligence for dexterity to allow for combat optimization.  I mean seriously, you think 4e has heavy Indie game influence?  To complete the sterotype, you think 4e is the game that edgy, artsy, FORGE reading, flower children flocked to after the virtual demise of the WoD LARP scene?  (I should note that while sterotyping here, I'm not denigrating either style of gaming as inferior nor am I suggesting my sterotype is inclusive of everyone that enjoys 'Indie' games.)  Look, I know that before 4e came out, alot of people believed it would look like Donjon (especially when they heard about 'skill challenges') but I just don't see the resemblence.  I don't think you could have made a less 'indie' game if you tried.

As for Ron Edwards essay, I don't want to comment on it, because my criticisms of it would probably unfortunately echo what alot of people have been saying about me.  I don't see how you can quote that tripe with a straight face while simultaneously blasting me for being derogatory.  I mean seriously, what's with that guy and who took a leak in his cheerios?


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## Celebrim (Apr 30, 2010)

Hussar said:


> To end the whole "twenty minutes of fun wrapped up in four hours" that tends to characterize older games?




I get so sick of that crap.  Seriously, what is with that?  If its 20 minutes of fun wrapped up in 4 hours, why the heck is anyone still playing?  I'm sorry you've had some bad DMs or bad times, but can you stop projecting on to everyone else?



> Or, to put it another way, is the shift in games not a recognition of a failure on the part of older games to engage players meaningfully for rather lengthy periods of time?




To answer that question, I'd first have to accept the premise that older games weren't fun most of the time.


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## Hussar (Apr 30, 2010)

Celebrim said:


> I get so sick of that crap.  Seriously, what is with that?  If its 20 minutes of fun wrapped up in 4 hours, why the heck is anyone still playing?  I'm sorry you've had some bad DMs or bad times, but can you stop projecting on to everyone else?
> 
> 
> 
> To answer that question, I'd first have to accept the premise that older games weren't fun most of the time.




Has nothing to do with bad DM's and everything to do with the mechanics.  It's not that older games weren't fun most of the time, it's that older games forced a very traditional setup of "act on your turn, not on someone else's".  

Older, traditional games spent a HUGE amount of time doing not much of anything.  You sat and watched the other players doing something a whole pile.  You couldn't act out of turn.  Heck, going way back, you had a caller who would mediate between you and the GM, removing even your ability to really decide all your own actions.

It might be hyperbole, but, there is a grain of truth there.  Older games, by delaying gratification, meant that you were spending more time not being gratified.  This should be pretty obvious.  If the rate of gratification is higher now, then it must have been slower before, with more time spent between points of gratification.

Thus the hyperbole of 20 minutes of fun wrapped in 4 hours.  You spend a minority amount of time actively participating, and a majority of time passively watching and waiting for your turn.

One thing that more recent games have done is break out of the turn based systems that characterize many traditional games.  Many games now have some sort of interrupt ability (to borrow a CCG term) that lets you "go out of turn".  Many games have abilities which allow you to make someone else take an action out of turn as well.  Whether it's something as simple as an Attack of Opportunity mechanic or something more complex, the idea of "wait your turn" is a good example of delayed gratification.

Since gratification doesn't equal succeeding, but rather actively participating, again, I have to ask, is this trend really a bad thing?  Forcing more active participation from the players more often is a good thing isn't it?


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## jmucchiello (Apr 30, 2010)

Hussar said:


> Has nothing to do with bad DM's and everything to do with the mechanics.  It's not that older games weren't fun most of the time, it's that older games forced a very traditional setup of "act on your turn, not on someone else's".
> 
> Older, traditional games spent a HUGE amount of time doing not much of anything.  You sat and watched the other players doing something a whole pile.  You couldn't act out of turn.  Heck, going way back, you had a caller who would mediate between you and the GM, removing even your ability to really decide all your own actions.




I think I've found the difference. For me, and I'm guessing other people, participation is not a function of rolling the dice, interrupting someone else or even succeeding. Take baseball as an example, I'm guessing the reasons someone likes or dislikes baseball is a play here. If you are sitting in the stands and your favorite team is at bat, you are attending the game but you are not participating. If you are sitting on the bench, due up 5th this inning while you team is at bat you are as "active" as the guy in that stands yet you are definitely participating. A guy on the bench is watching the pitcher to learn how he pitches, he paying attention to the score and who's on base and how the fielders are positioned.

The same thing happens in an RPG when it is not your turn. You can choose to goof off, go get a snack, talk to someone else at the table about your job, etc, or you can pay attention to who's turn it is, where the monsters are, what might come through the door, etc. 

The difference between the role-player and baseball player is the baseball player is being paid to be member of the team and you can damn well bet if his coach or manager asks him "are you paying attention to the game?" He's going to answer yes if he doesn't want to get chewed out. As a professional, it is his job to participate regardless of whether he has his glove on or a bat in hand. The role-player is not held to the same standard the pro baseball player is without a strong social dynamic. 



> Thus the hyperbole of 20 minutes of fun wrapped in 4 hours.  You spend a minority amount of time actively participating, and a majority of time passively watching and waiting for your turn.




Anyone posting on this board is likely capable of paying attention without needing game mechanics to keep them "engaged". And I would guess is not passively watching, waiting for his turn. Can't you observe what is happening on other players' turns while waiting for your turn? I know I'm always listening to the damage announcements from the both the DM (to figure out how much of a threat the current foe actually is) and from my fellow players (to figure out how tough the foes are). Isn't this fun?

I'm guessing it probably isn't for the casual gamer. The casual gamer is someone who doesn't live for the hobby. He doesn't read ENWorld, ever. And while he may be an excellent "team" player socially, he doesn't engage with the game when it's not his turn. This group is orthogonal to the twitch gamer of this thread but they do both benefit from rules systems that cater to twitch gaming. If there are more things to do out of turn in order to increase the twitch gamer's frequency of action, then this also helps the casual gamer stay focused on the game. As I said earlier in the thread, perhaps this observation about faster, more frequent WIN does more than just cater to the twitch gamer. In the case of "more to do during a round" it also keeps casual gamers engaged.


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## Garthanos (Apr 30, 2010)

Celebrim said:


> I mean seriously, what's with that guy and who took a leak in his cheerios?




Here is a weird one I agree I have difficulty digging past the overly exaggeratedly critical portrayal of other peoples play style to meaningful
elements which might be in there.


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## Garthanos (Apr 30, 2010)

jmucchiello said:


> Take baseball as an example, I'm guessing the reasons someone likes or dislikes baseball is a play here. If you are sitting in the stands and your favorite team is at bat, you are attending the game but you are not participating.




I would rather take football...  

"Baseball is a nineteenth-century pastoral game.
Football is a twentieth-century technological struggle."

--George Carlin.

Note football involves lots more dynamic and explicit gaining of advantage via positioning not a bad analogy. D&D has become more like football. Lots of explicit roles including defenders and strikers. 

Though there are also soccer or hockey elements anyone and everyone on the field can score goals...at most anytime.


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## jmucchiello (Apr 30, 2010)

Garthanos said:


> Note football involves lots more dynamic and explicit gaining of advantage via positioning not a bad analogy. D&D has become more like football.




So like AD&D, the players will designate a caller and he'll take orders from a coaching team of 5 other people to direct each round or "play". Then everyone will take their actions simultaneously and then huddle up for no more than 30 seconds while the coaching team tells them what to do. The caller relays this info to the players and every takes their actions simultaneously. After a few plays a whole new group of players will come in to finish the encounter and the yet another whole group of players will come in to start the next part of the adventure. Football, yeah, that makes sense. 

And it's too bad George is dead. We'll never find out what the 21st Century game is.


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## Garthanos (Apr 30, 2010)

It has become much more like Football. It has always been somewhat true but it feels more true with the newer mechanics.

In 4e the warlord is a quarterback archetype... the runners and recievers are strikers the line is defenders... who stop you from getting to the others etc. There is even an Archer warlord for the quarterback who specializes in the passing game ;-). The characters with the various roles have more abilities to reinforce there functions.(like defenders able to stop attacks against there allies and the warlord/leader who enables the strikers).

In 4e (3e too right?) that every-bodies actions are coming simultaneously is reinforced by out of turn actions.

Positioning advantages are explicit for every character in 4e. Ignoring it is missing out and will result in inferior effectiveness. gee sounds ike the kind of thing a EG will love right? choices that he has to make that slows each round and may result in failures.



jmucchiello said:


> And it's too bad George is dead. We'll never find out what the 21st Century game is.




And the too bad part is because he was awesome.


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## Garthanos (Apr 30, 2010)

jmucchiello said:


> As I said earlier in the thread, perhaps this observation about faster, more frequent WIN does more than just cater to the twitch gamer. In the case of "more to do during a round" it also keeps casual gamers engaged.




Actual real combat is not in a turn order so breaking that up is really catering to simulationists.(see that very absolutist)

So who exactly is getting catered t?

I mean increase significant choice density slows feedback it doesn't speed it up.  And the more real the choices are... the less it caters to "mr unthinking easy win".

AD&D is the perfect game to addict somebody to fast "I attack" "You hit" pellet releases if that is what you want.


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## Celebrim (Apr 30, 2010)

Hussar said:


> Has nothing to do with bad DM's and everything to do with the mechanics.  It's not that older games weren't fun most of the time, it's that older games forced a very traditional setup of "act on your turn, not on someone else's".




We've suddenly got real time combat?

I don't have the books in front of me, but the 'Attack of Oppurtunity' concept which forms the core of the argument you are advancing here is not a new concept.  It has just been formalized better than in older editions, but in older editions taking a non-combat action while threatened did draw an attack from anyone threatening you.  In fact, by the time 2e came out, I'd taken this notion and formalized it into 'parries' and 'counterattacks' that looked alot like a clunky version of 3e's AoO.  But even without my formalization, it's in there.  You couldn't make a missile attack or quafe a potion in melee without getting attacked.

Moreover, older game systems actually in some ways did a much better job of handling simultaneous action than modern versions of D&D.  Most elegantly, older versions of D&D maintained the wargame-like concept of 'phases' within the turn, so that for example, everyone made simultaneous movement during a movement phase, which was followed by everyone taking turns making attacks.  In practice, this actually made the battle simulate real-time much better than 3e and post 3e's strictly turn based sequence where everyone completes a full set of actions and attacks in initiative order.   So I'm not sure I agree that there has been net movement in the direction of acting out of turn, except possibly in 4e's concept of 'team play' where your actions can trigger actions in your teammates.   That is new, although I'm not sure that it necessarily means you act more often since if you aren't the one who gets an additional action, it just means you are waiting longer for your turn.  On the whole, I tend to think of it as a wash.



> Older, traditional games spent a HUGE amount of time doing not much of anything.  You sat and watched the other players doing something a whole pile.  You couldn't act out of turn.




This seems like a false assertion backed up by a thin bit of evidence.  The primary time in older traditional games I can remember spending a huge amount of time doing not much of anything is when we split the party - and that was only for some groups.*  Most groups played a more traditional game and never split the party, and in that case I don't have the recollection you have.  Splitting the party in a modern game will end up with the same passive participation phase as you watch (or not) the other members of play do their thing while waiting for yours.

*(Splitting the party in some groups became a big enough problem that in some groups I had a primary PC and several 'hench-PCs' who were the henchmen of another primary PC.   This resolved what had been the increasingly big problem of waiting around watching other players do something.)



> Heck, going way back, you had a caller who would mediate between you and the GM, removing even your ability to really decide all your own actions.




I go back far enough to remember when this was the suggested course of action in the rule books, but not far back enough to remember this ever being strictly enforced.  And, even in the example of play in the 1e DMG, it wasn't strictly enforced and there is direct DM to non-leader player communication.  So, I think that you are speaking more from theory than from actual play experience here.



> It might be hyperbole, but, there is a grain of truth there.  Older games, by delaying gratification, meant that you were spending more time not being gratified.  This should be pretty obvious.  If the rate of gratification is higher now, then it must have been slower before, with more time spent between points of gratification.




There is a grain of truth here, but I think it is more in the occurance of certain sorts of failure and the expectation of failure than in the rate of play.  High level 1e play is typically much faster than high level 3e play, and I would suspect at least as fast or faster than high level 4e play because the system did not encourage so much attack modifier management, nor did you typically have as much to do on your turn so rounds typically went faster.  More to do in a round vs. getting to your turn more quickly seems like a wash to me.



> Thus the hyperbole of 20 minutes of fun wrapped in 4 hours.  You spend a minority amount of time actively participating, and a majority of time passively watching and waiting for your turn.




I disagree.  There were times when you passively participated because you were diseased, unconscious, stunned, or had been tied up because the psionic blast had driven you insane and you kept trying to gut yourself with your own sword (yes, I am speaking from experience), but that wasn't 'a majority of the time'.   I don't think you are going to make much headway on the participation argument via the standard model of combat.



> One thing that more recent games have done is break out of the turn based systems that characterize many traditional games.  Many games now have some sort of interrupt ability (to borrow a CCG term) that lets you "go out of turn".  Many games have abilities which allow you to make someone else take an action out of turn as well.  Whether it's something as simple as an Attack of Opportunity mechanic or something more complex, the idea of "wait your turn" is a good example of delayed gratification.




I suppose so, but I'm not convinced there is as much progression here or that the 'interrupts' you talk about are as significant to what has changed as you seem to want to make them.



> Since gratification doesn't equal succeeding, but rather actively participating, again, I have to ask, is this trend really a bad thing?  Forcing more active participation from the players more often is a good thing isn't it?




I don't agree with the premise, and to the extent I agree with the conclusion it wouldn't mean that I was also validating the premise because the one doesn't to me imply the other.  Actively participating in failure is less gratifying than actively participating in success (for many or most players) and even ungratifying regardless of the level of mechanical participation so I don't agree in your attempt to split the concepts.  And I don't agree that there is a increased participation trend except where failure is defined down.  Since I don't agree with the premises, what I think about encouraging involvement in the game doesn't much directly impact what is being discussed here.

Moreover, I think based on the argument you made here that you don't even get the whole premise of the claim "20 minutes of fun in 4 hours of play".


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## clearstream (Apr 30, 2010)

Garthanos said:


> You specifically do not understand  ...1 its not "always" 2 it is most frequently "yes, but" and  the but part is incredibly important because it encourages the yes part to be only partial and the introduction of new complications so as to progress the action/story etc.
> 
> That you think its "always" makes it sound like you are listening to rumors instead of actually reading about the concepts from the sources.




I think you bring to this discussion a more nuanced idea of what 'yes' means than perhaps exists in the more egregious examples that irk me. I looked for a few examples, and they help illustrate your point.

For instance, from Chris Perkins
_'Give your players space to enhance what you create, and when they try to  add to your campaign, embrace their ideas as if they were your own.  Just say yes._'

Chris goes on to explain the benefits to his gameworld he feels he gained from this method. I'm not sure I could characterise Chris' 'say yes' approach as egregious.

Or take Ameron

'_Let the PCs be heroic

This is a mixture of the “say yes” philosophy and the “rule of cool.” If the PC want to try something that’s a little outside of the rules and it makes sense for their character and makes sense for the moment, then I say let them try it._'

Again, I'm not sure I could characterise that as not including a virtuous 'but'.

Or another author - Mike (somebody) - criticising his DM

'_The latest hotness in DMing is the “Philosophy of Yes” where the DM encourages the players to be creative. For example during the skill challenges when suggesting using a skill he said “explain to me how you use it” and instead of working with it or accepting it and using a high DC, he said “no, you can’t do that.”_'

Mike talks about 'encouraging the players to be creative'. I wonder if that is what it really amounts to? Certainly arguments have become very sophisticated on the forums. A respondent to Mike bemoans that

'_It appears that [the no-saying DM] sees the game as a competition between your PCs and  his Monsters (or NPCs).  This makes him seem like he is out to get your  PCs and wants to “win” at all costs.  The best way to think about this  is to disbelieve it.  In many sports competitions it’s all about the  mental psych-out that some players hope to use against the other side –  it becomes an advantage by making the opposing players lose confidence  and falter._'

Really? Maybe the chosen skill just didn't apply? I often rule a skill won't work for some purpose, that doesn't make my players think I'm out to get them or want to 'win' at all cost. If I truly wanted to win, I think my players would find there is no limit to how many uber-dragons I can create  However, my real point is that there is a recognised 'philosophy of yes' and I think this philosophy probably means different things to different people. 

Your version sounds kind of cool; but the version taken task with is not cool. 



Garthanos said:


> Specifically the "none" valid you or Cerebelim have provided that even claims it... I am not going to be pulled in to proving a negative... sorry it is your responsibility if you honestly want to claim people are so much like rats.
> 
> You might look up gaming theory ... and see if you can find mention of
> "the easy instant win"...without the word "dissatisfaction" next to it.
> ...




I read the paper SkyOdin rather poorly summarised. He missed out elements such as playing to beat the game or feel better about yourself. Further, it misinterprets the study to say that it represents what people choose to do: rather it represents what people respond positively to. These things are not the same, and I think a point I have been trying to make is that people who want everything to go their way indeed miss out on things that they could enjoy greatly, if only they were open to them.

Both the fiero and schadenfreude qualities described in the study contain negative as well as positive elements, and as the authors say '_People play games to change or structure their internal experiences._' In fact, the study contains very little to address the question of whether 'just tell me yes' gamers might exist, and whether they might be misguided.

I think you are defending a position I am not arguing against (and vice versa, in all likelihood). Most people would surely agree there are 'bad sports' and that some of those are characterised by always wanting to win. Unfortunately, there is a cross-over between them and 'say yes' philosophy that I feel to be problematical. This wouldn't be the first time something that is good handled correctly can become a thorn in the side of good gaming.

-vk


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## Hussar (Apr 30, 2010)

> Anyone posting on this board is likely capable of paying attention without needing game mechanics to keep them "engaged". And I would guess is not passively watching, waiting for his turn. Can't you observe what is happening on other players' turns while waiting for your turn? I know I'm always listening to the damage announcements from the both the DM (to figure out how much of a threat the current foe actually is) and from my fellow players (to figure out how tough the foes are). Isn't this fun?




I've found myself frequently multitasking at the table, so, I know exactly how people feel.  It's not that hard to keep half an ear on things and then go off to do other stuff.  Particularly when a round of combat can take upwards of fifteen minutes before my turn comes up again.  

And I know for a fact, I'm not the only one.



> I don't have the books in front of me, but the 'Attack of Oppurtunity' concept which forms the core of the argument you are advancing here is not a new concept. It has just been formalized better than in older editions, but in older editions taking a non-combat action while threatened did draw an attack from anyone threatening you. In fact, by the time 2e came out, I'd taken this notion and formalized it into 'parries' and 'counterattacks' that looked alot like a clunky version of 3e's AoO. But even without my formalization, it's in there. You couldn't make a missile attack or quafe a potion in melee without getting attacked.




Why did you do that?  Why make up "counter attack" rules?  For simulation reasons or to further engage the players or both?

While, yes, earlier D&D did have some very rudimentary AOO rules - you couldn't retreat without taking attack, the effect was to basically turn combat into bingo.  I call a number and a damage, you call a number and damage, wash rinse repeat.  Tactics were mostly non-existent because the mechanics didn't reward anything other than standing in one place and whacking away.

I do agree that the rudimentary mechanics were there.  But it took 3e and then 4e to realize that engaging players ALL THE TIME is a good idea.  You have to actively pay attention to the combat or you'll miss out on actions.  In 1e or 2e, I didn't have to pay any attention, other than write down the damage I took.  I wasn't EVER going to act on another player's turn, and it was extremely unlikely I'd get to act on a monster's turn.  After all, how many monsters are quaffing potions in combat?  

You're looking at this from a purely DM's perspective.  The DM might get to roll AOO's in 1e, but the players almost never will.  Very, very few mechanics exist that allow me to actively do anything on another player's turn in 1e or 2e.  Even 3e is pretty limited this way.  Certainly pre-4e, no other player is going to impel me to take an action on his turn.

Yet, in 4e, pretty much every class has mechanics that will impel both the monsters and the other players to take actions out of turn.  Many monsters also have abilities that act out of turn.  

This has been my biggest eye opening in finally playing 4e.  How much attention the game forces you to pay in order to play.  It is not unusual to act on other character's turns EVERY round.  Not every character, of course, but, once or twice a round seems to be about average.  This is a huge departure from earlier D&D.


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## Raven Crowking (Apr 30, 2010)

Celebrim said:


> This seems like a false assertion backed up by a thin bit of evidence.




Keep in mind that the tactical richness of 1e meant that most players had to mull for a minute or two (at least!) prior to deciding exactly what to do!  Since people have commented on this tactical richness so often, and so often said that WotC-D&D pales in comparison, it makes sense for them to argue that turns take longer in 1e.

You're probably also forgetting how long it takes to roll 1d20 in 1e.  In 1e, rolling 1d20 is a labour-intensive effort, often requiring a great deal of thought and effort.


RC


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## Celebrim (Apr 30, 2010)

Hussar said:


> Particularly when a round of combat can take upwards of fifteen minutes before my turn comes up again.




Ugghh.  Fifteen minutes is a whole combat as far as I'm concerned.  What level are you playing at or system are you using that turns take 15 minutes?  



> Why did you do that?  Why make up "counter attack" rules?  For simulation reasons or to further engage the players or both?




When I was younger, everything was a simulation reason.  Greater and greater 'realism' was the holy grail of everything I was doing.  If it had some other positive effect, that was not only good but expected.  That it might have some negative effect hadn't yet occurred to me, and wouldn't until I switched systems in frustration and started trying to make them 'realistic'.



> While, yes, earlier D&D did have some very rudimentary AOO rules - you couldn't retreat without taking attack, the effect was to basically turn combat into bingo.  I call a number and a damage, you call a number and damage, wash rinse repeat.  Tactics were mostly non-existent because the mechanics didn't reward anything other than standing in one place and whacking away.




Putting aside whether this is strictly true or not, it runs entirely counter to your claims about how previous editions played.  If it is true that combat was 'bingo', wash rinse repeat, it should also clearly follow that no one needed to spend a long time waiting for their number to be called.



> I do agree that the rudimentary mechanics were there.  But it took 3e and then 4e to realize that engaging players ALL THE TIME is a good idea.




To the extent that the 'bingo' analogy is true about 1e, I find it true about 3e and largely for the same reasons would find it true about 4e.  

You are looking for mechanics to reward something other than standing in one place and whacking away.  My belief is that this is a very poor understanding of what tactics mean.  I still believe that good encounter design trumps mechanics when it comes to encouraging tactics.  On the other hand, you make a good point about mental engaugement in the scene.



> You have to actively pay attention to the combat or you'll miss out on actions.




That's been happening at my table since 1e, but that is a whole other story.



> Certainly pre-4e, no other player is going to impel me to take an action on his turn.




I agree that that is true and that it could potentially create greater passive involvement in the scene because of the anticipation of an unexpected oppurtunity for active involvement.  On the other hand, I haven't exactly been complaining about 4e's event driven combat either and would consider that one of the aspects of 4e they 'got right' and which might be worth importing into my own rules.  



> This has been my biggest eye opening in finally playing 4e.  How much attention the game forces you to pay in order to play.  It is not unusual to act on other character's turns EVERY round.  Not every character, of course, but, once or twice a round seems to be about average.  This is a huge departure from earlier D&D.




Agreed in as much as it is a mechanical departure.  And in and of itself, that approach doesn't bother me.  Although I don't think it actually decreases the amount of time you wait between turns (on average) I do agree that it can have the positive benefit of maintaining passive participation in the scene.  In fact, this would be a good example of maintaining an ego gamers participation in the scene and excitement, without taking away or defining down the possibility of failure.   The sting of failure is still there, but its mitigated by the hope that something will happen soon to make up for it.


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## Celebrim (Apr 30, 2010)

Raven Crowking said:


> Keep in mind that the tactical richness of 1e meant that most players had to mull for a minute or two (at least!) prior to deciding exactly what to do!




Not at my table you didn't.  I picked up on something from 'Tomb of Horrors' and ran with it.  If you started hesistating, I started counting to six.  If you couldn't figure out what you wanted to do by then and state it clearly, then you lost your turn.  I still do that.  It takes alot of the dithering, page flipping, and so forth out of the metagame that gets in the way of the fun.



> Since people have commented on this tactical richness so often, and so often said that WotC-D&D pales in comparison, it makes sense for them to argue that turns take longer in 1e.




I waffle back and forth over which edition had the most tactical richness.  Certainly 4e has tried the hardness to make tactical richness the center-peice of its play experience (with some success), but I'm inclined to think that they all have something or the other going for them.  Compared to 1e, I think both 3e and 4e suffer from tactical illusionism, where in you are making somewhat complex tactical choices but this complexity serves to mask the fact that - unless the DM is good at creating tactical puzzles - you are doing pretty much the same thing over and over.  In 1e, this problem happened alot as well, but when it did you were under no illusions about it and it was pretty obvious that the DM wasn't using his creativity well.  But 1e did do alot of things with weapon vs. AC, simultaneous movement, weapon length, facing, and so forth that I miss in new editions but which I don't want to port into their already complicated frameworks.



> You're probably also forgetting how long it takes to roll 1d20 in 1e.  In 1e, rolling 1d20 is a labour-intensive effort, often requiring a great deal of thought and effort.




No, but sometimes tracking down the d20 when it fell on the floor required a great deal of effort.


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## Raven Crowking (Apr 30, 2010)

Celebrim said:


> Not at my table you didn't.




That's okay; you picked up on my point in your reply to Hussar.

The claim has been made again and again that all you did was make an attack roll in 1e.  How it takes 15 minutes under those same circumstances to get to your next turn is beyond me.  I played 1e with groups numbering up to 12-20 PCs at a time without doing so.


RC


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## Starfox (May 1, 2010)

Hussar said:


> [...]it took 3e and then 4e to realize that engaging players ALL THE TIME is a good idea.  You have to actively pay attention to the combat or you'll miss out on actions.




While it is not a bad thing to introduce interrupts that let you act in another players/creature's turn, its not the holy grail of gaming either. Because each possible interrupt (even those that never actually happen) involves decision making, and each decision takes time. Which makes for a very slow game. While a player turn rarely took more than 30 seconds in 1e, it is not unusual for a single player's turn to take as much as 5 minutes in 4E - leading to 15 minute rounds. And having to wait 15 minutes between rounds is a disaster. In our Mutants and Masterminds game, there are no opportunity actions, and that alone has shaved perhaps half the time off how long each player's turn takes.

To digress: this is not the only reason gameplay is slow in 4E. Another reason is that a player's turn now consists of three actions - minor, move, standard, each of which involves separate choices, can be substituted for each other, and can be used for complex actions like attacks or trigger reactions from other actors on the board. On top of that, you can spend action points for more actions.


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## jmucchiello (May 1, 2010)

Hussar said:


> You're looking at this from a purely DM's perspective.  The DM might get to roll AOO's in 1e, but the players almost never will.  Very, very few mechanics exist that allow me to actively do anything on another player's turn in 1e or 2e.  Even 3e is pretty limited this way.  Certainly pre-4e, no other player is going to impel me to take an action on his turn.



We had rules for all of this in 2e pre-Player Options: Combat and Tactics. Our circle of DMs liked tactical options and made allowances for stuff to take place out of turn. We used stuff like the segment rules for how long it takes to cast a spell, swing a two-handed sword or quaff a potion. It was all in the book and we used it. When people talk about pre-3e combat being strictly stand face-to-face and slug it out I shake my head. Not at our tables. Our DMs were also heaving influenced by S2: White Plume Mountain so we also always had interesting terrain long before 4e made it "cool".


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## Tuft (May 1, 2010)

Starfox said:


> While it is not a bad thing to introduce interrupts that let you act in another players/creature's turn, its not the holy grail of gaming either. Because each possible interrupt (even those that never actually happen) involves decision making, and each decision takes time. Which makes for a very slow game. While a player turn rarely took more than 30 seconds in 1e, it is not unusual for a single player's turn to take as much as 5 minutes in 4E - leading to 15 minute rounds. And having to wait 15 minutes between rounds is a disaster. In our Mutants and Masterminds game, there are no opportunity actions, and that alone has shaved perhaps half the time off how long each player's turn takes.
> 
> To digress: this is not the only reason gameplay is slow in 4E. Another reason is that a player's turn now consists of three actions - minor, move, standard, each of which involves separate choices, can be substituted for each other, and can be used for complex actions like attacks or trigger reactions from other actors on the board. On top of that, you can spend action points for more actions.





Exactly. A bunch of the most powerful buffs only lasts for a single turn, but in its entirety (such as e.g. the Pit Fighter's Extra Damage Action). Thus, you want to squeeze in as many attacks in that single round as possible: Normal standard action attack, action point standard action attack, normal minor action attack and converted-from-move minor action attack. Since (A) your buffs are per damage roll and (B) you want to maximize the chance of a crit, each of these four actions should preferably consist of as many separate attack rolls as possibly (bonus basic attacks are dandy for this). Also, since you converted your move into a minor action attack, you also prefer attack powers that includes movement, such as shifts, in the attack itself (e.g. Storm of Blows). Quite a lot of decisions need to be pondered during this, of course, in order to do all this in the optimal order. 

Then, add a bunch of to-hit re-rolls from various sources (and the decisions needed to be made where to apply these re-rolls for best effect), and a bunch of damage dice re-rolls to this, as well as describing all status effects that gets applied, and marking up the minis with those.

Top this off with that the player (quite naturally) wants to cinematically describe each and everyone of these attack rolls in detail, as well as illuminate all on what makes every one of these powers so _absolutely awesome_, since that round is that character's shining moment...   

(If you really want gravy on that, add a dash of occasional backtracking into all this, due to differing rules interpretations and situation interpretations between DM and player, such as whether a square is inside or outside the area of difficult ground, or whether a corner that is so very rounded on the map _really_ gives cover or not - since this is an _important_ round, such DM calls suddenly have extra impact...   )

I ofter wonder if the so very disparate accounts of combat time simply depends on whether each group has discovered the minor action attacks or not...


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## Garthanos (May 1, 2010)

Some Tactical Choices are built in to individual powers.. Weapon Masters Strike  with 4 distinct and useful options based on weapon used with fast switch built in... very cool.

Good point about play time being influenced by descriptive aspects.
I let my players describe how they defend themselves as part of an unearthed arcana rule referbished (aka Players make all the rolls)... effectively Defenses and HP are treated as describable powers I initiate an attack against them by describing how it starts.,, they get to roll the defense and describe how there character did it... 

This also breaks up turn order.


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## Garthanos (May 1, 2010)

The impact of individual die rolls have decreased ... so tactical choices even lesser ones are more important or even if they only feel more important ... so the time to take turns has increased .... so the need for elements to help keep people focused has increased.


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## Hussar (May 2, 2010)

Raven Crowking said:


> That's okay; you picked up on my point in your reply to Hussar.
> 
> The claim has been made again and again that all you did was make an attack roll in 1e.  How it takes 15 minutes under those same circumstances to get to your next turn is beyond me.  I played 1e with groups numbering up to 12-20 PCs at a time without doing so.
> 
> ...




Sigh.  I guessed it would have been obvious in context, but, I forgot where I was posting.

To be absolutely pedantically explicit:

1e and 2e - individual turns VERY fast since you few or no tactical options.  Other than choosing a paricular spell, you had no choices.  You swung your sword and passed the dice.

Thus, it appeals to the ego-gamer because the ego-gamer's turn comes up very often.

Although, thinking about it, you can see the extension of individual turns starting here.  Fighters gain additional attacks at 1st level with weapon specs.  More spells for casters.  Various other individual effects.

3e - odd duck a bit.  Vast tactical choices for almost every class.  However, this tended to extend individual turns and sometimes led to analysis paralysis.  How many threads are there on these boards of people instituting "shot clock" table rules to stop dithering.  This is where the 15 minute round certainly can be seen at almost any level.

4e - again, loads of tactical choices - even at 1st level you have at a minimum 5 options in any given round.  However, additional mechanics can force players to act out of turn, even on other player's turns.  Thus, the ego gamer is again served because he's going more often.

Celebrim - a question, what edition/level played entire combats in 15 minutes?  Even MerricB has longer combats than that.  

The only edition that doesn't actually appeal to the twitch gamer is 3rd, since every other edition engages ACTIVE participation more often.  Either by having very limited choices in combat - thus making individual turns very fast - or by granting additional actions to players from other players.

My point is, the twitch gamer has always been actively engaged by D&D.  Yes, yes, I know your combats combined both incredible speed, smoothness of play and a multitude of tactical choices EVERY ROUND, but, for the rest of us mere mortals, we don't mind having mechanics that increase the amount of active participation during each round.


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## Celebrim (May 2, 2010)

Hussar said:


> 1e and 2e - individual turns VERY fast since you few or no tactical options.




First, I don't know how to say this nicely, so I'll just say it, but you clearly don't have a good idea what the word 'tactics' means.  You seem to be using it as a synonym for mechanical options, which it isn't.  Tactics are techniques for using personel, weapons and terrain in combination to achieve a military advantage.  

Secondly, the relationship between tactical options and speed of turns is almost nonexistant.  To give an example, chess offers dozens of options on each turn but it plays only as slowly as desired.  You can play chess as a frantic game of blazing fast action or as a slow deliberate game, but the amount of choices available to you at each step are exactly the same regardless of how much of the clock you consume and the actual mechanical resolution occurs just as fast in either case.

Thirdly, in many ways 1e was the most open edition tactically because you weren't under mechanical constraints.  The game was written by wargamers and for wargamers and was designed to encourage good squad level tactics.  If you went into a skilled DM's game on the assumption that it was just roll the dice and pass your turn, you were going to die.  Hopefully, you out grew that sort of thing by the time you were in high school.  I got shocked out of that viewpoint by the DM who tutored me into the craft when he ran me in an encounter with some gnoll archers who ambushed us in a wooded setting.  Each archer acted as an individual skirmisher.  Moving away when attacked, taking cover behind the boles of trees, fleeing and trying to evade when chased, and generally making a nuisance of themselves.  You chase down one group and take them down, that just let the ones behind you set up a skirmish line you had to advance back toward.  An encounter that would have been relatively trivial in a stand up fight, turned into vicious memorable (and to a young player not used to playing the game tactically) both frustrating and very educational experience.  To be skilled at 1e, you had to manipulate the terrain.  Cover was very important, as was denying the foe the chance to surround you or attack your unshielded side.  You needed to lure attackers into chokepoints to keep from being overwhelmed.  If you didn't have a chokepoint, you needed to create one - like dropping flaming oil or casting a spell.  You had to protect the casters, because there was no defensive casting or 5' steps, and the casting time of spells tended to create significant vunerable intervals.  You needed to concentrate force, outflank foes, and so forth.  Plus, there was support for grappling and the like if you wanted (and many widely used alternatives to the DMG system), and in many cases you had to make choices between something like a longsword (good for dodgy foes) and a military pick (good for armored foes).  There were plenty of tactics and plenty of choices.  

And that's not even getting into the question of the DM inspired by S2.



> Celebrim - a question, what edition/level played entire combats in 15 minutes?  Even MerricB has longer combats than that.




Any edition where you have a fairly straight forward melee can play that fast.  You just don't dither.  Combats might only last 2-3 rounds, and in that case you've got about a minute per player turn.  I expect to get a proposition in the first 6-10 seconds of a players turn.  In 1e I built individual attack tables for each of my PC's vs. AC, so they just reported a number and I crossreferenced it vs. target AC.  That took another what, 10-15 seconds counting rolling damage and maybe 5-10 seconds for a quick, "The orcs screams in pain/drops to the floor/blocks your attack with his shield/snarls at you and presses the attack."  Seriously, average 1e modules had like 40-50 combats built into them.  If you were spending 15 minutes on each round, getting through one would have probably taken you like 9-10 sessions.  Sure, there were longer much more complicated fights that took longer, mostly because of the poor DM trying to run 24 trolls or something like that (or the uberfight that develops in WG4!), but even then you weren't waiting long for your turn because of the other players but because you were fighting such an enormous number of foes.  Fights versus 30 or more foes weren't uncommon, and often individual fights would turn into running battles as allied foes (combat encounters) started linking up to help each other.


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## Hussar (May 2, 2010)

How is this tactical Celebrim?  The DM set up a perfect situation in which to use a single tactic all fight long?  Oh noes, the gnolls set up a skirmish line.  Who cares?  It's still, I move here, I roll my single attack, next.  There's still no other actions being taken.

To me, tactical play isn't setting up the optimal situation and spamming one single option over and over again.  Tactical play means that I have at least two choices beyond, do i roll a d20 at this guy or that guy.

But, we're to the point where we're talking at each other, and no longer to.  I'll step out now.

-----

Thinking about your post, I admit some confusion.  Apparently, average combats featured twenty, thirty combats regularly, but only lasted about four rounds and took fifteen minutes to resolve, YET, still contained vast tactical breadth and depth challenging individual players constantly to think and plan.

All at the same time.

Man, I gotta start playing this game that you guys play, cos it sure as heck doesn't look like any game I ever played.


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## AllisterH (May 2, 2010)

Celebrim, what you're referring to seems more like STRATEGY than actual TACTICS.

STRATEGY - everything that happens before the actual battle that help move the odds in your favour

TACTICS - everything that happens DURING the actual battle that helps move the odds in your favour.

Choosing a "blunt" weapon/Negative plane protection spell when going into Ravenloft - Strategy
Pushing the undead into the container of holy water - Tactics.


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## AllisterH (May 2, 2010)

Christopher Robin said:


> I think that's an exception rather than a rule.  Compared to when I was young (wait, when did I get old?), there's a lot more TV shows that take up a hour timeslot rather than a 30 minute one.  In fact, almost everything I watch on TV these days falls under that... Bones, House, Fringe, Law and Order, NCIS.  Or it seems that way to me, anyway.




At the least, there seems to be more shows that require you to be "invested" a.k.a., you have to watch them in order and woe be to you if you miss an episode.

Other than the premiere episode, shows (excluding soap operas) from the 70s/80s pretty much have interchangeable episodes unless a new character gets introduced. (example, MASH can be watched out of order as long as you stay within certain time frames of characters appearing)


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## Garthanos (May 2, 2010)

AllisterH said:


> Celebrim, what you're referring to seems more like STRATEGY than actual TACTICS.
> 
> STRATEGY - everything that happens before the actual battle that help move the odds in your favour
> 
> ...





I think it has as much to do with presumed in game world time governed by a round...
you pretty much are perfectly reasonable in ignoring small choices when one  
round involves dozens of them.

It meant that social gamer x who doesnt want to think about the
details or the game aspect gets satisfied ... but relying on the DM to provide all those details 
  is intrinsically less than satisfying for those who  want to feel  like
"it was them doing all this stuff" . For those who just want simulation 
even it isnt bad if the DM is really good at his job.(and some DMs might be awesome at 
providing details <and most weren't /> but since I didn't get to chose? or feel
like I chose, Feh ... ithose details are just watching a dms movie controlled by dice).

Some elements were just done wrong. .. weapon length  
IRL Weapon reach induces a dance of either weapon going in and out of best position
for its reach which is almost a wash over the course of a whole minute... 
ie the longer weapon gets first opportunity advantaged position (unless suprised)  but loses as soon
as it is capitalized on without success at which time advantage toggles to the shorter
reach weapon... this is due to fighting style involved in how the weapon is used
not just the reach of the weapons.

Fighting style changes enough by weapon type in fact that OD&D has all weapons functionally equal
and 4e if you have the right fighting style for them are similarly equal. Dirks and Zwiehanders for
example.... are functionaly equal but they get that way in very distinct fashions. 
-> In OD&D descriptions and in 4e cinematic maneuvers(powers) feats and class features.


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## jmucchiello (May 2, 2010)

Hussar said:


> How is this tactical Celebrim?  The DM set up a perfect situation in which to use a single tactic all fight long?  Oh noes, the gnolls set up a skirmish line.  Who cares?  It's still, I move here, I roll my single attack, next.  There's still no other actions being taken.



There's ducking behind the tree for cover, the flaming oil gambit, the archer running off and you chasing him. There are no mechanics for these things but you still decide whether or not to do them.


> To me, tactical play isn't setting up the optimal situation and spamming one single option over and over again.  Tactical play means that I have at least two choices beyond, do i roll a d20 at this guy or that guy.



Since that's how you define then you can't be wrong. But I disagree with your definition. Choosing between my at-will power vs my daily power will eventually lead to my rolling a d20 at this guy or that guy. Why is that a choice but swinging a sword at this guy or that guy is not a choice?



> Thinking about your post, I admit some confusion.  Apparently, average combats featured twenty, thirty combats regularly, but only lasted about four rounds and took fifteen minutes to resolve, YET, still contained vast tactical breadth and depth challenging individual players constantly to think and plan.
> 
> All at the same time.



I'd say that would take 25-30 minutes but otherwise, sure. Having combat 4+ times per 4 hour session (with miniatures on a battlemat) was normal in my last 2e game. In fact the slowest part of the combat was the DM grabbing the minis off the shelf if there were a lot of combatants.


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## pemerton (May 3, 2010)

jmucchiello said:


> For me, and I'm guessing other people, participation is not a function of rolling the dice, interrupting someone else or even succeeding
> 
> <snip>
> 
> You can choose to goof off, go get a snack, talk to someone else at the table about your job, etc, or you can pay attention to who's turn it is, where the monsters are, what might come through the door, etc.



This is right. That's why I've been trying to find an adequate description of the sort of player to whom 4e and comparable games appeal - the phrase I've been using is "engaging the mechanics in order to influence the gameworld via the player's PC". What I've just tried to describe is what is missing from the sort of out-of-turn participation that you're describing, and that is characteristic of AD&D and similar systems. Players who are less like you, and who are looking for the sort of play I'm trying to describe, will therefore (and naturally) turn to a different sort of mechanical system.

I think this reflects broader changes in the way RPGs are being played. Classic AD&D assumes large parties, multiple PCs and/or henchmen/hirelings per player, playing an NPC when your PC is disabled, etc. 4e is desgined for a player who wants a different experience from this - they want their PC, their PC's story and their PC's abilities as mechnically expressed to be at the centre of their playing of the game.

Undoubtedly this is a different player looking for a different game. I still don't see the "ego-gamer", though.


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## pemerton (May 3, 2010)

Celebrim, I don't think that everything that is hard is suffering and I don't believe that I asserted that, nor implied it (I certainly didn't intend to imply it).

Some hard work is suffering (eg I think that I would suffer if bound into physical slavery). Some work that is not hard nevertheless involves suffering, or at least tedium (in my own working life, marking papers is the main example). Some hard work is not suffering (eg mostly, for me, writing pieces for publication). Some training is tedious (when I used to practice my guitar more regularly, I found doing scales tedious). Some training is not tedious (I "trained" to be a philosopher by, among other things, reading Kant - this was probably worthwhile, certainly involved suffering, but was not tedious).

Some of these phenomena involve delayed gratification (eg practising scales). Others do not (eg for me, writing articles - I get payed to do this, which is gratifying, but most of the time there is also a complex pleasure in the writinig experience).

Some pleasures require tedious training to experience them. The pleasures of playing the guitar is, in my view, one of them. Others do not. And some pleasures require little or no training at all - I would include in this the pleasure of listening to music (unless you count the cultivation of taste as a type of training, but I'm not sure about this) and the pleasure of RPGing (this involves a bit of training, but not much).

You may or may not have had similar experiences to mine, as to what causes pleasure, what tedium, what suffering, and the relationship between them. But if your RPG play involves (i) a large deal of training, and/or (ii) a large deal of tedium, and/or (iii) a large degree of delayed gratification comparable to that which I experience when I get paid for marking papers, then your experience of RPG play is very different from mine. Perhaps it is. But I still don't see where the ego-gamer thing comes in. What is egoistic about looking for an RPG that doesn't require much training and doesn't involve tedium?

You posted upthread that AD&D was designed for wargamers by wargamers. I agree with this. I think it is obvious that 4e was designed for gamers with different preferences, in particular those who find certain elements of traditional wargaming, and/or the manifestation of these elements in RPG play, to be tedious (being deprived of the PC as a means for interacting with the gameworld is the most obvious). But what is the reason for describing such players as egoistic?

As to 4e and indie games, I assert the connection in part because Rob Heinsoo has expressly stated that it is there, in part because Mearls was a participant in the indie scene in earlier days, in part because Robin Laws has written 4e stuff which is partly cribbed from his HeroQuest work, and in part because I see resemblances.

The resemblances I see are in respect of (i) a more-or-less coherent set of mechanics that, when played as the box tells you to, more-or-less delivers the game experience the box promises, (ii) a game that relies quite heavily on fortune-in-the-middle mechanics (eg hit points, attack rolls, saving throws, skill challenges etc), (iii) a game that separates details of narration from mechanical details in a way that differs quite markedly from traditional D&D or mainstream simulationist games but looks quite a bit like HeroQuest or The Dying Earth (this is also related to (ii) above), (iv) a game with non-traditional conflict resolution mechanics in the form of skill challenges, and (v) a game that has a defined endgame via epic destinies and destiny quests. There may be others as well that I'm missing here.

4e has a tricky relationship to shared narration. The player gets to narrate power usage and effects (and this has caused some opposition from simulationist-minded gamers, eg in respect of Come and Get It, and martial encounter and daily powers more generally). The rules are ambiguous on who has narrative authority in a skill challenge, but I doubt that ours is the only group in which players exercise at least some authority in skill challenges (including by adopting directors stance for at least limited purposes). The players have a high degree of authority over the general tenor of the endgame, because they get to choose their epic destinies and the GM is obliged to deliver (this is a very big difference from the superficial resemblance to immortality in Menzer Basic D&D).

4e also has a tricky relationship to its gameworld. Played out of the box the world is tightly defined - their are gods, a history, specific monsters, etc. Furthermore, a GM who uses the monsters in accordance with the encounter-buidling guidelines will have a game in which the players, one way or another, experience the "story of D&D" - start with humoids, work up through drow/mindflayers/githyanki, finish with demon lords/archdevils. (There is some discussion of this by the designers in Wizards Presents: Worlds and Monsters.) This focused attention on the world and setting as part of the play experience fits with indie design tenets, but also a certain sort of traditional design as well (eg Pendragon, Cthulhu, RQ played in Glorantha). The paragon path and epic destiny rules push it a little more definitely in the indie direction, by obliging the player to make choices that will locate his/her PC in that world, but it's not quite Nicotine Girls or My Life with Master.

But for those players who don't play straight out of the box - making up their own world, reskinning monsters etc - then the game itself provides little more to the world than is given by the character build rules. This is pretty traditional.

The loot system, at least as printed, mixes indie and traditional sensibilities. Loot, according to the DMG, is based on pre-determined parcels and player wish lists. This suggests that it's an element of character build that emerges out of engaging in gameplay - indie! But it is also a reward for success in encounters - traditional! I wouldn't be surprised if this is an area of 4e which different groups approach quite differently in actual play, depending on what sort of play experience they are looking for. It's also one site of lurking incoherence.

I see two main mechanical differences between 4e and the quintessential indie game. The first is that the combat mechanics are hived off from the other conflict resolution mechanics. Perhaps unsurprisingly, this is also (in my view) the aspect of the design which puts the greatest pressure on coherence - at least at present, the rules (even post-DMG2) don't do enough to support the interaction of skill challenge mechanics and combat mechanics.

The second is that 4e has no mechanics that directly express PC passions or relationships. Rather, the expression of these is mechanically indirect, finding expression potentially through skill challenge mechanics (eg players calling on relationships to make checks easier), through quest rewards (eg players working with the GM to establish quests that fit their PCs' passions), through certain powers (eg narrating the warlord's Inspiring Word), and at the character build stage through various feats, powers, paragon paths and epic destinies. Still, it's interesting to note that these potential indirect expressions of these aspects of a PC are firmly located in the players' hands as much as, if not more than, the GM's. This is a marked contrast with traditional RPGs, especially D&D (where alignment is perhaps the most notorious example of a more traditional approach).

The main non-mechanical difference between 4e and the typical indie game is the publishing strategy. But the publicationo of player options doesn't necessarily undermine coherence, because it simply reinforces those aspects of the game - powers, epic destinies etc - which are the tools for players to use to drive the game in their preferred direction. The publication of modules and worldbooks, on the other hand, does threaten coherence, because these tend to shift authority away from the players and into the hands of either the GM or the sourcebook author. My response to this is to not use the modules as written, and rather to use them simply as sources of encounters and other interesting gameworld elements. I wouldn't be surprised if other groups have different responses, thereby changing quite considerably their play experience.

Would Forge-ites play 4e? I don't know. I've read threads on the Forge discussing fantasy RPG play, including D&D, so some of those posters might play it. I can imagine that a player who likes The Riddle of Steel, or Burning Wheel, might find something interesting in 4e. Or they might not. It's a bit hard to make these sorts of generalisations.

EDIT: Look at the sorts of complaints one hears about 4e from those who like AD&D: too much player entitlement (HeroQuest has more); too many mechanics and too little GM arbitration of the situation; too little resource management (HeroQuest has almost none); mechanics that guarantee a heroic story at the expense of verisimilitude; Come and Get It would be OK if it allowed a Will save; etc, etc.

These aren't complaints about a badly-designed traditional game (they're not, for example, the complaints one hears in a debate between players of traditional AD&D, traditional RQ and traditional RM). They're complaints about those features of the game which marks its difference from a traditional RPG.

Now look at the main complaint one hears about 4e from LostSoul, one of the posters on these boards who clearly has a lot of play experience with indie games: potential incoherence in 4e's relationship between challenge and player narrative entitlements. This is a complaint that (in my view) arises from some of the areas of lurking incoherence I've noted in 4e's design, where it straddles traditional and indie approaches.

I think the tenor of these complaints is consistent with my view that 4e is heavily influenced by non-traditional approaches to RPG design. They're complaints that I think need to be taken seriously by someone wanting to get the best out of 4e: don't play it if you want an AD&D experience, and be careful playing it for a more indie experience given the potential incoherences (in my own GMing I look for ways to try to avoid those incoherences - it's a bit too early to tell whether or not I've succeeded). But none of them suggest to me that 4e is a game designed for ego-gamers, and that _this_ is the explanation for the potential unsatisfactoriness of its design.


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## Hussar (May 3, 2010)

jmucchiello said:
			
		

> Since that's how you define then you can't be wrong. But I disagree with your definition. Choosing between my at-will power vs my daily power will eventually lead to my rolling a d20 at this guy or that guy. Why is that a choice but swinging a sword at this guy or that guy is not a choice?




Hrm.  If you really don't see the difference, I'm not sure anything I can bring up will change your mind, but, I'll give it a shot.

My fae touched warlock's at will either does straight up damage, or deals less damage and makes me invisible to that target for the round.  Right there, that's a significant tactical choice.  One might be better than the other depending on the situation.  My Daily deals lots of damage and allows me to slide the target three squares, and I can then slide him every round after that until he makes a save with a minor action.

Thus, if there is any damaging terrain out there, the daily becomes a really good choice.  

And this is just with a first level character.  

Then again, if that's not tactical difference to you, I'm not sure we're ever going to agree.

Just for full disclosure, in the other 4e game I've been playing a warlord.  Every single one of my abilities causes another player to do something.  Either shift or attack.  Possibly even a free move.  If I get smacked with a debilitating effect, you're not only stripping away my actions, but stripping at least one extra action per round.

This is where I think Celebrim really misses the mark.  He presumes that a given average round is the same between editions.  You make an attack, hit or miss, and move on.  4e is most certainly not built this way.  Every single round, and I mean every round, you should be seeing out of turn actions by other players.  About the most boring class is something like a striker which generally only has a single, personal effect riding his abilities.  Generally every other class is causing extra actions by other players.

I think Pemerton makes a good point of it.  Older D&D presumed you'd be playing multiple characters, often at the same time.  Unless the DM rolled attacks and damage for all your henchmen/hirelings, it's quite possible that you'd take multiple turns per round.

But, every subsequent supplement starting with the Unearthed Arcana has given more actions to individual players.  Fighters gain multiple attacks at first level.  Rangers get two weapons or bows which get two attacks per round.  On and on.

BTW, jmucchiello, are you honestly claiming that you averaged 20+ combatants in the fight at the same time, AND your fights averaged 30 minutes (or so) AND you had the depth of tactical choices that you would get in 3e?  Really?


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## pemerton (May 3, 2010)

Hussar, I can't give you XP but your description of how 4e play works fits with my experience (including that strikers - or, at least, archery rangers - are boring). And for the same reasons as you give, I find that Celebrim's description of how the game plays - take your turn, hit or miss, move on - doesn't fit my experience.


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## Doug McCrae (May 3, 2010)

Hussar said:


> Older D&D presumed you'd be playing multiple characters, often at the same time.  Unless the DM rolled attacks and damage for all your henchmen/hirelings, it's quite possible that you'd take multiple turns per round.
> 
> But, every subsequent supplement starting with the Unearthed Arcana has given more actions to individual players.  Fighters gain multiple attacks at first level.  Rangers get two weapons or bows which get two attacks per round.  On and on.



OD&D, and to a lesser extent 1e, really show their wargame roots.

In this account of a proto-D&D session which took place during the winter of 70/71, Greg Svenson describes a party composed of 30 men-at-arms. Only 6 of them were PCs, the rest NPCs.


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## Mark (May 3, 2010)

Celebrim said:


> First, I don't know how to say this nicely, so I'll just say it, but you clearly don't have a good idea what the word 'tactics' means.  You seem to be using it as a synonym for mechanical options, which it isn't.  Tactics are techniques for using personel, weapons and terrain in combination to achieve a military advantage.
> 
> Secondly, the relationship between tactical options and speed of turns is almost nonexistant.  To give an example, chess offers dozens of options on each turn but it plays only as slowly as desired.  You can play chess as a frantic game of blazing fast action or as a slow deliberate game, but the amount of choices available to you at each step are exactly the same regardless of how much of the clock you consume and the actual mechanical resolution occurs just as fast in either case.
> 
> ...





I was discussing tactics with a young gamer of about fourteen (he had a CCG background and was trying out a miniatures wargame, 25mm figs on an open tabletop) at a convention recently who had the same problem, in that if a game didn't have the tactics spelled out as a mechanical option he was confused by the game.  That's one of the areas where I think 4E shows some strength, in spelling things out for players who might not be as quick to develop tactics on their own.  It's very simple at almost any level of the game to be given a set of cards with your character and be able to thumb through them or lay them out and just point to the option that gives you to combination of damage and movement that suits a given situation.  The "powers" system parcels tactics into focused and digestable units to avoid confusion during play.


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## Celebrim (May 3, 2010)

Mark said:


> I was discussing tactics with a young gamer of about fourteen (he had a CCG background and was trying out a miniatures wargame, 25mm figs on an open tabletop) at a convention recently who had the same problem, in that if a game didn't have the tactics spelled out as a mechanical option he was confused by the game.  That's one of the areas where I think 4E shows some strength, in spelling things out for players who might not be as quick to develop tactics on their own.
> 
> It's very simple at almost any level of the game to be given a set of cards with your character and be able to thumb through them or lay them out and just point to the option that gives you to combination of damage and movement that suits a given situation.  The "powers" system parcels tactics into focused and digestable units to avoid confusion during play.




I certainly don't disagree that 4e has strived hard (and with a measure of success) at making tactical combat the centerpeice of its gameplay.  I also agree that 4e achieved some success in its goal of being more approachable for a novice.  But, yeah, this approach to what is meant by 'tactics' isn't out of wargaming.  If you look at a game like De Bellis Antiquitatis or any of its iterations, which I think can be taken as a traditional tactical wargame, the playing peices don't have arrays of different powers.  

If you look at war itself, you basic infantryman's tactics devolve down to move somewhere (or not) and shoot at something (or not).  At a stretch you might have 'throw a grenade' as an encounter power, but tactics are built out of interactions with the terrain and with the opposing force - not out of combinations of choices between powers.

If you look at sports that are very tactical like basketball, football, rugby and soccer, tactics are built up out of very limited repertoires of legal moves.  They are primarily about how players move relative to each other to achieve local concentration of force through surprise and deception.

And yeah, I agree that 4e has had some success at achieving its goal of making the game more accessible to novices.

I also can't help but notice that the conversation is veering toward, "4e is a good gaming system and hears why"   I don't even at this point remember how we got off on a discussion of what was meant by tactics (I fuzzily remember it having something to do with people advancing the claim that 4e is much more fun than that boring old game 1e), but all I was trying to say down this thread was that there are aspects of how each D&D system plays out at a tactical level that I like and I sometimes wish I could combine the best parts of each in a way that didn't result in an unplayably complicated game.


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## Garthanos (May 3, 2010)

We got in to it because the claim that game defined choices are meaningless is central to the idea that the new designs are catering to simple easy wins ...  But if the choices are frequently significant and required by newer designs and force longer spans of time between "pings" then your core theorem washes out like smelly rain water.


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## Mark (May 3, 2010)

Celebrim said:


> I certainly don't disagree that 4e has strived hard (and with a measure of success) at making tactical combat the centerpeice of its gameplay.  I also agree that 4e achieved some success in its goal of being more approachable for a novice.  But, yeah, this approach to what is meant by 'tactics' isn't out of wargaming.  If you look at a game like De Bellis Antiquitatis or any of its iterations, which I think can be taken as a traditional tactical wargame, the playing peices don't have arrays of different powers.
> 
> If you look at war itself, you basic infantryman's tactics devolve down to move somewhere (or not) and shoot at something (or not).  At a stretch you might have 'throw a grenade' as an encounter power, but tactics are built out of interactions with the terrain and with the opposing force - not out of combinations of choices between powers.





DBA, DBM, HotTs, etc. have been on my lists for years and add to that many others including the relatively new Field of Glory (played about a week ago at the Little Wars convention).  You've echoed my point about it being less tactically restrictive to play one of these games.  Granted, all troop typs have limitations and places where they excel, but the tactical way in which they are deployed and react on the battlefield are very open.  For, perhaps, a better (closer?) analogy you might look toward the one-to-one scaled wargames of years ago like SPI's Patrol (or even Sniper, the Patrol predecessor).  It came on the scene in the same year as D&D, 1974, and I imagine a lot of wargamers who were also trying out the new RPG also played games like this and utilized tactics in the same manner.  If you are not familiar, read the description with the breakdown of turns and hexes and options, then let me know what you think.





Celebrim said:


> If you look at sports that are very tactical like basketball, football, rugby and soccer, tactics are built up out of very limited repertoires of legal moves.  They are primarily about how players move relative to each other to achieve local concentration of force through surprise and deception.





Hockey was my primary sport groing up and I just went to the Wolves (AHL) game Friday.  Great game, even though they lost.


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## Celebrim (May 3, 2010)

pemerton said:


> What is egoistic about looking for an RPG that doesn't require much training and doesn't involve tedium?




I don't see alot to be gained by even trying to answer such a loaded question.  



> The resemblances I see are in respect of (i) a more-or-less coherent set of mechanics that, when played as the box tells you to, more-or-less delivers the game experience the box promises,




I could say the same about any prior edition of D&D, and in particular, 1e does a far better job I think than any edition of delivering the game experience described by the rule books if only because it gives some of the most direct and also evocative descriptions of how the game is to be played.  Gygaxian prose has something going for it.

I also note you directly undermine this claim later in your post by talking about 4e's incoherence and 'tricky relationships'.



> (ii) a game that relies quite heavily on fortune-in-the-middle mechanics (eg hit points, attack rolls, saving throws, skill challenges etc),




I'm not sure where you are going there, but FitM (at least without teeth) is in my opinion old school and uber-traditional.  Virtually all classic mainstream RPGs use FitM in a loose form.  Things like hit points, attack rolls, saving throws, skill checks have always been FitM and are typical features of older games.  I consider it a much more typical mark of indie games that they feature more FatE or more FatB than traditional games.  With AD&D since 1e, you generally get proposition ('I attack') -> Fortune -> Narrative resolution describing that attack in a way suitable to the fortune.  For example, what in any edition does an attack roll or an attack doing 4 hit points of damage mean?  The answer is obviously, you can't know outside of the circumstance.  In 1e, 4 hit points of damage might be an attack that misses ('The giant hornet bashes you with its abdomen, but fortunately was unable to connect with its stinger' (saving throw vs. poison was made)), or one that leaves a scratch, or one that disembowels the target.   This level of abstraction has always irritated simulationists (like my younger self) who want a more 'realistic' game (moving fortune nearer to the end) with more concrete relationships between propostion/stakes and ultimate result.

An example of a mechanic that might give FitM more teeth would be rerolls, but we had that in D20 modern.  The 4e action point system actually moves the game further from FitM than some 3e variants (Modern, M&M, Unearthed Arcana (IIRC) etc.) because RAW you can't use them to modify fortune (in the middle), only to buy more actions (IIRC).



> (iii) a game that separates details of narration from mechanical details in a way that differs quite markedly from traditional D&D or mainstream simulationist games but looks quite a bit like HeroQuest or The Dying Earth (this is also related to (ii) above),




If you are talking about what I think you are talking about, mechanics just working regardless of situation (requiring the ad hoc invention of narration), then these differ from traditional D&D by being more gamist, not by being more 'Indie'.  I don't see the relationship between TDE rules and 4e you keep asserting.  I'm not familiar enough with HeroQuest to judge, but from what I understand of it, HeroQuest is a nar game using flexible prose/keyword character creation, contested rolls and with fortune practically at the beginning - which doesn't at all remind me of 4e.



> (iv) a game with non-traditional conflict resolution mechanics in the form of skill challenges,




The published skill challenge system is not non-traditional.  It's merely formalized.  As a the most simple example, there is nothing non-traditional about 'You can get 3 success in theivery to disarm the trap, or you can evade it, or you can bash it into rubble."  Some of the homebrew versions of skill challenges I've seen (especially those that came out before the rules were released) are abit or alot more Forge-like in their mechanics, but the published version is just the extended version of a skill check.



> (v) a game that has a defined endgame via epic destinies and destiny quests.




See the Immortals ruleset, for example.  I don't see how this relates to Indie games as I understand the term.  

I can't help but feel that when you say 4e has a relationship to Indie games, you mean, "4e the way I play it at my table has a relationship to Indie games".


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## Piratecat (May 3, 2010)

*Time to scale back the snippiness, folks. No more taking shots at one another.*


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## pemerton (May 3, 2010)

Celebrim said:


> I don't see alot to be gained by even trying to answer such a loaded question.



Fair enough. But if you're not prepared to consider why some players find some aspects of traditional AD&D play tedious, then I don't think you're going to find it easy to understand the appeal of 4e to some of those same gamers.



Celebrim said:


> I could say the same about any prior edition of D&D, and in particular, 1e does a far better job I think than any edition of delivering the game experience described by the rule books if only because it gives some of the most direct and also evocative descriptions of how the game is to be played.



It's hard to compare across games where I'm also comparing across so many years, but I don't agree with this. One example which comes up from time to time (I've seen both MerricB and Doug McCrae talk about it): the DMG time rules assume you're playing nearly every day, but no where is this spelled out.



Celebrim said:


> I also note you directly undermine this claim later in your post by talking about 4e's incoherence and 'tricky relationships'.



Well, that's the meaning of "more-or-less" - you have to take the less with the more! But the real contrast isn't with 1st ed, it's with 2nd ed AD&D which provides (more-or-less) the 1e mechanics but promises a game more like Pendragon or Ars Magica. Or (more controversially, but in my opinion) '3E, which in its mechanics has trouble deciding whether its AD&D or Rolemaster.



Celebrim said:


> I'm not sure where you are going there, but FitM (at least without teeth) is in my opinion old school and uber-traditional.  Virtually all classic mainstream RPGs use FitM in a loose form.



D&D and T&T, yes. Traveller, RQ and RM, no - they're basically fortune at the end. Simulationism kills FitM.



Celebrim said:


> If you are talking about what I think you are talking about, mechanics just working regardless of situation (requiring the ad hoc invention of narration), then these differ from traditional D&D by being more gamist, not by being more 'Indie'.
> 
> <snip>
> 
> I'm not familiar enough with HeroQuest to judge, but from what I understand of it, HeroQuest is a nar game using flexible prose/keyword character creation, contested rolls and with fortune practically at the beginning - which doesn't at all remind me of 4e.



The character creation of HQ is different from 4e. 4e has a sourcebook sales approach to flexibility! But HQ is not fortune at the beginning - it is FitM, in some ways resembling 4e skill challenges (with the direction of influence being from HQ to 4e). As described in the rulebook, the player states intention, the dice are rolled and then the GM narrates outcome.



Celebrim said:


> I don't see the relationship between TDE rules and 4e you keep asserting.



FitM is one resemblance. The use of fixed lists of character abilities to nevertheless be rather expressive of the PC's role and personality is another. Ablative resources is another (healing surges in 4e), with a high degree of narrative flexibility as to how the ablation manifets itself in the gameworld. The existence of fairly robust and level-sensitive encounter building guidelines is another. The use of gameworld history and points of light is another.

I'm not claiming identity. Nothing in 4e realy resembles The Dying Earth's advancement mechanic, for example.



Celebrim said:


> The published skill challenge system is not non-traditional.  It's merely formalized.



I don't agree with this. For example, the notion that 3 successful checks - whatever the skill in question - transitions the encounter to a new stage, is not a traditional notion.



Celebrim said:


> As a the most simple example, there is nothing non-traditional about 'You can get 3 success in theivery to disarm the trap, or you can evade it, or you can bash it into rubble."



This is true, but that is also the least interesting implementation of the skill challenge system that the game offers.



Celebrim said:


> See the Immortals ruleset, for example.



I explained in my thread why 4e is different from this. The main difference, but not the only one, is player entitlement and narrative authority.



Celebrim said:


> I don't see how this relates to Indie games as I understand the term.



The notion of the game having a defined "endgame" is something I associate with games like Nicotine Girls or My Life With Master. I don't of traditional games that have the same thing (ie a thematic resolution built into the game, as opposed to simply a mechanical limit beyond which the rules don't keep going).



Celebrim said:


> I can't help but feel that when you say 4e has a relationship to Indie games, you mean, "4e the way I play it at my table has a relationship to Indie games".



Well, that may be true - ultimately, I can only speak for my own play experiences. But I still believe that I have the designers on my side on this one.


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## pemerton (May 3, 2010)

Mark said:


> That's one of the areas where I think 4E shows some strength, in spelling things out for players who might not be as quick to develop tactics on their own.



But to understand it's appeal to at least some players, including experienced RPGers, I think it's helpful to look beyond a conception of 4e as "trainer wheels" for something else, and see what sort of gameplay experience it offers on its own terms, and who might enjoy that. As I suggested upthread, maybe a M:tG player rather than a traditional wargamer. That's a different thing from AD&D, but is it a bad thing?


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## amysrevenge (May 3, 2010)

pemerton said:


> the GM is obliged to deliver





Wanted to give XP for using "obliged" correctly when many would use "obligated" (ugh, it pains me to even type it out as an example), but haven't spread it around enough yet.  lol


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## Mark (May 3, 2010)

pemerton said:


> But to understand it's appeal to at least some players, including experienced RPGers, I think it's helpful to look beyond a conception of 4e as "trainer wheels" for something else, and see what sort of gameplay experience it offers on its own terms, and who might enjoy that. As I suggested upthread, maybe a M:tG player rather than a traditional wargamer. That's a different thing from AD&D, but is it a bad thing?





One, knock off the need to get everyone into a better or worse conversation.  Two, if you read my post above regarding the young player, he came from a CCG background and was getting into wargaming.  If you can't chill on needing everything to be ranked or qualified as fun or unfun, then you're going to want to cease quoting me.

Admin here. Frankly, you don't have any say as to whether or not someone quotes you. Please don't try to tell him whether he can or can't. It's fine to disagree with someone who quotes you, of course -- but that's a different issue. ~ PCat


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## Fifth Element (May 3, 2010)

amysrevenge said:


> Wanted to give XP for using "obliged" correctly when many would use "obligated" (ugh, it pains me to even type it out as an example), but haven't spread it around enough yet.  lol



Ooh...and then he goes and writes _it's_ instead of _its _in the post directly above yours. Shame.


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## pemerton (May 4, 2010)

FifthElement, I can't give you XP at the moment (for your copyediting powers!).


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## The Shaman (May 4, 2010)

Celebrim said:


> I don't have the books in front of me, but the 'Attack of Oppurtunity' concept which forms the core of the argument you are advancing here is not a new concept.  It has just been formalized better than in older editions, but in older editions taking a non-combat action while threatened did draw an attack from anyone threatening you.



Correct, as did attempting to withdraw from an engagement.

This was refuted here before, but citing the actual rules doesn't seem to dissuade some posters from repeating these readily disproved arguments. Same thing with, "1e _AD&D_ offers no tactics except rolling a d20 to hit."







Celebrim said:


> Moreover, older game systems actually in some ways did a much better job of handling simultaneous action than modern versions of D&D.  Most elegantly, older versions of D&D maintained the wargame-like concept of 'phases' within the turn, so that for example, everyone made simultaneous movement during a movement phase, which was followed by everyone taking turns making attacks.  In practice, this actually made the battle simulate real-time much better than 3e and post 3e's strictly turn based sequence where everyone completes a full set of actions and attacks in initiative order.



One of the very best simultaneous combat systems I've played is _Snapshot_ for _Traveller_; each character has a number of initiative points and the character with a lower total can be interrupted at any time by a character with a higher total. Published in 1979, _Snapshot_ remains an excellent system.







Celebrim said:


> This seems like a false assertion backed up by a thin bit of evidence.



Ron "Brain Damage!" Edwards' pseudo-scientific claims and the "fifteen minutes of fun" myth are based on stilted, contrived views of gaming, in my opinion.

That's not to say that some gamers find some styles of play more enjoyable than others, but some of the solutions advanced take as their premises that the whole gaming experience is distilled down to interacting with the rules, which I think misses one of the best and more important differences of roleplaying games from other kinds of games.


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## Garthanos (May 4, 2010)

The Shaman said:


> That's not to say that some gamers find some styles of play more enjoyable than others, but some of the solutions advanced take as their premises that the whole gaming experience is distilled down to interacting with the rules, which I think misses one of the best and more important differences of roleplaying games from other kinds of games.




Extremism meet extremism.(The "whole" isnt whole)
If I wanted the "Game" part to be ALL DM "hand waving" and speculation or require him to have a degree in real world battle tactics ... I would also ditch the dice entirely... and recommend "Amber".  --- > Then you get to tell me about a few more rules that might show tactics in AD&D and we can back and forth some more 

Note that is a pretend rant with elements of truth in it.. so dont beat me up 

However I have only ever had minor interest in war-gaming ever.... I do love fencing and heroic team work.

So newer D&D gives me ripostes and flourishes and cinematic fights with a small number of combatants fighting as a team (like the company of the ring not like the battle at helms deep) and in the arena which I like AD&D gave me nothing but a d20 to cover a whole minute, ie the choice density "in what I am interested in" is garbage... and would have been even with a great tactical DM... unless he just threw out the system....which is what I ended up doing.


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## AllisterH (May 4, 2010)

I tend to disagree that NOT having codified rules for tactics means that the game is more open to the use of tactics....it's not what I found in my experience.

For example, say you use the classic "tactic" of cutting down the chandelier to trap/beat the bad guy(s). In ALL editions of D&D, this should be a valid tactic but 4e does give some idea to the DM (and by extension, the players) as to what the result is via its infamous pg. 42.

You know, as a player, what that outcome would be and as such can judge non- power based tactics in context with your OWN powers. Not so true in pre 4e since as a player, it's dependant on DM whim and experience.

Indeed, one of the reasons why I suspect so many games in 1e simply involved the pcs simply swinging away at each other was that the players only thught those were valid tactics based on their own experiences with trying non-traditional tactics.


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## The Shaman (May 4, 2010)

Garthanos said:


> Extremism meet extremism.(The "whole" isnt whole)



From a post on *Big Purple*:







			
				Bradford C. Walker said:
			
		

> The game is where the rules say that it is, not where the fluff says that it is or where the ad copy says that it is.  No rules? Not part of the game.



*Garthanos*, I tend not to say something like that without being able to back it up. For future reference.







Garthanos said:


> So newer D&D gives me ripostes and flourishes and cinematic fights with a small number of combatants fighting as a team (like the company of the ring not like the battle at helms deep) and in the arena which I like AD&D gave me nothing but a d20 to cover a whole minute, ie the choice density "in what I am interested in" is garbage... and would have been even with a great tactical DM... unless he just threw out the system....which is what I ended up doing.



Y'know, I haven't mentioned 4e at all - I know next to nothing about the game, so there would be no point.

And with that in mind, I do think the gamers who blast other editions of _D&D_ should have at least some idea of what they're talking about when they do so. Like suggesting that the 'choice density' in 1e consists of nothing more than rolling a d20 to hit, which is simply wrong, and which has been demonstrated over and over again here and elsewhere. That may have been how you played it, but that's not what the game offered to those who learned the rules. Later editions have added added granularity to those choices, in my experience, and increased optimization of some of those choices considerably. But that's very different from saying they were never there at all.

And for what it's worth, when I express my agreement with *Celebrim*, it's based on my experiences with _other_ games. I see the same behavior described in players playing games which are not 4e.


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## Mark (May 4, 2010)

AllisterH said:


> I tend to disagree that NOT having codified rules for tactics means that the game is more open to the use of tactics....it's not what I found in my experience.
> 
> (. . .)
> 
> Indeed, one of the reasons why I suspect so many games in 1e simply involved the pcs simply swinging away at each other was that the players only thught those were valid tactics based on their own experiences with trying non-traditional tactics.





Your experiences might well be echoed by any number of players with DMs who lacked the ability to handle such examples as you might hold up as typical but I hasten to mention that I found little support for your position in my thirty-five plus years of playing and DMing.  Granted there are such DMs, but they tend to make up the minority in my experience.  I can only suggest that, barring the ability to locate a DM of sufficient talent, perhaps it is wise that you play in a game where codification ensures that certain specific tactics will be allowed if no DM of adequate ability can be found.  It is good that such a set of rules covers your needs and a shame that it took this long for you to find such a game.


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## pemerton (May 4, 2010)

The Shaman said:


> That's not to say that some gamers find some styles of play more enjoyable than others, but some of the solutions advanced take as their premises that the whole gaming experience is distilled down to interacting with the rules, which I think misses one of the best and more important differences of roleplaying games from other kinds of games.



I agree with what comes before the first comma. But I disagree with the "but" - for some players it _is_ true that the game involves engaging with the rules, and I don't think that this necessarily misses what is best about RPGs. Of course it depends on preference, but my preference for RPGs is that playing by the rules deliver a compelling situation of conflict which, via its resolution, will produce a compelling story (compelling for the participants, that is - I don't think my RPG play produces stories that would be very compelling for spectators).

I would add to this - the "rules first" approach tends to take a broader view of what counts as rules than many posts on ENworld. For example, in D&D play, I would count the encounter building guidelines, the treasure placement guidelines, etc as part of the rules.


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## pemerton (May 4, 2010)

Mark said:


> Your experiences might well be echoed by any number of players with DMs who lacked the ability to handle such examples
> 
> <snip>
> 
> barring the ability to locate a DM of sufficient talent, perhaps it is wise that you play in a game where codification ensures that certain specific tactics will be allowed if no DM of adequate ability can be found.



I tend to agree with Shaman, that it is an issue of preferences. I don't think it is about the talent of GMs.

When it comes to adjudicating chandelier-dropping, for example, the issue is more about predictability than about talent. A system that relies heavily on GM intervention for such cases makes the outcome of chandelier-dropping less predictable for the player. Whether or not this sort of mechanical predictability is a good thing is itself a matter of playstyle preference. Mechanical predictability is not such a big part of AD&D play, for example (at least when I think about modules like White Plume Mountain or Tomb of Horrors).


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## Garthanos (May 4, 2010)

The Shaman said:


> . Like suggesting that the 'choice density' in 1e consists of nothing more than rolling a d20 to hit, which is simply wrong,  .




Sorry not exactly what I meant... I wasnt being precise... hyperbole carry over.

Choice density how often in "game world time" do I get to choose the actions of my character its almost 1 round = 1 minute... so any choices or options or die rolls I make covers the whole of that one minute for the character. That is choice density in action.  (pretend I said a to hit and whatever choices are appropriate to cover the actions of a whole minute)

The larger the time the more vague and hand wavy you have to be otherwise the choices later tend to depend to much on activity earlier in the span and get invalidated for instance exact position in the battle field over the course of a minute is appropriately vague. I am intrinsically deprived of choices about little things by long melee rounds but the inverse isnt true.   

In various other games those choices I make apply to 12 seconds or 6 seconds or even 1 second of game world time. (1 second is 2x faster than real world fencers attribute the time to decide and carry out a single attack sequence by relatively normal reflexes/minds so its a bit insane)

The inverse isnt true however any choices I might make for a 1 minute round are still makable within the context of shorter 12 second round.

At some point the really short rounds get hung up on more detail than you are interested in... just as at some point overly long rounds make the action more vague than you are interested in... but the determining factor is a matter of taste because it affects the nature of the things you get to choose about and the nature of the things you have an influence on the description of.


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## Mark (May 4, 2010)

pemerton said:


> I don't think it is about the talent of GMs.





You're purposefully ignoring that AllisterH chalks it up to "DM whim and experience" and that my post expresses having found that lack of experience (and talent) more rare than he.  Please try to keep my posts in context since I am disallowed by PC to request you refrain from quoting me.


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## jmucchiello (May 5, 2010)

Hussar said:


> BTW, jmucchiello, are you honestly claiming that you averaged 20+ combatants in the fight at the same time, AND your fights averaged 30 minutes (or so) AND you had the depth of tactical choices that you would get in 3e?  Really?




No, I said that such a combat could take 25-30 minutes. Granted 25-50% of the combatants were sluphs (4e calls them minions) and unlike what someone else wrote I wasn't counting henchmen as it's been too long since I've used them. We switched to 2e rather early and henchmen became passé. So most combatants were controlled by the DM.

But, we certainly had 4+ combats in 4 hours regularly and that included time to move between rooms and waste time listening at doors and reciting Monty Python scripts. (Heavy MP sessions had fewer combats, I'll admit.) I'll also admit that was when we had 6 players who were heavily involved in combat tactics and were able to keep the MP down during actually combat time. In fact that group steered away from heavy role-play since that usually resulted in the most MP.


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## jmucchiello (May 5, 2010)

Garthanos said:


> Choice density how often in "game world time" do I get to choose the actions of my character its almost 1 round = 1 minute... so any choices or options or die rolls I make covers the whole of that one minute for the character. That is choice density in action.  (pretend I said a to hit and whatever choices are appropriate to cover the actions of a whole minute)




There are times when I miss the 1 minute round. One of the last 2e sessions we had I remember vividly one of the players stating something to the effect of "I dash around the corner up the ramp and leap off the ziggurat onto the levitating mage". With a shorter round he would have been around the corner one round and on the ramp the next. But here he was able to make a heroic dive at the chanting mage and fall short 15 feet because he didn't realize how far away from the ramp the mage actually was. But still it must have looked cool.


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## The Shaman (May 5, 2010)

pemerton said:


> . . . [M]y preference for RPGs is that playing by the rules deliver a compelling situation of conflict which, via its resolution, will produce a compelling story (compelling for the participants, that is - I don't think my RPG play produces stories that would be very compelling for spectators).



I think the rules of a game can help to reinforce genre conceits, but from what I've seen games which attempt to "deliver a compelling situation of conflict" are often so narrowly constituted as to miss what is for me the real strength of tabletop roleplaying games, which is the ability to create and explore an alternate universe.

To that end I prefer rules which model the physics of the game-world, and let the conflicts and resolutions come from the interactions of the adventurers with the game-world, not the rule book.


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## pemerton (May 5, 2010)

Shaman, thanks for that very clear statement of your preferences as a player. I'd sort-of guessed as much from your other posts, but it helps me, at least, to see it clearly stated.

I used to prefer rules-as-physics in the way you describe, but a lot of experience with Rolemaster has pushed me in a different direction. I wouldn't say that I now dislike Rolemaster, and I certainly don't disavow the decades of gaming pleasure it gave me, but (to be blunt) I would be perfectly happy never to GM it again.

I think your point about narrow constitution in more conflict-focused mechancis is a fair one. For me, 4e offers enough breadth to keep me satisfied, at least for now: there are humanoids, empires, "points of light", gods, demons etc. I have played games where more mundane (in the metaphysical sense) and human society-centred features of the world were prominent, such as political borders, public administration, exchange rate of gold between different economic centres, etc. I haven't tried this sort of stuff in 4e yet, and am not sure how it would go handling it. I doubt the system can handle exchange rates. I think skill challenges with Bluff, Diplomacy and History might handle public administration, but with the potential for a loss of detail (but maybe not - hard to tell until you try!).


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## Hussar (May 5, 2010)

Taking this in perhaps a little different direction.  Hopefully.

Over the past several years, we've seen games moving away from the traditional form of RPG's and games in general by granting greater and greater levels of editorial control to the players.  In traditional games, and in older versions of D&D, players had little or no editorial control.  Granted, editorial control was being handed over to the players in the 80's with games like the 007 RPG where you could spend ((I forget the exact term for it)) action points in order to alter a scene to make it more like a Bond movie - add in some trash cans to throw in the way of your pursuers, that sort of thing.

Could the erosion of the "turn" as a distinct unit simply be another step away from traditional game forms?  Instead of "twitch gaming" being catered to, is this not simply a fairly logical step for games to take?  After all, there's no particular need for RPG's to follow in the steps of wargames or board games where each player's game is relatively distinct.  It's just been done that way because it's always been done that way.

Not that it's wrong to have the "turn" as a distinct unit, just that it's not a requirement.


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## Garthanos (May 5, 2010)

The Shaman said:


> which is the ability to create and explore an alternate universe.



Take joy the parts you like the most are all yours not the games.
Never seen a game that creates or explores pretty sure the creating was mine and my players and like-wise the exploring ours ... narration and description. 

And no I am not so interested in accounting exercises. (tracking every last ration how long it takes to manufacture x or y and the precise exploitable value a trader gets by travelling from place x to place y and similar). Nor am I thrilled when very crappy rules try to enforce bad models of human behavior... for the sake of genre conventions or not.

For myself mechanics sheesh put them in there place let them help me visualize conflicts in a vivid compelling and fair way.. then get off the bloody screen.


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## firesnakearies (May 5, 2010)

pemerton said:


> Now look at the main complaint one hears about 4e from LostSoul, one of the posters on these boards who clearly has a lot of play experience with indie games: *potential incoherence in 4e's relationship between challenge and player narrative entitlements*. This is a complaint that (in my view) arises from some of the areas of lurking incoherence I've noted in 4e's design, where it straddles traditional and indie approaches.




(emphasis mine)


I liked this whole post a lot, and thought you had some very interesting things to say.  I didn't entirely understand what you meant by the bolded phrase above, though, and I'd really like to.  Could you explain that in greater depth, please?


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