Help me actually understand Winds of Fate.

[wotmaniac]

One more time; this time with feeling -- this is a competency and self-efficacy issue, not a system issue.

Last time: shut the fuck up. No it isn't. This is a system issue because it is a human functionality issue. People don't work in a way that allows them to make intelligent decisions in a reasonable amount of time when given an unordered list of 20 options.

I concur.
And if somebody has their character sheet "unordered" as such, then they deserve to be smacked. Nobody does this; and even if they do, they have an organization issue (as I've mentioned before).
Besides, you and Lago both need to get off of this strawman of a study right now. This is not how character advancement happens.
You start off with 3-4 things that you can do. Then (once you've had a chance to master those things), as you advance, you add abilities 2-3 at a time (with significant time between advancements to assimilate and master those new options). Mastery of your options/abilities as you advance happens as a process of distributive learning, thanks to a little thing called the spacing effect.
Oh, and here's some references for ya:
http://www.aft.org/newspubs/periodicals ... ingham.cfm
http://www.window.state.tx.us/schoolsta ... rbreak.doc
http://www.spaceded.com/info/spacing_effect

Now, Lago did actually go in to the why of the problem of heuristics. While this is a valid point, again, I see this as largely an organization issue.
On the flip-side of that coin -- in injection of the extra chaos factor creates extra lag time (i.e., decision paralysis) exactly because of the fact that you've exponentially increased the # of iterative input/output probabilities.

If Flame Bolt is sufficiently good and useful that you'd use it 60% of the time, that would get pretty boring pretty fast.

Here's a little anecdote for ya:
I once played a 3e warlock -- it looked cool; I created this whole neat little story for him and everything, and hit the table ready to rock ass.
All of 3 sessions later, I said "fuck this" and self-ejected. Why? Because that's all it took me to realize just how boring it was to just spam EB all day. You see, I identified the problem (I was bored), identified the source of the problem (class has no real options), and eliminated the problem (new character). Next character? Druid. Why? Options. Result? Had a blast.
But I know that you don't really care about anecdotes, because players don't actually do that -- right?

In case you haven't picked up on it by now, the key to getting players to vary their tactics/powers is to vary the what they're facing.

Stock Lago reply incoming:

You vastly underestimate the difficulty it takes to avert this.

Okay, imagine if you will goblin archers in the forest. They are on the other side of a chasm spanned by a bridge or two. Fortunately for them the goblin archers were able to recruit some trolls or some shit to block the bridge, putting the players in a chokepoint. Sounds like a pretty robust tactical situation, right? Maybe not robust, but it definitely requires a level of thought more than 'random goblin archers in a flat plane! GO!' Well, you know what, there are several issues with this.

1. Goblin archers across a forest chasm isn't actually much different than drow archers on a cliff in a cave with grimlocks at the bottom or pirate cannoneers on a ship drifting away from the docks. As much as we hate to admit it, a lot of tactical setups are actually really reductionist; video games and tabletop games have figured this one out for years to the point of naming a lot of them. The obvious way to avert this would be to dump more shit onto the tactical field to spice it up--there's also a thunderstorm going on and a weird magical fog that causes random teleportitus and there's also a strange stone that creates an anti-goblin arrow force field on one corner of the battlefield where the players might turn the tables! So the goblin archers send one of the trolls to try to push it into the chasm. Which leads into the second problem.

2. Making a robust tactical situation is actually really, really difficult. If you have a game where combat is rare then it's definitely quite possible to create unique special snowflake battles that the players have never seen before, making the first complaint seem churlish. But in a game like D&D where stories of a group running three battles in a night are common, this is a near-impossibly tall order for the DM. A lot of DMs, including yours truly, will not actually create special snowflake battles for many of them and will end up resorting to 'eh, fuck it, goblin archers in the alleyways, some difficult terrain here and there from garbage and dead peasants, we're ready to rock' in order to meet time constraints or battle quotas. Which of course will lead to monotony after enough time.

The obvious way to avert this is to have a robust monster manual with lots of wild and wooly monsters in it that is easy to run. Goblin archers in the forest need not feel the same as umber hulks in the forest or even drow archers in the forest. This is actually probably the biggest goal of monster manuals, but as we've learned from 3E and 4E D&D there is a limit to the amount of complexity you can give the average monster before they become too complex to run.

Beyond that though course there's the problem that D&D has lasted for 30 years and on top of that expects people to fight 10+ battles in the average story arc. As amazing as it might sound, people are actually quite familiar with dragons, man-scorpions, frost giants, demons, and golems due to D&D's longevity and effect on related media like video games. You will reach a point and soon where ogre magi backed up by yakmen are old hat. Such is the success of D&D, but it's a pisser when you're trying to come up with monsters that people haven't already Seen A Million Times. So you can't solely rely on the Monster Manual to jazz things up. A game needs to hopefully find a third way of attacking combat monotony but the only really big thing you can change in the combat equation is player tactics. And that's where Winds of Fate come in.

And before you immediately tell me again 'that's why you need to throw out diverse sets of monsters at the players that need different tactics!', let me tell you why it's not a good idea to rely on this. Even though the expected goal of throwing out the occasional golem or fire elemental or puzzle monster or whatever is to break players out of the routine of 'I fireball it!', what actually ends up happening is something a lot different because this ignores the reason why players resort to ability spam/5Mod in the first place. Actually, I made this argument a couple of times earlier in the thread so I'll just post it again.

Click here to see the hidden message (It might contain spoilers)

The thing that MfA and you are fantasizing about where people have 10 distinct powers that do different things and you reward people for picking the 'right' power never really works. Even in Mutants and Masterminds d20, which opens the floodgates to do anything you want with any power as long as you spent a Hero Point often has players spamming their same powers despite the game going out of its way to offer alternate situations in the solution books. Seriously, just read the goddamn logs for the Crucible City MUX and that stupid Heroes MUX pastiche that used that system. Players stuck to patterns and often didn't go for 'just as planned!' bait that seemed obvious to outsiders. Why is that?

1) It's often not as obvious as you think it would be for people to pick that 'just as planned' power. For example, should you hit the fire elemental with an Empowered Iceball, a Plane Shift, or a Wall of Stone? Depending on how you construct the game, they all might be equally useful even though a layperson would say 'go for the Iceball!'. Without such obvious decision points, the average person is going to default to what they feel most comfortable with, which invariably leads to ability spam. (Ed: This especially becomes a problem if you actually went ahead and made a small set of powers diverse, because it incentivizes people to stick to one power even more. There are a lot of occasions in which sunbeam won't do donkey dick and are forced to diversify, but it's very hard to come up with occasions that makes summon monster or mass curse more harmful than using another power). This is exactly what happened with Psions; they chose a small list of generically useful powers, some buffs and edge-case effects, then went to town. The only way you can avert this is by splitting up all versatile powers into individual spells, but then that either makes characters boring and one-note or it introduces option paralysis... which leads to people spamming the same one power anyway. Sigh.

2) Even if you do have a This Power Works Best situation, a lot of people aren't going to take it anyway. Either because of cautiousness, paranoia, laziness, roleplaying reasons, or they're just not that bright. They will of course stick to what they're comfortable with, which invariable leads to ability spam. Even though this seems like a minor thing, it's not. It's probably the biggest impediment on this list in fact. People are a combination of stubborn and looking for the path of perceived least resistance i.e. lazy. If you do a 'you can spam this power, but you'll get a -4 to attacks for it so it's a good idea to use something else', a large percentage of players will still choose to spam it. A lot of players' response to Salamanders Attack Your Fire Mage! is to sigh, suck up the fire resistance, and throw out fireballs anyway. You could theoretically put up enough obstacles to break up the player's pattern (these goblins have fire immunity and can fly over short walls!) but the problems with THAT approach is that A) this becomes very obvious after awhile and B) see caveat #2 about DMs being just about as lazy as players.

3) Those 'OMG that was just a PERFECT use of that power!' situations happen in comics and cartoons because, get this: the writers get a lot longer than 5 minutes to come up with something and even have considerable power to manipulate events into a 'just as planned' situation. The 'Iron Man modulates his laser to hit a ghost' tactic might seem obvious to you because you crafted the adventure, but it might not to the people actually playing it--at least not within a reasonable time frame. If someone is on a time crunch they will tend to default to what they feel most familiar with, which leads to ability spam.

Hold up -- now you're just doing what you've been crying about other people doing. You don't get to respond to critique of the lazy and unimaginative with a reiteration of the lazy and unimaginative.

Facing was done away with because of how much it systematically demanded that the game get bogged-down (on several levels); and did so without providing sufficient ROI.

Why weren't you upset at THIS loss of autonomy? In 2E D&D you had a choice of where you face; in 3E you don't. If autonomy is really that important, where was the rioting in the streets and cursing and apology from WotC? Why didn't 4E do a 180 and suddenly put facing rules in? Is it because, like you correctly noted, that level of choice doesn't improve the game?

It's almost as if it's possible to reduce choice some finite amount but still in the end increase player satisfaction! As in autonomy isn't the end-all be-all of game design! Who would have thunk it?

The issue is how and to what degree. The removal of facing made it a passive non-element -- and doing so did absolutely nothing else but remove systematic clutter from the flow of the game. WoF is an active element that adds complexity to other areas. You've literally changed the focus from the game to the metagame.

Green Arrow using Electromagnetic Field arrow against the Robot Monsters is pretty cute and novel the first time. The next three times it's not. It's still cute and novel if he figures out that Lightning Arrow, Chaff Arrow, and Willie Pete Arrow (complex circuits respond badly to overheating, almost as much as animals do) fucks them over and uses those next.

The fact that EMF arrow x4 is more effective than EMF/Lighting/Chaff/WP doesn't make it more interesting. But unless a player is prevented in some way from spamming EMF arrow they're going to keep hitting that button and create a less interesting story.

Spamming Robot Monster creates a less interesting story.
If EMF arrow isn't working, then it very well can be quite interesting to manipulate the situation in such a way that it does work. Here, the power isn't the focus; the situation is -- and manipulating a situation, IMO, is more interesting than the powers that you use (sometimes to the degree that the actual specific power used is completely inconsequential to how interesting the encounter is).

You seem to have missed the point. Psions got rid of the overwhelming # of options. The powers are flavorable as desired. Even if they happened to spam a bare handful of those powers, they still feel different because of how they are flavored/implemented ('cause, you know, I encourage my players to actually get in to describing how they implement their stuff -- 'cause, at least from what I"ve read, that's one of the game's basic expectations).

You did NOT just 'roleplay not rollplay' me. I'm going to pretend you didn't say that.

You're right -- I didn't. I simply pointed out that you don't have to mechanically engineer every single element of the individual's role in the whole cooperative-storytelling process. As a matter of fact, you probably shouldn't. There's a big difference between Stormwind, and simply not wanting to rely on some contrived mechanic to tell the story for you.

SO?? Do you cry if you used Mass Cure Major Wounds on an earlier encounter in a Vancian system and an encounter where it'd be even more useful comes up? Do you ragequit if you roll minimum dice on the random cure roll, which leads to you barely getting killed next round anyway? Are you going to throw a hissy fit if it gets counterspelled or the monster reveals an 'absorb beneficial spell' ability?

None of the above. Surprisingly enough, those examples have absolutely nothing to do with my actual criticism of WoF.

Oh, and what it is with you and Frank assuming that I'm so susceptible to temper-tantrums? Is it because I just jumped on in here full of bluster and bravado? Am I a little too combative for you? I certainly don't think that I've said anything that would indicate any of the things that you two have suggested. Here's a little secret -- I'm actually not normally like this (well, not anymore). The truth is, I did some lurking before I registered; and given who I knew I'd be debating with, I just figured that this was part of the baseline expectation -- I'm just trying to keep up. If I've misjudged, let me know.

I mean, c'mon man, even non-WoF systems have the potential for creating situations where you're boned if the best case scenario just isn't there.

You're absolutely right -- but you're removing (or, at the very least, severely limiting) the players' capacity to actively "make things happen", so to speak.

And as for implementation: You're having to manipulate the narrative to fit the mechanic -- you've got it backwards.
And as an example of where this happens elsewhere: just off the top of my head .... WoD does this shit all the time -- and I absolutely hate it.
You know, if you wanted to design a series of 1-off adventures around this, and literally title it "The Fickle Finger of Fate", then I'd totally be on board. But that's as far as I'm willing to go.

[CatharzGodfoot]

"Holding" would only give ambushing parties an advantage if every row is of equal utility outside of specialized options. Otherwise everyone just goes around holding her best row.

[Username17]

"Holding" would only give ambushing parties an advantage if every row is of equal utility outside of specialized options. Otherwise everyone just goes around holding her best row.

The idea is that you would lose your held card if you were surprised. So whether someone has a best row or not, ambushing is a slight advantage. The ambushing party picks an appropriate first turn and the ambushed party draws randomly.

You start off with 3-4 things that you can do. Then (once you've had a chance to master those things), as you advance, you add abilities 2-3 at a time (with significant time between advancements to assimilate and master those new options). Mastery of your options/abilities as you advance happens as a process of distributive learning, thanks to a little thing called the spacing effect.

Now you're arguing coherently. Unfortunately for you, you're still wrong. Because while the spacing effect will allow the player to learn all of their maneuvers, it won't actually make them magically able to make tactical decisions any faster. Even though they accumulated their character's options over twenty weeks, they still have to make their choice about what to do in the current round in twenty seconds.

Spacing out ability gain to small handfuls of abilities in a session is a good idea and makes character advancement much more manageable. But it does not make turn by turn decision making faster or more rewarding. When people do the candy selection studies, the people involved have in fact learned what all the candies are. Not just over weeks, but over years. They aren't confused about what a peanut M&M is or how a 3 Musketeers bar works. And you know what? People are still faster and happier about their pick from 6 than they are about their pick from 9. That's just a demonstrable, well documented, fact.

-Username17

[Lago PARANOIA]

None of your links have anything to do with choicemaking, but learning. I have no idea why you posted any of that.

Yes, I agree with you in the broad strokes that someone who is very familiar with what their character does will take less time to make a decision than someone who isn't familiar at all, but considering the fact that people still face option paralysis when confronted with 24 different types of chocolate or jams that should tell you that telling the player 'read moar, n00b!' isn't going to solve the underlying problem.

On the flip-side of that coin -- in injection of the extra chaos factor creates extra lag time (i.e., decision paralysis) exactly because of the fact that you've exponentially increased the # of iterative input/output probabilities.

Jesus Christ, another non-sequitur.

COMPARED TO WHAT OTHER SYSTEM? A Vancian / Cooldown / Spell Point power system of 24 distinct spell charges over 5 rounds has a decision tree of 24 x 23 x 22 x 21 x 20. A WoF system that separates 24 distinct powers into 4 rows has a decision tree of 6 x 6 x 6 x 6 x 6.

All of 3 sessions later, I said "fuck this" and self-ejected. Why? Because that's all it took me to realize just how boring it was to just spam EB all day. You see, I identified the problem (I was bored), identified the source of the problem (class has no real options), and eliminated the problem (new character). Next character? Druid. Why? Options. Result? Had a blast.

3E spellcasting has a very strong sorting algorithm to it, almost as strong as 4E D&D's. I'm not surprised that you found druid manageable.

Hold up -- now you're just doing what you've been crying about other people doing. You don't get to respond to critique of the lazy and unimaginative with a reiteration of the lazy and unimaginative.

I wonder if you'll realize the dramatic irony. Probably not, otherwise you wouldn't have typed this.

I get so weary of having to refute the same stale argument 5 or 6 times in a row. You'll forgive me for resorting to a stock if someone brings up the same unedited point as if what I said the previous times never happened. If you want me to come up with a different reply, either respond to the points I made in that or stop bringing up the same damn point.

The issue is how and to what degree. The removal of facing made it a passive non-element -- and doing so did absolutely nothing else but remove systematic clutter from the flow of the game. WoF is an active element that adds complexity to other areas. You've literally changed the focus from the game to the metagame.

No shit, that was the damn point; making facing abstract removed player choice but improved gameplay. This was supposed to be a refutation of the whole 'b-b-but player agency makes everything better!' No, it doesn't.

Spamming Robot Monster creates a less interesting story.
If EMF arrow isn't working, then it very well can be quite interesting to manipulate the situation in such a way that it does work. Here, the power isn't the focus; the situation is -- and manipulating a situation, IMO, is more interesting than the powers that you use (sometimes to the degree that the actual specific power used is completely inconsequential to how interesting the encounter is).

That first sentence is a total non-sequitur. I have no idea how that's important to my point at all.

As for your second point, I have no idea what that has to do with WoF. Yes, what you do with the powers are more interesting than the powers in of themselves. ... so?

You're right -- I didn't. I simply pointed out that you don't have to mechanically engineer every single element of the individual's role in the whole cooperative-storytelling process.

This is absolutely right. But you also have to mechanically engineer many element of the individual's role--otherwise you're playing Magic Tea Party. How much of it should be engineered? In a heroic fantasy game, probably most of it, since no DM is going to let Hercules turn people to stone with his gaze without a player pointing to a specific rule. It's such a pithy point that I don't even know why you made it.

None of the above. Surprisingly enough, those examples have absolutely nothing to do with my actual criticism of WoF.

Your criticism of WoF boiled down to 'I don't get to always have the game effect I want when I want', which is stupid because any resource management, attack resolution, and power resolution system that's working properly won't give you what you want when you want. I mean, really, when you say this:

You're absolutely right -- but you're removing (or, at the very least, severely limiting) the players' capacity to actively "make things happen", so to speak.

Why is WoF the line in sand when you declare that you won't let randomness or choice affect what you want to do? Why is the 1d4 chance to not land the big spell that will save the day the sticking point rather than the battle you had two fights ago or the anti-magic field or the healing roll or the saving throw? All of those produce optimal and suboptimal outcomes. All of those create situations that can cockblock a player's opportunity to 'make things happen'.

And as for implementation: You're having to manipulate the narrative to fit the mechanic -- you've got it backwards.

Why is that bad? You didn't say why that is bad, you just said that you didn't like it, implying that the narrative > the mechanic--which sounds like 'roleplay not rollplay' to me.

[wotmaniac]

Touche, Frank.

Okay, what about the idea of, say, having the character sheet do some of the heuristics for you?
-- side note: I'm still coming from the perspective of simply trying to address the apparent problems experienced at the table, and prefer something outside of WoF. If nothing else, attempting to poke holes in my logic at the very least helps me with my understanding of game design.
I think that the layout and organization of the character sheet can go a long way in helping to focus your process in a certain type of direction.
As long as the abilities are already properly tagged, then it's just a matter of filling them in the blanks. Having the sheet set up in such a way as to teach you a particular way of organizing thinking about your abilities, seems like it would lend itself to channeling your heuristics in a particular type of direction. Thus, you channel the thought process towards that which is more thematically appropriate, with specific choice optimization only being a consideration once your theme-based heuristics have got you down to 2-4 options.
Effectively done, 5MoD is much less prevalent, as is option paralysis.
Of course, this still requires a dynamic encounter setting, but that's pretty much a given.

what am I missing?

[mean_liar]

If you think that I'm overrepresenting that study, here's another one:
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/8779649/More%20 ... Visser.pdf

"Results indicate that the optimum assortment size lies somewhere between 12 and 24 items."

Well, awesome. Better make WoF based on a d12 then. Or d20. Or not use it and settle for a range of 12-24 meaningful choices.

http://www.columbia.edu/~ss957/articles ... vating.pdf

Well, this study determines that 6 choices lead to more satisfaction than 24. Meanwhile, it says nothing about, say, 12. Or 18.

I'd also argue that satisficing is more likely than maximizing within gamers - its a selected and encouraged trait - and therefore the bounds for acceptable numbers of options are higher than for mean ranges.

[Username17]

Okay, what about the idea of, say, having the character sheet do some of the heuristics for you?

That would be an example of reductionism and shallow decision making that make for a weak tactical experience. Yes.

Sure, you can order the powers on your sheet from those you are most likely to us to those you are least likely to use, and then go down the list until you find one you can use and then use it. But while that is (usually) a fairly fast sorting algorithm - it also sucks monkey ass. It's extremely unlikely to give you the optimal solution for your situation, and the ability in the 20th slot is basically never going to be used. The fact that it is on your sheet at all is just a sham.

Give someone six abilities to choose from and they can and will evaluate each one against their current tactical environment to determine which is best. Give someone a long list and they'll use an elimination heuristic and give a knee-jerk answer. That's how decision making works.

So you give someone a selection of six, and you change the selection of six each turn. It's a fairly obvious solution once you really understand the problem.

-Username17

[Lago PARANOIA]

The Erasmus study said that 4 choices provided about as much satisfaction as 24 and the distribution formed an inverted-U, so it's no surprise that 6 provides more satisfaction than 24 like the Stanford/Colombia one did.

The Erasmus study didn't give much of a range between 12 and 24 unfortunately, but at the conclusions near the bottom it concluded that the optimal range would be really close to 12.

The optimum assortment size for most consumers is between 12 and 24 items, with the strong indication that it is better to be close to 12 than to 24. Maximisers prefer slightly larger assortments than satisficers, so it could be opportune to create an assortment that is a little larger than the minimum of 12.

But anyway, back to the implications for WoF. The powers and the proper application of powers are a lot more complicated than choosing candy or music you'd like to listen to. The C/S study also stated (no citations or study though, alas) that people are more stressed from having to choose when there were 'right' and 'wrong' answers, which certainly would seem to apply to a tactical minigame like D&D's. And of course there's just the fact that power options have nested decision trees in them as well that can easily inflate the choices--should I use Whirlwind Attack on Goblin A, B, and C or use it on Goblin B and Troll A? I think for the Green Arrow style WoF having more than 6-7 entries is about the maximum you can do without creeping into option paralysis again.

[mean_liar]

But that's still an opinion: mine is that satisficing is the natural mode for gamers to aggregate towards and therefore the number would be closer to 12.

So while the articles are interesting, they're not really directly relevant. They basically say that 24+ is a bad idea, and I don't think you'd find much disagreement there.

[Lago PARANOIA]

But that's still an opinion: mine is that satisficing is the natural mode for gamers to aggregate towards and therefore the number would be closer to 12.

You don't actually want to set the number of discrete decisions at 12, because powers have different form depending on the tactical situation. For example, in a 'goblin archers across the forest chasm' situation, Wall of Stone can easily be Bridge of Stone, Cage of Stone, and Breastworks of Stone depending on what you want to do with it. Mind, if you wanted to make powers really specific and/or just mathhammers (like most of 4E's powers) you could probably put like 9 or 10 in there without causing option paralysis.

[Ice9]

See that's exactly the point. Having more maneuver cards just makes you weaker. Having more abilities on cards makes you stronger and deeper. You could write in specialty maneuvers on the basic maneuver cards and draw double cards, but then you're only drawing two or three cards.

Ok, I don't see how this is true. In MtG, having more cards available to build your deck from does not make it weaker. In fact, having more different cards in a single deck does not make it weaker. If it did, nobody would have less than four of anything in their deck.

To the extent that drawing 3 double option cards partially addresses the issue that Crusaders would get assraped by knowing Command Undead, drawing 2 triple option cards would more address that problem, and drawing a single sextuple option card would completely solve that issue.

Yes, and going nude solves the problem of having to wash your clothes. If you just have a single six-option card, then you cannot hold options from one turn to another. Which is a fucking huge part of the strategy in most card games.


Basically, for this to work, you cannot have crap abilities. All the abilities have to be something that a player would actually want in their deck. Which means that weaker abilities need to compensate by being usable faster/earlier/whatever. Or, you need to have a deck-building budget where not all your cards can be the most awesome. And you need a minimum deck / maximum copies limit so that players don't build a mono-move deck (the same as requiring different moves on different rows of a table, actually).

So let's look at the Command Undead move. If it is so crappy that people would not want even one copy in their deck - then trash it. Or rewrite it. Why are you putting abilities people don't like in the game anyway? If it's useful enough that people do want it, then what's the problem? If the crusader draws it when not fighting undead, then they still have five other options. And then on future turns they have the full six. The only problem is if people build an "all niche move" deck; if you want to protect them from themselves, just tag those cards as "Niche" and put a limit on how many can be in a deck.

[Ice9]

A further thought. It doesn't even have to be a binary choice. Just say that you draw up to a six-card hand, and allow people to discard cards.

Then green-arrow proponents can simply discard and redraw their entire hand each turn, and MtG proponents can hold options from turn to turn.

[Dean]

The study pleases me. I've been working on a WoF system that uses a d12 and allows you to choose the power rolled, one lower or one higher for a while now. It seems to be going well.

[wotmaniac]

but considering the fact that people still face option paralysis when confronted with 24 different types of chocolate or jams that should tell you that telling the player 'read moar, n00b!' isn't going to solve the underlying problem.

But, again, that only covers 1 cause of option paralysis. The other comes from how you train your heuristics. see my last post.

Jesus Christ, another non-sequitur.

COMPARED TO WHAT OTHER SYSTEM? A Vancian / Cooldown / Spell Point power system of 24 distinct spell charges over 5 rounds has a decision tree of 24 x 23 x 22 x 21 x 20. A WoF system that separates 24 distinct powers into 4 rows has a decision tree of 6 x 6 x 6 x 6 x 6.

First -- bullshit on the decision trees -- as to the former: in a given encounter, a majority of them are gonna be automatically dismissed out of hand with no need for thought (well, okay -- it technically doesn't happen quite like that; but the speed of that particular decision is so fast that that's the effect).
Second -- do I really have to connect all the dots for you? Okay, for the guy that insists on optimizing his choice to the point of a trembling hand perfect equilibrium (and we all know these people -- I've got 2 just in my group of 5), WoF is gonna send him in to apoplexy. In a non-WoF system, since he's already done his ni-instantaneous elimination of non-relevant abilities, he's got a handful of reliable abilities that he's got ready to go at any time -- this gives him a sense of certainty that allows him to have a certain degree of confidence in his decisions.
However, in a WoF environment, he's gonna sit there and cycle through each and every possible series of iterative outcomes. This adds all kinds of uncertainty to his little planning thing that he's got going on -- and it is this uncertainty that is literally going to lock him in to decision paralysis.

3E spellcasting has a very strong sorting algorithm to it, almost as strong as 4E D&D's. I'm not surprised that you found druid manageable.

Okay, now I'm starting to get a little lost -- where, specifically, are you seeing the option paralysis presenting? 'Cause full-casters is where I've seen it the most ... and the majority of the other cases aren't really that relevant to what's on the character sheet.
Defining this a little more clearly for me might help in this little disconnect.
Oh, BTW, notice that I never passed judgment on someone else wanting to play a warlock.

If you want me to come up with a different reply, either respond to the points I made in that or stop bringing up the same damn point.

which is fine, except ... that post specifically addressed the things in your canned response. repeating that same canned response does nothing but avoid addressing my points. but whatever; I've moved on.

No shit, that was the damn point; making facing abstract removed player choice but improved gameplay. This was supposed to be a refutation of the whole 'b-b-but player agency makes everything better!' No, it doesn't.

I've never said that agency is the end-all-be-all -- I've always been of the opinion that certain allowances must be made in order to facilitate flow of game.
I've also recently indicated that "agency" was probably not the right word to use for my particular perspective on this. While, yes, "agency" and "autonomy" are strongly related, they are actually 2 different things.
Removal of facing does nothing to autonomy, because there's no longer anything to govern; furthermore, it could be argued that it actually increases autonomy, because, since facing rules really only effect passive elements of the game, you are no longer constricted by the imposed complications (notice that is said "could").
WoF does actively impose itself upon autonomy. I'm given reign over selecting my abilities. I'm given reign over building my matrix. I'm given reign over whether or not to use an ability this round. And then the actual management of those abilities is completely out of my reach. That's a bait and switch.

Spamming Robot Monster creates a less interesting story.
If EMF arrow isn't working, then it very well can be quite interesting to manipulate the situation in such a way that it does work. Here, the power isn't the focus; the situation is -- and manipulating a situation, IMO, is more interesting than the powers that you use (sometimes to the degree that the actual specific power used is completely inconsequential to how interesting the encounter is).

That first sentence is a total non-sequitur. I have no idea how that's important to my point at all.

Because any time you want to illustrate just how boring ability spam is, you trot a specific monster vs. a specific ability -- and it's bullshit.
You've claimed that, essentially, the game can only be interesting when the players are using a variety of abilities/powers. Well, ability spam is only a "problem" when a specific ability is spammed for every encounter -- which is only gonna happen if said ability is actually effective for every encounter. But that's not the players' problem to deal with -- that's a GM that needs to get his act together.

As for your second point, I have no idea what that has to do with WoF. Yes, what you do with the powers are more interesting than the powers in of themselves. ... so?

Then what does it matter to you what abilities someone wants to use?

This is absolutely right. But you also have to mechanically engineer many element of the individual's role--otherwise you're playing Magic Tea Party.

You almost had me on that one. I'd almost be willing to let that slide as subjective aesthetic choice, except your whole premise is full of shit. Your premise assumes that everyone will always make the logically most optimal choices when engaging in the character building process -- which is empirically false.

None of the above. Surprisingly enough, those examples have absolutely nothing to do with my actual criticism of WoF.

You're absolutely right -- but you're removing (or, at the very least, severely limiting) the players' capacity to actively "make things happen", so to speak.

Why is WoF the line in sand when you declare that you won't let randomness or choice affect what you want to do? Why is the 1d4 chance to not land the big spell that will save the day the sticking point rather than the battle you had two fights ago or the anti-magic field or the healing roll or the saving throw? All of those produce optimal and suboptimal outcomes. All of those create situations that can cockblock a player's opportunity to 'make things happen'.

*sigh* this makes me sad.
Because I have an (at least rudimentary) understanding of economics. I understand and appreciate Scarcity and Opportunity Costs. By using a power 2 encounters ago, I knowing and willing assumed the opportunity cost of not having that power later on.
I also understand that my enemy is out there making choices of his own to try to end me. That AMF? Someone made an active decision to cast that; and, as such, I must react to that changing environment.
I also understand the difference between an input-resolution mechanic and a output-resolution mechanic. They feel different -- because they interact differently with the narrative.

Why is that bad? You didn't say why that is bad, you just said that you didn't like it, implying that the narrative > the mechanic--which sounds like 'roleplay not rollplay' to me.

Now, see ... that word "rollplay" makes me cringe; and when you throw out the whole "roleplay not rollplay", it sounds like you're accusing me of Stormwind -- which is something that can not honestly be attributed to anything that I've said or done through 17 years of gaming. So, forgive me if I buck at that a little.
Okay, it's like this: I think that it boils down to philosophic approach. I see the game as, first-and-foremost, a social event that serves as a medium for collective-storytelling -- which tells me that you're attempting to present a particular narrative. But, of course, if you want that narrative to have any semblance of cohesion, you have to lay down some tracks -- i.e., a commonly-used set of play mechanics. Both the narrative and the mechanics are interdependent -- you can't have one without the other. However, this particular approach dictates that the narrative drives the mechanics; the mechanics are there to support the narrative. Now, while I have established a particular horse/cart relationship (actually, let's call it train/tracks), I do maintain that both are equally important -- without a train, the tracks serve no purpose, and without the tracks the train can't go anywhere. There is no "one is better than the other" ... it's just a matter of where you find your contextual meaning.

I'd also argue that satisficing is more likely than maximizing within gamers

which contradicts Lago's heuristics theory in relation to 5MoD.

[wotmaniac]

That would be an example of reductionism and shallow decision making that make for a weak tactical experience. Yes.

Sure, you can order the powers on your sheet from those you are most likely to us to those you are least likely to use, and then go down the list until you find one you can use and then use it. But while that is (usually) a fairly fast sorting algorithm - it also sucks monkey ass. It's extremely unlikely to give you the optimal solution for your situation, and the ability in the 20th slot is basically never going to be used. The fact that it is on your sheet at all is just a sham.

No no -- I'm talking about a much more comprehensive thing .... maybe something where you break things down in to 4-6 tactical categories; and possibly break each of those down in to a couple of sub-categories based on specific types of situations. Since you're trying to resolve this quickly, choice of tactic is fairly instantaneous (at least, once someone has learned to properly assess the situation); from there, choice of specific power is fairly simple. As the situation changes, you're choice of tactic is gonna change.
I know it works, because I walked players through this. As a matter of fact, my success rate is 100%.
Of course, I'll go ahead and grant you the fact that my results may be a bit biased, do to a) my sample has been small (less than 10 for this little experiment), and b) this type of organization is tailored to each player for use in my games. But yeah .... surly there must be something that can be done with this idea.

[Zinegata]

Eh? Which card games are RPGs that have millions of players? Pokemon?

There aren't any RPGs that have millions of players any more. Remember: Hundreds of Thousands. There are millions of people who play card games like Magic, and there are card games that are role playing games like Lace & Steel, Engel, and to an extent Everway and the original Deadlands.

Magic the Gathering is "Fantasy Gaming". And it's beating the pants off of TTRPGs.

Oh yeah, also Dragonstorm and Warlord.

-Username17

Oh, okay, you meant a fantasy card game, but not necessarily an RPG. Yeah, that's true.

Deck-building games are also getting rather big nowadays, with Thunderstone being a rather fun simulation of a dungeon romp. Still not a true RPG as you don't carry your stuff over from dungeon to dungeon, but the game still features stuff like heroes that level up, a village full of ovepriced food, and monsters that do funky things.

[mean_liar]

You'll really want those broad tactical categories known anyhow: its not like anyone is expected to not remember that Overhead Chop is melee-only.

They'll have at least one binary decision sort right off of the bat (melee v ranged) and almost all their decision-making is going to start there. I'd argue that a good system should have risk-reward parity (in that casting MEGABOOM takes time and exposes you to pain) such that you have an additional filter (exposed v safe).

I still don't buy that any invocation of heuristics is an a priori guarantee of future dissatisfaction, especially given that the results we're talking about bandy around 12 distinct choices anyhow.

[gourdcaptain]

SO?? Do you cry if you used Mass Cure Major Wounds on an earlier encounter in a Vancian system and an encounter where it'd be even more useful comes up? Do you ragequit if you roll minimum dice on the random cure roll, which leads to you barely getting killed next round anyway? Are you going to throw a hissy fit if it gets counterspelled or the monster reveals an 'absorb beneficial spell' ability? I mean, c'mon man, even non-WoF systems have the potential for creating situations where you're boned if the best case scenario just isn't there.

Saying otherwise is just pure hindsight bias.

One note here: sure, it's not available, because I goddamn used it. It was my choice to use Mass Cure Major, and it's not the goddamn dice having arbitrarily decided it was off limits this round. The dice results are a known consequence of using the power. WoF pretty much throws out any planning beyond a round or so, and let me put it this way, irregardless of the average player, I do freaking plan strategies out more than six seconds.

That psychology study you wear around your neck as an impenetrable shield to deflect criticism? Okay, it's a good idea for game design to work with. Doesn't mean you can't come up with a cure to the problems it raises that is much, much worse than the disease, or that it's the only factor to consider when building the damn system. Or that any criticism on non psychology paper backed grounds is completely meaningless. (Plus, I've had a psych class in college recently, I really don't feel like digging around through more bloody psych papers.)

Also, you think option paralysis time is bad, wait until you see everyone trying to remember what this round's WoF results do.

[ScottS]

My personal reason for not-butthurt-getting over loss of agency in WoF:

There are already RPGs that feature an "activation roll" in order to use fixed abilities (thinking of SR and RM spellcasting as immediate examples).

I'm not seeing a lot of functional difference between making your SR Sorcery check and getting "a low number of successes", and missing your row on your WoF matrix check and having to settle for a less-desirable-yet-still-useful power from another row.

More answers to the objections:

"Not being able to auto-activate your abilities isn't 'D&D' enough": D&D is already cockblocking you through hit rolls, saves, DR, SR, immunities, Concentration checks etc.; as already mentioned, the biggest complainers in this category would probably be healers etc. that are usually expected to have auto-success actions; beyond that, we're getting into "whether it feels right" questions which I'll pass on

"A 1/N activation rate is too much cockblocking": depends on how large N gets and whether there's going to be any "downrowing", entry duplication etc. in the final form of this thing

"The row check adds another arguably pointless roll to the series of rolls you have to make to resolve a combat action": this might actually suck a bit and it's something I brought up before (i.e. asking about making the "random power activation" key off the hit roll); a matrix wouldn't be my first choice to implement WoF, but reading about it isn't making me hate the idea enough to not want to try it

[Username17]

See that's exactly the point. Having more maneuver cards just makes you weaker. Having more abilities on cards makes you stronger and deeper. You could write in specialty maneuvers on the basic maneuver cards and draw double cards, but then you're only drawing two or three cards.

Ok, I don't see how this is true. In MtG, having more cards available to build your deck from does not make it weaker. In fact, having more different cards in a single deck does not make it weaker. If it did, nobody would have less than four of anything in their deck.

Neither of those is analogous to adding a new card to the Crusader's deck by learning a new maneuver. What is analogous is literally adding a new card to your deck, increasing the total number of cards in your deck and diluting all the cards you do want t have four copies of. Seriously, how many people go to tournaments with 70 or 80 card decks?

There's a whole other issue where Magic allows you to hold individual cards indefinitely and has deck searching cards, both of which encourage the inclusion of small numbers of specialty cards. But neither of those apply in a 5 round combat in an RPG.

No no -- I'm talking about a much more comprehensive thing .... maybe something where you break things down in to 4-6 tactical categories; and possibly break each of those down in to a couple of sub-categories based on specific types of situations. Since you're trying to resolve this quickly, choice of tactic is fairly instantaneous (at least, once someone has learned to properly assess the situation); from there, choice of specific power is fairly simple. As the situation changes, you're choice of tactic is gonna change.

Yeah, that would be an example of a heuristic that uses reductionism to produce shallow decision making that makes for a weak and uninteresting tactical experience.

You're fighting a bunch of minor monsters, so you ignore all your options that aren't group attacks. Your enemies are skeletons so you ignore your shadow tagged spells and don't use Doom Tide. You select Fireball very quickly. Congratulations.

Now there are two problems with this. The first is obviously that next turn you're still going to be facing a group of Skeletons so the decision tree heuristic will probably give you the same result. And that's boring to you and it's boring to everyone else at the table. But there's another problem: Fireball is very likely to not actually be your best maneuver for the round. It's just the thing your simple sorting algorithm kicked out and it is somewhat optimized for the situation.

But imagine if we thought about this a little deeper. The enemies are cumbersome skeletons, they don't hit very often. If they hit on a 15+, then giving a +4 AC boost to the font liners is like killing two thirds of the skeletons and you probably don't even have to roll dice to do it. They are mindless opponents, there are probably a dozen things you could do to exploit their programming with illusions, conjurations, or speed enhancements.

If you thought about all your available options rather than sorting them by keyword, it is very likely that you could come up with a better solution to your situation than blowing up some of them with a fiery explosion. So while your sorting algorithm gives you a result, it makes for a shitty game. People use boring, repetitive, and severely suboptimal tactics instead of using varied and optimized ones. Where is the part where that's good?

-Username17

[Ice9]

Neither of those is analogous to adding a new card to the Crusader's deck by learning a new maneuver. What is analogous is literally adding a new card to your deck, increasing the total number of cards in your deck and diluting all the cards you do want t have four copies of. Seriously, how many people go to tournaments with 70 or 80 card decks?

What I'm saying is that learning a new manuever does not have to automatically put it in your deck, it can simply make it available for that purpose. Although if a new manuever is not good enough for people to put it in their deck, why are you putting it in the game?

But as I mentioned earlier, the same mechanism can support both methods. Allow discarding, draw up to a full hand, and you can cycle your cards "green arrow" style as much as you want.

[hogarth]

My personal reason for not-butthurt-getting over loss of agency in WoF:

The only sore rectum I've seen so far on this thread belongs to someone defending the system, not criticizing it.

I'm not seeing a lot of functional difference between making your SR Sorcery check and getting "a low number of successes", and missing your row on your WoF matrix check and having to settle for a less-desirable-yet-still-useful power from another row.

I agree that there isn't a huge difference between a +3 longsword and a +1d6 longsword, but that doesn't mean that the latter is an improvement on the former.

"Not being able to auto-activate your abilities isn't 'D&D' enough": D&D is already cockblocking you through hit rolls, saves, DR, SR, immunities, Concentration checks etc.

Did anyone make this argument? I don't think anyone cares too much about how "D&D-ish" something feels.

"A 1/N activation rate is too much cockblocking": depends on how large N gets and whether there's going to be any "downrowing", entry duplication etc. in the final form of this thing

That's not really an answer: "In some undefined future system, it might not be that bad."

"The row check adds another arguably pointless roll to the series of rolls you have to make to resolve a combat action": this might actually suck a bit and it's something I brought up before (i.e. asking about making the "random power activation" key off the hit roll); a matrix wouldn't be my first choice to implement WoF, but reading about it isn't making me hate the idea enough to not want to try it

Just to clarify -- I'd try this system (if there was an actual system and not just vague musings) but every example I've seen so far has seemed pretty half-baked.

[mean_liar]

Perhaps predictably, Frank is extolling maximizing behavior rather than satisficing, which is why he thinks 6-at-a-time WoF is so desirable and choice is a burden.

I think his mistakes are: the assumption that non-perfect play is inherently badwrongfun, that fun/varied play inherently cannot arise out of a 12-choice system, and that six is an ideal number.

I also wonder about the conclusion that employing any heuristic method means that you're on autopilot and cannot pull out of that mode to make rational choices. I mean, presumably someone chose those +AC or illusion powers for a reason, but they don't show up on his heuristic model as an option, ever. Its just fireballs, all the way down.

[hogarth]

I also wonder about the conclusion that employing any heuristic method means that you're on autopilot and cannot pull out of that mode to make rational choices. I mean, presumably someone chose those +AC or illusion powers for a reason, but they don't show up on his heuristic model as an option, ever. Its just fireballs, all the way down.

I thought it was interesting that forcing Mr. Fireball to use an illusion spell (say) would probably increase "option paralysis" instead of reducing it. Of course, that's assuming that Winds of Fate could force Mr. Fireball to avoid a blasting spell at all; certainly in Frank's Green Arrow example, one could happily use a blasting arrow every round if one wanted to (because of the way Frank arranged the table).

[BearsAreBrown]

I'm confused by some of the opponents of WoF. It seems that 80% of the issues posted are not inherent to WoF and instead qualms of TTG in general, like balance and the need for well written abilities. 10% of the issues raised could be easily dealt with by the specific mechanics of the WoF system, such as allowing the Cleric to spontaneously cast Cure spells regardless of his roll, the inclusion of meta-abilities, side decking, holding actions and so on.