The Difficulty in RPGs thread

[Mistborn]

+1 to everything isp said save this. Players are "supposed to win", the odds are going to almost always be in their favor. That doesn't mean that characters never ever die. Sometimes shit happen and you come to a bad end and that's fine, a game isn't a game if you can't lose.

Unless anyone has objections we can consider this thread done

[PhoneLobster]

... Sometimes shit happen and you come to a bad end ...

So in otherwords you are pulling an Elensar vs Iterative Probability thing.

Flat out that is what you are saying couched in some slightly different motherhood statements and better paragraphs.

You NEED a real risk of "Bad End" for your players to make your soggy dick hard. You actively demand to do things deliberately and explicitly to increase this chance (as outlined in your OP despite your endless screaming denials combined schizophrenically with confirmations and repeats of those same demands)

And you DON'T understand that iterative probability basically means "Sometimes" you reach a bad end becomes "All campaigns are highly likely to EVENTUALLY reach a bad end".

So yeah, you say sometimes you want your example one roll TPK bad ends hey. So out with it Elensar... what ARE the odds of Sometimes?

What are the odds of a TPK per combat that you demand? And since your own example is a single roll TPK... what are the odds per ROLL of a TPK that you demand?

PS. Just so you know. Thanks to the actual meaning of the word "Objective" your "Objective Difficulty" manifesto means you totally MUST put a fucking number on this shit.

[Mistborn]

Did PL have Roy as his DM once or something? He seems abnormally ornery in this thread.

Would someone other than PL explain why it's controversial to ask when you sit down to play a game it should be possible to lose that game.

[Wrathzog]

Would someone other than PL explain why it's controversial to ask when you sit down to play a game it should be possible to lose that game.

Short Answer: Because people Play Games for different reasons.
Expanded: And those reasons might not be the same as yours. It really is that simple. Understanding those reasons isn't even necessary (or expected).

Lago actually put forth the Sanest idea in this entire thread when he recommends that people Talk about their expectations for a game before it even starts.
Shit's fucking banana-town.

[wotmaniac]

a legal-but-unwitting murder machine?[...] PC wasn't as tough as he thought they were [...] put something together by the rules that turns into the Ruiner of Worlds or that winds up being the bane of a particular PC.

this was the impression that I got ... which seems completely legit to me.
That being the case, I gotta 2nd Frank on this one.


(wait -- didn't we have like a 10+ page thread about this very thing a few months ago?)

[Stubbazubba]

The problem with fudging die rolls, or honoring the die rolls no matter what, is only ever a problem when it clashes with the existing expectations. So Lago is absolutely right to say that every campaign should begin by clarifying those, and then proceed with chargen.

But assuming you're in an on-going campaign and haven't done that, and all of a sudden something comes up, that's a good time to have that conversation, to take the time to re-align expectations, without deciding for the whole party either way what's going to happen.

I was a player once and my PC was killed by a lucky crit, I think I was at -13 or so HP. By RAW, I was dead, and I declared it. I was OK with that, as I like making new characters. But the other players and the DM seemed to think that this needed to be avoided, and the DM said, "Oh, yeah, I was planning on using the 4e rule where you have negative HP equal to 1/2 your regular HP instead of RAW, so you're still alive." Everyone seemed to feel like this was a good idea, and I was fine either way, so the game continued and did not fall apart. Yes, my expectations were kind of one way and had to shift to another, but because they were set for the whole group and the whole campaign, I still felt like I was on solid ground afterwards.

Then again, maybe I'm just an exceedingly mature person for this hobby, and most people would throw a tantrum or lose interest in the game?

EDIT: I actually agree with isp; while any one element is a minority of the total Encounter's Difficulty, it's still important that we try to measure that somehow, so that we can figure out a holistic perspective on difficulty, and then try and communicate that in the rules and make the gears and levers clear for each table to create the proper desired difficulty.

[Dean]

Would someone other than PL explain why it's controversial to ask when you sit down to play a game it should be possible to lose that game.

Sure. It's not. But look at this....

a game isn't a game if you can't lose.

So you're not asking why it should be "controversial" for it to be "possible" to lose. Essentially you're not asking at all, you're demanding. It's not an "option" for you so any of that halfsies language is a false presentation of your position. So try and notice that. I support games that have me losing as a possibility, Chess for instance. I believe it is an important and positive part of the design of Chess that I can lose it. I am not categorically denying the possibility of a game that is made better by it being losable. But you ARE declaring the opposite is true. That ALL games intrinsically MUST be losable or they are bad.

What I am doing, and willing to do is judge games on a case by case basis of why they are being played and how, and let that determine whether or not it is a game that is improved by win/lose conditions. Dungeons and Dragons is not one of those games. It's win/lose conditions aren't honest, they don't improve the game, they don't add to fun, and the popular notion that the game is an honest win/lose game is provably disingenuous and and an internal lie people make due to cognitive dissonance in an attempt to think more positively about themselves.

As Wrathzog says; people play different games for different reasons. I think you think that I, and other difficulty skeptics just don't get what you're saying and how you're thinking. We do. I promise. Now you should try and see if you can turn the tables. Think about how Minecraft is a game and a fun one, how imaginary games (games) worked that you still must remember playing as a kid, that improv doesn't have lose conditions and yet all of those things are LEAGUES more like D&D than Chess or Ninja Gaiden are. If you get past the notion that all games must be able to be won so you must be winning D&D then I feel you'll be able to see the game more clearly and in doing so you can get to the next question which is far more interesting which is how best to design RPG's in the future knowing that they aren't required to make you "lose".

[Lago PARANOIA]

But assuming you're in an on-going campaign and haven't done that, and all of a sudden something comes up, that's a good time to have that conversation, to take the time to re-align expectations, without deciding for the whole party either way what's going to happen.

No, that's an awful time to have the conversation. In fact, that's the absolute worst time to have the conversation. It's awful for two reasons.

[*] If you're asking people whether they would like to endure pain at a certain point in time for a benefit later, you'll get the lowest amount of compliance if you ask right when it's time to endure the pain. That's the essence of procrastination. The best time to discuss people to start an exercise routine / plan a study weekend / stop smoking / stick to negative consequences of game rules is well in advance of the moment of truth.

[*] It's really dickish to discuss a new social contract at a point when people are already invested in the project and you're at the project's most vulnerable moment. If you don't have unanimous consent to change the project, then you're guaranteed to have dicked over at least one person who agreed to the social contract back when things were fair. It's a dick move in exactly the same way that Darth Vader agreeing to Lando's terms and then waiting until Stormtroopers are in Cloud City to renegotiate a new deal was a dick move.

If for some reason the conversation didn't come up, then you go with the default assumption: which is that people die when they're killed. In a game as violence-drenched as D&D, people who don't apparently realize this until it's time to pay the piper are either morons or weasels. And it needs to stop.

[PhoneLobster]

[*] If you're asking people whether they would like to endure pain at a certain point in time for a benefit later, you'll get the lowest amount of compliance

I just love that language. "Endure pain"... "Compliance" you are very like the deficit hawks a blind "pain is virtue and must surely pay off eventually!" attitude and such.

But more importantly yeah you WILL get the "lowest compliance" at the point where it is MOST CLEAR to a player what they have to lose.

Similarly you will get the HIGHEST "compliance" (note that Lago words it in a manner that suggests he is trying to pressure them INTO "enduring the pain" for "later benefits" whatever the hell those are... You will get the MOST compliance pressuring players into a "hardcore mode" Way in advance when they imagine they are awesome and invulnerable and will never NEED a spare life.

Or in otherwords you are just panicking and demanding to put the scenario balanced as much as possible in your favor because you see it as better for PUSHING players into "higher compliance" with your desires.

But you know what. Fuck it. I've done it at the "highest complaince" stage and not one damn player has ever said "fuck no I want to play Hardcore mode!". So "highest compliance" with hard core mode... is still pretty fucking low.

It's really dickish to discuss a new social contract at a point when people are already invested in the project and you're at the project's most vulnerable moment.

And it's actually MORE really dickish to demand players adhere to a social contract term that they maybe recklessly agreed to or I don't know felt pressured to "comply" to to even get into the game even in the face of obvious massive adverse effects to them they may very seriously have believed they would never face.

A simple "It's here, it's going down are you SURE you want to stick to hardcore mode?" MIGHT just be I dunno... significantly less dickish than not offering that.

And indeed your suggestion that offering that is somehow more dickish than not offering that... is fuck it MASSIVELY DICKISH.

ADAPTION. It's what being a GM is about.

If for some reason the conversation didn't come up, then you go with the default assumption.

That is not the default assumption. No really. It isn't. Go round. Ask the players at the table "Do you assume your character will die an ignominious random death unexpectedly for little reason other than temporary bad luck?"

That is NOT their default assumption in D&D, no way.

[Fuchs]

[*] If you're asking people whether they would like to endure pain at a certain point in time for a benefit later, you'll get the lowest amount of compliance if you ask right when it's time to endure the pain. That's the essence of procrastination. The best time to discuss people to start an exercise routine / plan a study weekend / stop smoking / stick to negative consequences of game rules is well in advance of the moment of truth.

[*] It's really dickish to discuss a new social contract at a point when people are already invested in the project and you're at the project's most vulnerable moment. If you don't have unanimous consent to change the project, then you're guaranteed to have dicked over at least one person who agreed to the social contract back when things were fair. It's a dick move in exactly the same way that Darth Vader agreeing to Lando's terms and then waiting until Stormtroopers are in Cloud City to renegotiate a new deal was a dick move.

If people are talking about compliance, enduring pain, and so on, then I walk away. I am here to play a game, not to make a social contract with some psychotic control freak.

I always wonder if Lago would play in a game where he could pick to have his negative consequences as character death, and the rest of the players could pick their negative consequences as "imprisonment" or "fled" "left for death" and so on. Wouldn't that be easiest and best for the group, everyone gets what they want?

[RadiantPhoenix]

I thought the default assumption in D&D was, "characters can die, but Raise Dead exists, and the DM can have an NPC cast it if the party can't."

That said, the correct time to have the discussion of expectations in a curently-ongoing RPG campaign is right now (unless you've already had the discussion). At your next game session (i.e., probably this Saturday or Sunday), take some time before the game to talk about these expectations.

In future campaigns, discuss it while thinking up character ideas or something.

[Lago PARANOIA]

If people are talking about compliance, enduring pain, and so on, then I walk away. I am here to play a game, not to make a social contract with some psychotic control freak.

I used words like that because my point applies generically. Not just to TTRPGs. That same psychological calculus applies to such myriad, mundane crap as:

[*] Starting exercise routines.
[*] Studying for a test.
[*] Taking care of housework.
[*] Bringing food to a potluck.

And so on. Getting people to agree to any task that's 'some pain now, more benefit later' is best done well in advance of actually coming to collect. The absolute worst time to convince your spouse to start a schedule of jogging on Friday mornings is Thanksgiving evening. The best time would be the previous Friday afternoon.

I have no idea why this insight is so controversial.

I thought the default assumption in D&D was, "characters can die, but Raise Dead exists, and the DM can have an NPC cast it if the party can't."

It is, but it comes with some caveats. The first being is that just because someone can cast Raise Dead doesn't mean that there's someone available who can cast True Resurrection or even regular Resurrection. The second being that Raise Dead has a time limit. The third being that if you're fleeing from a pack of ghouls and one of your buddies goes down, Raise Dead won't help. The fourth being that if everyone dies, there's no Raise Dead at all. Etc. etc.

Exceptions to 'people die when they're killed' do exist in D&D, but they're specific ones with prerequisites. And in any case don't actually prevent people dying; they're not in-game retcons like in Shadowrun. Which even in that game has some caveats.

And hey, if you want to negotiate changes to how death and resurrection works in D&D that's more than fine with me. I think that they're too strict given the other assumptions of the game. However, that shit needs to be done before you actually sling the dice for the first time. If you agree to D&D as she is played and then try to negotiate a major exception? If you bring it up randomly while in the middle of a routine dicker, I'll not be happy but I'm willing to talk it over. If you wait until after your character died to try negotiating an exception? Then fuck you. You're either a moron or a weasel to wait until an obvious negative consequence of playing in a violence-soaked game with no retcon device to think that 'hey, maybe I don't like the default assumptions of the game'. And in no case should such weak-willed idiots be catered to.

[Stubbazubba]

The best time to discuss people to start an exercise routine / plan a study weekend / stop smoking / stick to negative consequences of game rules is well in advance of the moment of truth.

You ignorant moron, I said this literally the line before what you quoted:

So Lago is absolutely right to say that every campaign should begin by clarifying those, and then proceed with chargen.

Maybe if you weren't so eager to start masturbating on your soapbox you wouldn't have sounded like an idiot.

But when you don't have that idealized possibility anymore, as I clearly said, then what do you do? I'm saying you do it as soon as you can, up to and including the moment it comes up, if that's what it takes to make you think of it.

You seem to be saying it's better to not bring it up than to bring it up at that moment. You're saying that if both the DM and all the players were thinking, "I want this campaign to use non-death failure states," but none of them said it (slipped their mind, or someone was just too timid to bring it up once), that they should enforce the "default" assumption of PC death in the moment, even though everyone would agree non-death would be better, because that proves that they're all psychological big boys? And that if this doesn't happen, the appropriate big boy response is to throw a tantrum about the morons and/or weasels being catered to (or grudgingly go along with it, tantruming on the inside/here)? That's some logic.

When's the last time you played with a group of humans (as in, not Denners)? It turns out that most people are way more mature than this board, and simply can't be bothered to freak out about stuff like this. It's best to get it clear as early as possible, but it's still OK to do it when it comes up, because the only reason people would possibly freak out at such a thing is if they already don't trust the DM and/or the other players, which is a larger problem than game rule orthodoxy.

I agree with your psychological principle for a great many of actual, important things, but just because a point is widely applicable does not mean it's universally applicable. That kind of regimenting is undoubtedly good for stuff that absolutely requires objective competence to succeed or win, like jobs, exercise, competitive sports teams or even competitive gamers, but D&D doesn't share very many of its core assumptions with those activities.

When a character dies in D&D, the player has not lost. The game continues, the story evolves around it, and the player jumps in with a new char or after a res, and you just keep going. In fact, the only win/lose conditions are entirely fabricated by the DM, who decides when the campaign ends, either by the PCs achieving their final victory or being TPK'd and not being brought back. Furthermore, the DM has no stake in the victory or defeat of the PCs, and similarly cannot win or lose, so you literally just keep playing until you feel like stopping.

At that point, what happens when you fail a single encounter is just not that big of a deal to start throwing tantrums either way. The only problem is re-aligning expectations. So just do it and get it out of the way, the earlier the better, but up to and including after Mike's PC bites it on a freak crit. And guess what, if all of those preferences change later, you should then change the rule again. While discipline is its own kind of success and is necessary for success in a million different things, it is not the supreme good in TTRPGs, and needs to yield to other interests from time to time.

[Fuchs]

And so on. Getting people to agree to any task that's 'some pain now, more benefit later' is best done well in advance of actually coming to collect. The absolute worst time to convince your spouse to start a schedule of jogging on Friday mornings is Thanksgiving evening. The best time would be the previous Friday afternoon.

I have no idea why this insight is so controversial.

Because a lot of people don't want to suffer any pain when playing games. D&D is not exercise. D&D is not a diet. D&D is a tabletop game.

And where "pain" is concerned, I feel that right when it comes up is best to discuss it, when people realize exactly what it means, so the guy who wants others to suffer pain can't hide behind "but we agreed on that" but has to convince people when they know what exactly they are agreeing to. It's usually quite hard to do that to friends when they know what's happening.

[ishy]

I disagree with you Fuchs.
No gamer I've ever played with has called for a ban for colour spray yet. They prefer suffering through the pain of being potentially stunned for 13 rounds.

[zugschef]

people change their minds... and as pl has already said, some people agree to some terms just because the only alternative would be not playing at all. so if the situation comes up that a rule, which one player didn't like from the start, is in question because now the gm and the other players are not happy with how it worked out, why the hell shouldn't you change it? if you don't understand this you shouldn't live in a democracy. one bad law and then you're fucked till eternity because it would be dickish to change it. lol

[Username17]

people change their minds... and as pl has already said, some people agree to some terms just because the only alternative would be not playing at all.

If you change the "rules" whenever you feel like it, you aren't playing. At all. You're telling a story, but you're telling a story that doesn't have any rules.

If you're playing Super Mario, then every time a Gumba kills you, you'd rather it didn't. But of course, if every Gumba couldn't kill you, then the game would be so easy that it wouldn't even be interesting.

We have rules because otherwise we're playing Cops and Robbers. We roll dice to resolve the dispute between the guy who says "Bang! I shot you!" and the guy who says "No! You missed!" If you're such an immature fuck weasel that you're willing to roll dice to determine who is right and who is dead, only to insist on changing the rules if and when it turns out that the dice say you got shot after all, then fuck you!

Seriously, the entire reason we roll dice, the entire reason is so that we resolve disputes about the results of actions and move the fuck on with the game. If you are just going to go back to the "I shot you!/No you missed!" argument after the dice are rolled, even that is pointless. You're no better than a five year old child.

-Username17

[Lago PARANOIA]

So Lago is absolutely right to say that every campaign should begin by clarifying those, and then proceed with chargen.

Maybe if you weren't so eager to start masturbating on your soapbox you wouldn't have sounded like an idiot.

I don't care if you agree with me for everything else but this one point, but it's such a key pivot to how games work that if you agree with everything else I said but this, then guess what? I don't agree with what you're saying.

I think that it's very hypocritical and dishonest of you to paint my objection as 'we basically agree on all major points, so why are you flipping out?'

You're saying that if both the DM and all the players were thinking, "I want this campaign to use non-death failure states," but none of them said it (slipped their mind, or someone was just too timid to bring it up once), that they should enforce the "default" assumption of PC death in the moment, even though everyone would agree non-death would be better, because that proves that they're all psychological big boys?

Yes. That's an empathic and hearty yes on my end.

I do note that blinkered 'everyone would agree' assertion, which I find hilariously ironic after you said that one of the reasons why people didn't bring it up earlier was because of timidity/rules unfamiliarity. Did it ever occur to you that the other people at the table might not want to waive player death? People in these and similar threads keep trying to paint their argument as 'why do you have problems with unanimous rules agreements', which is an amount of projection I have a hard time comprehending.

So at the very least, you're risking provoking a confrontation. Like what happens whenever you try to non-unanimously change an agreement after it's made.

And that if this doesn't happen, the appropriate big boy response is to throw a tantrum about the morons and/or weasels being catered to (or grudgingly go along with it, tantruming on the inside/here)? That's some logic.

For fuck's sake, projecting much? If someone gets upset that you changed an agreement after it was made and people have already sunk resources into it in a way that the new agreement hurts them more that's then throwing a tantrum?

I can't imagine the amount of hypocrisy it would take to make a statement like that. Imagine this setup:

1.) A group of people get together and agree to play a certain TTRPG. It has a lot of violence in it, like Shadowrun or D&D or Warp Cult. They agree to certain houserules and playstyles and party configurations and agree to play. One of the changes not discussed is character death, so like with rules regarding diplomacy checks or starting wealth rules, the gamers assume the default is in action.

2.) However, one or more of the players isn't actually okay with 'people die when they're killed'. They don't bring this up when the group is hammering out agreements. Either they're completely unfamiliar with the ethos of the game or they feel that the other players won't play unless they think that the default death assumption is in place. So this major disagreement to group dynamics is existing in their heads with some degree of consciousness.

3.) One of the players ends up dying. This is when one of the players reveals that they would like to make a major change to the rules. Not when the group was hammering out play dynamics, not well in advance of when the moment of truth came, but when the agreement is literally at its most vulnerable point.

So you're telling me that after that blatant progression of stupidity and/or dishonesty, the person who is mad that the rug was yanked out from under there is the one throwing the tantrum and should STFU? And not the person who flipped out and revealed that this was what they really wanted to play?

That kind of regimenting is undoubtedly good for stuff that absolutely requires objective competence to succeed or win, like jobs, exercise, competitive sports teams or even competitive gamers, but D&D doesn't share very many of its core assumptions with those activities.

Sorry to tell you this, but this also applies to D&D or pretty much any cooperative storytelling game.

Games like this have to have a way to enforce negative consequences. People don't particularly like blowing a random treasure roll or getting hit with disfiguring diseases or failing war strategy rolls -- but they agree to them anyway. If you gave players the opportunity to declare that 'no, I really did roll for a Holy Avenger' or 'My army really did crush the evil Empire in a decisive battle' instead, then people would rarely (if ever) accept the actual negative consequence. The game then becomes boring and predictable.

The nature and probability space of these negative outcomes and should be changed depending on the game or group, but they:

A.) Have to be discussed ahead of time. Otherwise you have an argument.

B.) Have to be stuck with after they happen. Otherwise you have a Monty Haul game at best and a game-breaking argument at worse.

[zugschef]

i see your point. there are different situations, though, where you realize that a particular (house)rule had a bad effect on the game, and it's just better to either change/remove it or stop playing.

pc death is not the only possible reason for a disappointing game experience.

[ishy]

If it is a gamebreaker then you can make a quick rule at the table to do it different. (say you have a flask rogue with 14 attacks, who has to roll 10 damage dice per attack, for a total of ~150 dice; you might want to use some kind of average damage then).

But if it doesn't break the game in half then you probably should run it as everyone thought it was supposed to go and discuss it after the game with everyone.

Say for example you are a DM who thinks evasion shouldn't work on firebals because of "RAELIZARM", if you change the rules right at that point, people won't object as much because they feel the DM is always right. Or because they don't want to have an argument at that point and just game. etc.

[Lago PARANOIA]

i see your point. there are different situations, though, where you realize that a particular (house)rule had a bad effect on the game, and it's just better to either change/remove it or stop playing.

I maintain that there's there's a difference between someone wanting a rules fudge or on-the-spot houserule because the outcome was totally unexpected and/or they grew to like it less over time or because the outcome was plausible and they just didn't want to suffer the consequences.

The former I'm willing to have a frank discussion about, the latter I'm a lot more skeptical about. I go from being skeptical to hostile when people wait to renegotiate an agreement when their leverage is at its strongest. Going back to the death thing, if someone wants to renegotiate the default assumptions of death during the game well-before someone dies or well-after someone dies... I won't be happy, but I'm willing to discuss it? If you want to change how death works after a random mook scores a lucky crit with a scythe? Then fuck you.

Here's an analogy: Someone asking to reduce the rent payout of hotel'd properties in Monopoly before the game starts? Fine. Someone asking to reduce the rent payout of hotel'd properties in Monopoly after a game in which three people landed on Boardwalk ends? Fine. Someone asking to reduce the rent payout of hotel'd properties after the first purchase of Connecticut Avenue was made? I wouldn't be HAPPY but if enough people wanted to do it I'd be willing to debate it.

But asking to change the payout of hotel'd properties after someone lands on a Hotel'd Park Place? Fuck you. That is shit that happens when you have five-year olds at the table. Just the group being willing to entertain a discussion at that point reduces my respect for them and my ability to want to play with them. I don't want to pause the game in progress to have an argument about how the game should go every time someone gets hit with an outcome they really don't like. And I especially don't want to be thinking 'oh boy, is someone going to filibuster the game if something bad happens to them' any time the specter of a negative consequence pops up. Even before we get into a debate about whether and how much do cheat codes ruin the gaming experience, that kind of fuckery completely kills the tension independent of how easy the game is.

[zugschef]

ok, i agree with that completely.

[Fuchs]

Newsflash: D&D is a cooperative game. Not like Monopoly.

Also, for the social-challenged: If a cooperative game has outcomes players dislike, it should be changed. The best game is one where you have fun all the time, not some times.

[Dean]

Games like this have to have a way to enforce negative consequences. People don't particularly like blowing a random treasure roll or getting hit with disfiguring diseases or failing war strategy rolls -- but they agree to them anyway. If you gave players the opportunity to declare that 'no, I really did roll for a Holy Avenger' or 'My army really did crush the evil Empire in a decisive battle' instead, then people would rarely (if ever) accept the actual negative consequence. The game then becomes boring and predictable.

What the fuck is this??? "Death needs to exist because if it didn't no one would agree to fail a Decipher Script roll again". What the fuck? First of all, Slippery Slope fallacy, so right of the bat this is uncool. Second of all there is no connection between these two statements as there are already deathless games which exist and I've never heard anyone say that their Champions group forcibly ejected their DM to group fellate each other. I might be misunderstanding your position, and if I am feel free to clarify, but if you wanna push a pro-death position don't do it through chicanery.

[Foxwarrior]

Fuchs: Mass Effect 3 Multiplayer should definitely qualify as both cooperative, and a game. In it, you can get a TPK and be disappointed. However, getting TPKs on the harder difficulties does in fact make victory that much sweeter when you get better at the game. Therefore, I would strongly disagree with your assertion that "The best game is one where you have fun all the time, not some times."

...Unless you'd say that I enjoy losing in ME3? Hmm, maybe I do. That's only partially an attribute of the game though; would you be in favor of changing the player's opinions sometimes instead?