Mechanics that disappoint you in every conceivable manner

[K]

Frankly, I don't think it's really practical to create a table top deterministic game. It works in computer games because you can look up all the stats and run your comparisons yourself. But in a table top game, having to constantly ask a real person "What's that orc's armor rating? What about that one?" would slow the game to a fucking crawl. Letting the petty variations pop out organically from die rolls is simply faster.

I think you've forgotten what it's like to play with people. In DnD, people are constantly asking about the monster's AC. They ask which monster has a spell effect on it. They ask which one was tripped. They ask which one had the poisoned blade. They ask about motherfucking HPs after every attack. They ask which one was the Wizard. Lots and lots of asking.

Dice-rolling takes a lot of time in order to produce occasionally absurd results, results that the majority of gamers can't even calculate in order to make informed decisions. That's poor design.

[zugschef]

Even actual DnD-branded video games have a spotty history of using rolls. Very often you get the best dialogue option because you have a high CHA or something and not because of a roll.

Isn't that the key, though? You don't ditch the rng completely, you simply don't use it for everything.

[Username17]

I am well aware that keeping track of fiddly details is basically beyond lots of players. That is, for example, one of the major reasons that 4th edition D&D slows to a fucking crawl so often. "Which one has the astral seal on it?" they might ask. Followed right after with a question about whether the Astral Seal stacks with some bonus they get from something else.

But here's the thing: that's an argument for less modifiers before the die roll. It is not an argument for replacing the die roll with more modifiers. For a deterministic system to replicate the outputs of even a d6 damage roll, it has to support enough modifiers to give six potential outputs. That's fine for a computer to automatically track, but it would be a righteous pain for a tabletop game where someone has to ask what's up with each modifier before it gets applied.

-Username17

[K]

Even actual DnD-branded video games have a spotty history of using rolls. Very often you get the best dialogue option because you have a high CHA or something and not because of a roll.

Isn't that the key, though? You don't ditch the rng completely, you simply don't use it for everything.

I think it's pretty telling that video games that could handle lots of dice rolls have chosen to minimize those things.

Games like Final Fantasy XI mostly uses randomness to make the hundreds of damage numbers per combat more interesting to look at while keeping the actual numbers within a few percentage of the base. In that game, the randomness is almost entirely cosmetic since even a string of lucky hits is rarely more than one or two fewer hits out of a hundred.

That's an argument that I could buy since seeing a stream of hundreds of the same numbers is boring, but it leads me to ask "why do a stream of hundreds of numbers in the first place?"

The end result a designer is looking for is to make an interesting combat system, and that doesn't come with any additional conditions like "most interesting combat system using dice" or "most interesting combat system that make armchair swordsmen happy" or "most interesting use of props in a combat game."

In general, things like timewasters and failure points are to be avoided because they make a less interesting system. I mean, DnD could use a random number generator that consisted of bouncing quarters into a shotglass of whiskey and drinking when you hit, but I'm going to argue that the extra bit of interesting is not worth the failure points and the time-wasting.

Is your game more interesting if skilled people have a run of bad luck and die to easy monsters? Is your game more fun if master mountain-climbers occasionally fall while climbing knotted ropes? Is it fun to roll and count dice when you could be playing instead?

Some people will answer "yes" to those questions for a variety of reasons, but I won't.

[K]

... For a deterministic system to replicate the outputs of even a d6 damage roll...

Why should anyone do that?

Simulating random outputs with a deterministic system seems a recipe for failure.

Or are you trying to say that six interesting options open up with every d6 roll and a deterministic system has to be held to that standard? If so, I'm calling shenanigans.

[zugschef]

Isn't combat with a deterministic system extremely predictable?

[Cyberzombie]

Dice-rolling takes a lot of time in order to produce occasionally absurd results, results that the majority of gamers can't even calculate in order to make informed decisions. That's poor design.

In D&D, it's not the dice rolling that slows the game down, it's the long decision making process of some PCs. There's a lot more thinking in chess/checkers/Go than there is in dice games. Removing the dice makes the players choices even more important, so you can expect people will take more time to think about them if it means the difference between hitting and missing. A no-RNG RPG would have very slow combats.

If you want to speed up RPGs, you want to remove the miniatures elements, counting squares and measuring lines of cover and that crap. You also want to cut down the number of numerical bonuses you get from a variety of sources. You also want to cut down on the number of choices of stuff to do in combat. It's fine to offer a few distinctly different effects, but you don't want a mix of similar nuanced abilities.

That being said, it's fine if you want to remove some extraneous die rolls. Current RPG design is a little slanted right now towards the roll for everything mentality. Swimming/climbing/jumping proficiency should just eliminate the need for a check altogether. Crafting should be a simple matter of spending time and resources to make something, you don't need a roll.

[Starmaker]

Isn't combat with a deterministic system extremely predictable?

It's predictable to the extent that you're able to make completely informed decisions. Abstractly speaking, each combat is an exponentially exploding choose-your-own-adventure flowchart tree. Setting up a combat scenario where a party of characters with fixed abilities battle a group of monsters with fixed abilities on fixed terrain is equivalent to offering the party a choice out of a number of possible outcomes (which is little-o smaller than the number of all possible outcomes, provided the MC aims to cause maximum harm to the party). In a very simple and easily solvable scenario, you're looking at:
(1)kill the cleric first, everyone gets hit by a fireball and loses 5 hp
(2)kill the wizard first, one of your party members gets cursed
(3)kill the fighter first, get both the fireball and the curse
(4)stand around scratching your ass and just lose

However, you don't actually possess perfect information on the MC's decision-making process, nor the MC on yours, and you don't have control over the other players' actions, and you might not have the time to chart the whole tree. So, like in chess, you're left to pick a general strategy and try the steer the game in that direction.

[silva]

I agree with Cyberzombie, but I dont think "current rpg design" is that a meaningful descriptor, because it involve a whole lot of variance in ideas and concepts, including games with extraneous rolls and not extraneous rolls.

Is your game more interesting if skilled people have a run of bad luck and die to easy monsters? Is your game more fun if master mountain-climbers occasionally fall while climbing knotted ropes? Is it fun to roll and count dice when you could be playing instead?

This. Totally this.

Thats why Im leaning more and more to "color" -based rules lately instead of math-based ones. When I sit down to play, I wanna play, not count dice and do math.

By the way, how that stealth card-based game fared ? "Dark" I think was its name. It looked like the exact kind of deterministic game we are talking about here.

[Cyberzombie]

I agree with Cyberzombie, but I dont think "current rpg design" is that a meaningful descriptor, because it involve a whole lot of variance in ideas and concepts, including games with extraneous rolls and not extraneous rolls.

By current RPG design, I'm talking about the mainstream RPGs, mostly D&D and Shadowrun, since those are the two big ones right now. And really all of those have extraneous rolls. Obviously Shadowrun is the bigger offender in that category, but D&D's skill system requires a bunch of rolls for things that really shouldn't require rolls.

[silva]

Well, your definition of "current rpg design" feels incredibly narrow to me, cause it leave out such popular new games like Fate Core, Savage Worlds, Numenera, Apocalypse/Dungeon World, Marvel Heroic Roleplaying, Star Wars EotE, The One Ring, 13th Age, Icons, etc.

I think "current trad design" would be a better label for what you seems to be describing. Even then it sounds a little weird, because the games you cite - D&D and Shadowrun - are grounded on 90s design, which makes your "current" design practically identical to that of two decades ago.

[Username17]

By current RPG design, I'm talking about the mainstream RPGs, mostly D&D and Shadowrun, since those are the two big ones right now.

Not even close. The top five games for fall of 2013 were:

1. Pathfinder
2. Star Wars Weird Dice from FFG
3. Fate Core
4. WotC D&D Variants
5. Iron Kingdoms

Basically, D&D, more D&D, and various licensed crap. If you go back a few months, Fate Core drops out, but it isn't replaced by Shadowrun. It's replaced by Dark Heresy. Shadowrun doesn't rate the top two, it doesn't rate the top five. I don't know if it makes the top ten. Shadowrun has been a contender at various times... but it isn't anymore. Shadowrun didn't make the top five sales lists when 5th edition literally came out. Shadowrun is a niche game and has been at least since 2009. When 4th edition was coming out with regular product, Shadowrun could be claimed to be a major RPG with a straight face, when the release schedule fell apart, that was simply no longer true and the line has never recovered its market share.

In D&D, it's not the dice rolling that slows the game down, it's the long decision making process of some PCs. There's a lot more thinking in chess/checkers/Go than there is in dice games. Removing the dice makes the players choices even more important, so you can expect people will take more time to think about them if it means the difference between hitting and missing. A no-RNG RPG would have very slow combats.

This I do agree with. The more portentous a choice, the longer people will spend agonizing over it. Lost Worlds (or Queen's Blade if you prefer the soft core porn version) has about as simple a resolution system as a deterministic system can get: you say a number and then cross reference the number your opponent said with the number you said. Combats take over ten minutes to resolve duels.

-Username17

[zugschef]

However, you don't actually possess perfect information on the MC's decision-making process, nor the MC on yours, and you don't have control over the other players' actions, and you might not have the time to chart the whole tree. So, like in chess, you're left to pick a general strategy and try the steer the game in that direction.

The problem that I see with that approach is that TTRPG combat cannot be like chess, unless all you want is a combat simulator -- but that's taking the RPG out of TTRPGs. Chess is a game where the initial chance to win is 50/50. If DnD combat worked like that, even though there are mostly three to five times as many PCs as MCs, the PCs would TPK almost guaranteed after four battles (which means the very first adventuring day).

[edit] Also, chess takes fuckin' hours; with a clock holding players to 60 seconds a turn, that is. TTRPGs are way more complex than chess, so good luck with building a fast enough combat engine.

Now your goal as a designer is to make the game exciting, and mostly in an TTRPG, that means that there has to be a chance that your character dies or even that your party wipes. Adding +1 on a d20 is a 5% increase of your chance to succeed on a given task. I expect that a deterministic system will be way more complex and unpredictable in combat, because we're fuckin' humans, than figuring out some numbers, unless you simplify the system to a degree where you know the outcome before the battle music even starts to play.

I think it's probably doable and possibly desirable out of combat, but in combat you'll face unmanagable complexity or dull simplicity with a deterministic action resolution.

[K]

Isn't combat with a deterministic system extremely predictable?

I wouldn't call Chess or Rock, Paper, Scissors predictable, yet their results are entirely deterministic.

The question comes down to how you set up the system. Do you make it skill-based like Chess, or do you make the results unpredictable like Rock, Paper, Scissors?

For a combat system without dice for an RPG, you'd lean away from the skill-based part because that tends to lead to people spending lots of time planning their move.

To make it more interesting than RPS, you'd just add interesting mechanics. Maybe the enemy revealing an ability opens up options to counter that ability, like gaze attacks opening up the option to bounce those attacks back at the monster. Maybe certain moves change the tactical landscape and open up new options, like a Earthquake Stomp power putting a crevasse in the ground that people can now be pushed into. Maybe moves set up other moves, like three Mind powers used on a monster open up a monster to mind control magic.

Ideally, you'd want people to act and react on the limited circumstances of the current turn and not really be able to chessmaster out the next three or more turns because the tactical situation may look entirely different in the next few turns.

[Username17]

The question comes down to how you set up the system. Do you make it skill-based like Chess, or do you make the results unpredictable like Rock, Paper, Scissors?

The answer of course, obviously, is neither. For a table top RPG, the core requirement is that the game be playable over and over again for months or years of campaigning. Iterative probability is kind of a bitch, and you need things to be heavily stacked in the favor of the PCs. So having the game require lots of skill or produce swingy results is basically unacceptable.

The purpose of the system is more than anything to obfuscate how grossly in the favor of the PCs the system actually is. People think that a 5% chance of getting killed in an encounter is too low, but think nothing of having content that unlocks 20, 60, or 100 encounters into the game.

I'm not sure that a game without an RNG can successfully pull off the sleight of hand that is required. If the game is deterministic, it actually becomes quite obvious that all roads lead to victory.

-Username17

[RadiantPhoenix]

IIRC, the math in 3E is that at 10th level, a 5% chance of getting killed in an EL=APL encounter means that, on average, you will remain level 10 forever.

[K]

I'm not sure that a game without an RNG can successfully pull off the sleight of hand that is required. If the game is deterministic, it actually becomes quite obvious that all roads lead to victory.

True, but this issue only matters if you buy into the other mechanic I'm 100% done with: perma-death.

I think that you can have fail conditions in your game that are just as fun as win conditions. For example, Arkham Horror and its permutations are the kind of game where actually winning is like 10% of the fun, and I think that this philosophy would be useful if ported to a RPG.

You can just make a game where players are tactically evenly matched with enemies in battles and people feel threatened as long as losing is as fun as winning. You have to have a mechanic where people don't crumple up their character sheets when they lose a battle, and it has to be completely integrated into your overall system so that it doesn't feel like the MC is cheating on your behalf when used.

Heck, even failing a main quest because you lost a battle could lead to a more compelling narrative if it leads to bigger quests and involved sidequest rewards and complications.

[Drolyt]

I'm not sure that a game without an RNG can successfully pull off the sleight of hand that is required. If the game is deterministic, it actually becomes quite obvious that all roads lead to victory.

True, but this issue only matters if you buy into the other mechanic I'm 100% done with: perma-death.

I think that you can have fail conditions in your game that are just as fun as win conditions. For example, Arkham Horror and its permutations are the kind of game where actually winning is like 10% of the fun, and I think that this philosophy would be useful if ported to a RPG.

You can just make a game where players are tactically evenly matched with enemies in battles and people feel threatened as long as losing is as fun as winning. You have to have a mechanic where people don't crumple up their character sheets when they lose a battle, and it has to be completely integrated into your overall system so that it doesn't feel like the MC is cheating on your behalf when used.

Heck, even failing a main quest because you lost a battle could lead to a more compelling narrative if it leads to bigger quests and involved sidequest rewards and complications.

Permanent death is a real consequence in the real world. Real people risk their lives all the time and so that is a story you want to be able to tell with an RPG. Maybe not all RPGs, but I can't fathom how you can believe that perma-death is bad in general.

[silva]

Im with K here (again). Never saw the logic of perma-death for roleplaying games. You spend an hour creating a character and then another hour resolving a combat scene.... and then you die due to a random die roll and have to spend another hour to create a new character (while rest of the group keep on playing).

What roleplaying games out there already do this ? I mean, dont have perma-death and dice ?

[K]

Permanent death is a real consequence in the real world. Real people risk their lives all the time and so that is a story you want to be able to tell with an RPG. Maybe not all RPGs, but I can't fathom how you can believe that perma-death is bad in general.

Permanent death is not a consequence in stories for characters who are going to appear in sequels. Spider Man never dies. Sherlock Holmes never dies until the series ends. Optimus Prime never dies because he can be resurrected by Marky Mark.

Have you ever noticed that Rogue-lite video games don't have stories? Sure, they sometimes have a little backstory to make the violence seem relevant, but there is no big narrative to them because the fact that you will probably die before you get to do anything interesting is a big killer of stories.

RPG computer games have immortal characters. You are always a saved game away from a new incarnation of the same character. Sometimes you are literally unkillable like in Planescape: Torment.

[Drolyt]

Permanent death is a real consequence in the real world. Real people risk their lives all the time and so that is a story you want to be able to tell with an RPG. Maybe not all RPGs, but I can't fathom how you can believe that perma-death is bad in general.

Permanent death is not a consequence in stories for characters who are going to appear in sequels. Spider Man never dies. Sherlock Holmes never dies until the series ends. Optimus Prime never dies because he can be resurrected by Marky Mark.

Have you ever noticed that Rogue-lite video games don't have stories? Sure, they sometimes have a little backstory to make the violence seem relevant, but there is no big narrative to them because the fact that you will probably die before you get to do anything interesting is a big killer of stories.

RPG computer games have immortal characters. You are always a saved game away from a new incarnation of the same character. Sometimes you are literally unkillable like in Planescape: Torment.

Spider Man never dies because of the plot, he risks his life all the damn time. Your proposal is for characters to never risk their life, which rules out a large number of stories that your RPG could tell.

[Cyberzombie]

Permanent death is not a consequence in stories for characters who are going to appear in sequels. Spider Man never dies. Sherlock Holmes never dies until the series ends. Optimus Prime never dies because he can be resurrected by Marky Mark.

This may sound odd, but this is one of the reasons I want perma-death. It helps reinforce the idea that this isn't a novel and that anything can happen. I feel like a bit of my player agency is taken away when my decisions can't lead to my own death. That no matter what happens, I will always get brought back. It also makes me feel less of a hero when I know that I'm running around in +10 plot armor.

[K]

Spider Man never dies because of the plot, he risks his life all the damn time. Your proposal is for characters to never risk their life, which rules out a large number of stories that your RPG could tell.

Only the character thinks he's in danger. The audience knows that he can't die because the story won't give him anything he can't handle.

[K]

Permanent death is not a consequence in stories for characters who are going to appear in sequels. Spider Man never dies. Sherlock Holmes never dies until the series ends. Optimus Prime never dies because he can be resurrected by Marky Mark.

This may sound odd, but this is one of the reasons I want perma-death. It helps reinforce the idea that this isn't a novel and that anything can happen. I feel like a bit of my player agency is taken away when my decisions can't lead to my own death. That no matter what happens, I will always get brought back. It also makes me feel less of a hero when I know that I'm running around in +10 plot armor.

Do you also play cRPGs and uninstall the game after the first death?

[Drolyt]

Only the character thinks he's in danger. The audience knows that he can't die because the story won't give him anything he can't handle.

Spider man did die though. It was a big deal and received a lot of marketing. Also, the reason main characters tend not to die is that stories tend to end when they do. RPGs don't have that problem. Edit: Besides, in an RPG you aren't a spectator. You are supposed to be roleplaying that character.

Do you also play cRPGs and uninstall the game after the first death?

The cases are not at all similar. cRPGs simply don't have much replay value, there isn't much point to starting over. TTRPGs have infinite replay value.