The Difficulty in RPGs thread

[zugschef]

what is actually the point of this thread?

[Kaelik]

Mistborn wants to insult everyone for taking it easy on their players, but he is a dumb shit for doing so.

[zugschef]

Mistborn wants to insult everyone for taking it easy on their players, but he is a dumb shit for doing so.

so you're supposed to murder your players until... what point actually?

[Username17]

so you're supposed to murder your players until... what point actually?

Until the players don't die. Look, it's fucking regrettable when you kill beloved player characters, but it's way more destructive to the game to destroy the suspension of disbelief and feeling of danger for the players.

Back in the 90s, I once sent an enemy against the players in a Champions game who was a multi-armed swordsman. Several linked killing attacks. I thought that one character had a lot more resistant defense than he actually did and those swords just ripped him to pieces. That was unfortunate. It was poor planning on my part.

But you know what killed that game? Me as GM trying to retcon the event away to keep the character alive. That just killed everyone's enjoyment and the game collapsed utterly. Never again.

Showing the net is worse than killing characters. By a lot. If you fuck up and TPK the players by throwing in enemies that are too hard, that's unfortunate. But if you show the players that there's no real danger by declaring take backsies at that point, you've ruined the game for good.

-Username17

[Kaelik]

Mistborn wants to insult everyone for taking it easy on their players, but he is a dumb shit for doing so.

so you're supposed to murder your players until... what point actually?

The problem is that there are sane positions on balancing difficulty vs not ruining the game.

But where the sane position is to balance your opposition against your enemies, Mistborn's position is that I should use Ice Devils the same way I would in a Tome game in a regular game to TPK over and over until the players learn to play at the highest possible optimization level.

That is dumb, because it is perfectly valid to play at lower optimization levels, so if they aren't DMM Persist Clerics, Conjurers with abrupt Jaunt and the best spells, and Druids that is okay, and I can scale the opposition down instead.

But Mistborn wants me to make up the list of challenges and decide how to play them to their best before I see the PCs, and then if the PCs don't meet the standard I have set, then I just TPK the party as punishment.

Because that will be "Objective Difficulty" which is better for the game because...

And that is where Mistborn drops off. He doesn't have a good reason why punishing players who don't or can't optimize to the full extent that I build the encounters to is a good thing. It doesn't make the game more fun, and it doesn't seem to be worth destroying several games for the different but not better playstyle that can sometimes be created by being so aggressive.

[Mistborn]

The problem is that there are sane positions on balancing difficulty vs not ruining the game.

But where the sane position is to balance your opposition against your enemies, Mistborn's position is that I should use Ice Devils the same way I would in a Tome game in a regular game to TPK over and over until the players learn to play at the highest possible optimization level.

That is dumb, because it is perfectly valid to play at lower optimization levels, so if they aren't DMM Persist Clerics, Conjurers with abrupt Jaunt and the best spells, and Druids that is okay, and I can scale the opposition down instead.

But Mistborn wants me to make up the list of challenges and decide how to play them to their best before I see the PCs, and then if the PCs don't meet the standard I have set, then I just TPK the party as punishment.

No that's not what I'm saying. I never said that you shouldn't scale the real difficulty of your encounters up or down to the parties level. I'm saying the we can determine that an encounter has a real difficulty level which can be less or more difficult. Which is a thing you admit is true.

[Kaelik]

No that's not what I'm saying. I never said that you shouldn't scale the real difficulty of your encounters up or down to the parties level. I'm saying the we can determine that an encounter has a real difficulty level which can be less or more difficult. Which is a thing you admit is true.

This is you in the OP:

Any scenario where all the scenery, treasure, monsters and the general tactics for those monsters have all been generated before the players begin to interact with it has an objective difficulty. . . . The fact the most gamers, most of the Den apparently play with spineless MCs that have challenges that might beat the players, immediately nerfed to triviality does not in any way make the potential for objective difficulty not a thing. In fact objective difficulty is what allows player agency to exist.

You said exactly that. You decided to begin this thread of accusing anyone who adapts encounters to the players not playing up to a standard set up beforehand as being spineless and nerfing to triviality and depriving players of their agency.

You are explicitly saying that choosing to not force the players to meet up to some arbitrary predetermined level of difficulty is bad for the game.

[Desdan_Mervolam]

Frank: You were running a Superhero game which fizzled because you... brought someone back from the dead? Wat? That has to be the genre that would most easily survive retconning away death because it happens all the time in the source material.

[MGuy]

Frank: You were running a Superhero game which fizzled because you... brought someone back from the dead? Wat? That has to be the genre that would most easily survive retconning away death because it happens all the time in the source material.

It is bullshit when they do it in comics and it is MORE bullshit when you do it in a game.

[CapnTthePirateG]

Really?

[PhoneLobster]

I'm pretty fucking confident that if the players don't want a do-over for their long running game when there is a freak one roll TPK event as described by Mistborn then the problem isn't their dedication to "Dice Honor" or "Frank's insanely fragile suspension of disbelief he only ever seems to have when he doesn't have anything real to say about something".

They generally only say "fuck it let the dice fall where they may lets write up new characters" when they just plain AREN'T enjoying the game ANYWAY. Which is a problem largely irrelevant to the discussion but likely to be mistaken for it by say, the infamously terrible 15ish year old GMs which is what... about the age Frank must have been during any super hero game he was running back in the 90s?

And hell his example doesn't even gel, it's one damn PC death. ONE that shouldn't be a game ender whether he lets it happen OR NOT. The example Mistoborn gave us was fudging a freak single roll TPK. That is a definitive game ender, and an almost cartoonishly bad one. You don't GET to pull out "but it ruins the immersion" on it. Its a god damn single roll freak TPK.

Immersion is already ruined, in fact Immersion is OVER, the GAME is over, the story is OVER, in the most jarring and incongruous possible way, it is for Immersion purposes "Rocks Fall You All Die". And the only thing anything you try at that point can POSSIBLE do to immersion is revive some portion of it. Walking away and saying "well, can't win them all! This way is Best!" is some sort of well... its that Elensar thing...

[Username17]

Frank: You were running a Superhero game which fizzled because you... brought someone back from the dead? Wat? That has to be the genre that would most easily survive retconning away death because it happens all the time in the source material.

It fizzled because I tried to declare take backsies and undo the die rolls. That killed it for everyone. The game literally just came to a stop because people didn't really want to play anymore if things didn't go forward.

Yeah, I probably could have let the dice fall where they were, let the character die, and then have the other characters defeat the villain. Then maybe in moving forward we could have a new person wear the suit, or have a complicated piece of nanite bullshit revive the character, or bring him back as a zombie or a ghost, or whatever. Moving forward there are lots of ways to bring a hero back in a comic book world and I should have used one of them.

Instead, I tried to edit the event just after I realized the math error I had made when designing the enemy. And doing that was a no-go. You can't show the players that you're discounting die results that you don't like, even when it's in the players' favor. It kills the feeling of meaning for every die roll in the game. Which is a lot of die rolls actually. It can ruin the entire game. I've seen it ruin the entire game. From both sides of the MC screen.

If you error and put in opposition that kills the players, that's on you. That is an error on your part as MC. But you have to own up to it and move forward from that death or you cause irreparable harm to the game.

-Username17

[Lago PARANOIA]

If you error and put in opposition that kills the players, that's on you. That is an error on your part as MC. But you have to own up to it and move forward from that death or you cause irreparable harm to the game.

Oh, I totally agree with this, but what's your response to all of the people saying 'but derailing the story or dropping a bridge on my character would've made it even worse than having the net revealed'? Seems like people are just arguing by assertion.

[Username17]

If you error and put in opposition that kills the players, that's on you. That is an error on your part as MC. But you have to own up to it and move forward from that death or you cause irreparable harm to the game.

Oh, I totally agree with this, but what's your response to all of the people saying 'but derailing the story or dropping a bridge on my character would've made it even worse than having the net revealed'? Seems like people are just arguing by assertion.

My personal experience is that you can in fact pick up from the death of a character or the entire party. The story moves forward. Players either make new characters or there's an excuse to have the characters brought back from the dead at a later date and then you continue the story from the point where the enemies have in fact already won. That works. It's a thing. It's often not ideal, but it works.

But showing the players that there's no actual chance of failure is game ruining. There is no going forward from that, because the players have seen that their actions and die rolls don't matter.

-Username17

[Fuchs]

so you're supposed to murder your players until... what point actually?

Until the players don't die. Look, it's fucking regrettable when you kill beloved player characters, but it's way more destructive to the game to destroy the suspension of disbelief and feeling of danger for the players.

Back in the 90s, I once sent an enemy against the players in a Champions game who was a multi-armed swordsman. Several linked killing attacks. I thought that one character had a lot more resistant defense than he actually did and those swords just ripped him to pieces. That was unfortunate. It was poor planning on my part.

But you know what killed that game? Me as GM trying to retcon the event away to keep the character alive. That just killed everyone's enjoyment and the game collapsed utterly. Never again.

Showing the net is worse than killing characters. By a lot. If you fuck up and TPK the players by throwing in enemies that are too hard, that's unfortunate. But if you show the players that there's no real danger by declaring take backsies at that point, you've ruined the game for good.

-Username17

There is no "real danger". It's a game. There's a fight, and the player character lost. The player knows he lost, even if the fight is retconned/fudged to keep the character alive. It still stings as much as it would have, there's just not the added humiliation/bother to make a new character. If you demolish someone in Star Craft, but then, shortly before killing their last unit, pull back and call it a draw, then no one is fooled. No one thinks there was a safety net - everyone knows that the fight was won by you.

Don't know how it works for you, but where I come from, I don't make others pay for my mistakes. If as a GM I fuck up, I straighten it out. I don't punish my players by making them make new characters.

Finally, "irreparable harm" for resurrecting/saving a character through deus ex machina/fate intervention/cheap tricks? In a superhero game? What kind of dimwits were you playing with? That's a superhero trope.[/i]

[Fuchs]

Instead, I tried to edit the event just after I realized the math error I had made when designing the enemy. And doing that was a no-go. You can't show the players that you're discounting die results that you don't like, even when it's in the players' favor. It kills the feeling of meaning for every die roll in the game. Which is a lot of die rolls actually. It can ruin the entire game. I've seen it ruin the entire game. From both sides of the MC screen.

If you error and put in opposition that kills the players, that's on you. That is an error on your part as MC. But you have to own up to it and move forward from that death or you cause irreparable harm to the game.

-Username17

When one GM fucked up once and tried to make it stick we retconned the whole adventure by ignoring it. There was no harm done to the game at all, we continued the campaign with the other GMs for years. When we didn't that in another game and let some stupid pvp scene stand it did ruin the game because the trust of the players who met to have a good time, not to stab each other in the back and plot to remove characters or their toys from the game behind people's back was broken.

In short, if a GM fucks up I expect him to fix it or I walk. Like when a bug wipes a raid in a MMOG I expect a GM to fix it, not ignore it and tell me to redo it.

[Red_Rob]

Finally, "irreparable harm" for resurrecting/saving a character through deus ex machina/fate intervention/cheap tricks? In a superhero game? What kind of dimwits were you playing with? That's a superhero trope.[/i]

No.

Read what Frank said. He rolled some dice, told the player how much damage he took, and the player said "I can't take that, I'm dead." Then Frank realised that the bad guy had stats way too high and tried to ret con the rolls made. At this point people realised that when the dice were rolled, it didn't really matter, because they could be taken back if they dictated something that wasn't conducive to the "story".

It wasn't anything in game. In game resurrection is fine, use of in game abilities like Hero points is fine, because the players know about these before hand. When rolls change from high to low if they would say things the DM doesn't like, then there isn't really a point in rolling them. So you might as well just do cooperative storytelling rather than take all that time writing character sheets and learning rules systems.

[PhoneLobster]

I up front tell players I will never kill their characters regardless of circumstances unless THEY approve it. In my own rules I write them from the ground up with that in mind. I extend this to "very bad things" happening to them too.

And you know what? I have an awesome reputation as an awesome GM who runs awesome games. I do not get complaints.

Seems sensible in a co-operative story telling game in the general form of DND to actually HAVE an explicit policy where you do not go randomly executing the characters of players limited to one character a piece in the co-operative story game.

Those few who want to do the "defeat has consequences" thing do. Those that don't don't. And having actually OFFERED the option. Openly, exposed "the net" explicitly, I have not only not had problems, I have observed that just short of nobody ever picks "Yay TPK!" and with minimal finesse doing something, anything other than that has great benefits. Hell basically nobody ever picks "Ok my character is dead now!", they occasionally demand a scar. That is seriously it. Except that one grass is greener guy who just wants a new character at every opportunity.

And as to the question as to "what kind of guys was Frank playing with that thought they wanted that in a Supers game?". Probably 15 year old guys. This was in the 90's. He is seriously basing this on that sort of thing.

[hogarth]

If you error and put in opposition that kills the players, that's on you. That is an error on your part as MC. But you have to own up to it and move forward from that death or you cause irreparable harm to the game.

As a player, I have absolutely no problem with the GM taking a mulligan in the case of a genuine mistake. In fact, I have nothing but bad experiences with the opposite approach where the party has to suck up the unfair encounter and deal with the shitty consequences.

[Fuchs]

I up front tell players I will never kill their characters regardless of circumstances unless THEY approve it. In my own rules I write them from the ground up with that in mind. I extend this to "very bad things" happening to them too.

Same here. No complaints either since the 90s.

[Fuchs]

Finally, "irreparable harm" for resurrecting/saving a character through deus ex machina/fate intervention/cheap tricks? In a superhero game? What kind of dimwits were you playing with? That's a superhero trope.[/i]

No.

Read what Frank said. He rolled some dice, told the player how much damage he took, and the player said "I can't take that, I'm dead." Then Frank realised that the bad guy had stats way too high and tried to ret con the rolls made. At this point people realised that when the dice were rolled, it didn't really matter, because they could be taken back if they dictated something that wasn't conducive to the "story".

"Ooops, guys... I made a mistake. I accidentally doubled my monster's damage. Sorry, but I'll not change that. Make new characters. Otherwise dice would not matter."

"It's ok, GM. Next time I'll forget my character's stats too and double them by mistake, since stats don't matter."

It's not retconning the dice rolls, it's retconning mistaken stats to use the correct amounts. I'd say not retconning such a mistake is more likely to damage a game irreparably since it sedns a message that rules don't matter.

[ishy]

I up front tell players I will never kill their characters regardless of circumstances unless THEY approve it. In my own rules I write them from the ground up with that in mind. I extend this to "very bad things" happening to them too.

Same here. No complaints either since the 90s.

There is a huge difference between lying to your players and telling them before the game starts what rules you play by.

[Lago PARANOIA]

From what I see in this thread, I think that every table in existence should open up with a frank discussion on their expectations of player death and TPKs and GM dice fudging before the game ever starts.

I have no problem with waiving the rules of the game either as a player or DM, but that needs to be hammered out before the game begins. I hate being surprised or having my expectation broken in the middle of a game when some player or DM asks at the moment of truth if it's okay to turn the cheat codes on. THAT breaks my immersion and ruins the game even more for me than the DM straight-up telling people that the game has a safety net and everyone can be expected to survive the campaign given common sense actions no matter what the RNG says.

[violence in the media]

"Ooops, guys... I made a mistake. I accidentally doubled my monster's damage. Sorry, but I'll not change that. Make new characters. Otherwise dice would not matter."

"It's ok, GM. Next time I'll forget my character's stats too and double them by mistake, since stats don't matter."

It's not retconning the dice rolls, it's retconning mistaken stats to use the correct amounts. I'd say not retconning such a mistake is more likely to damage a game irreparably since it sedns a message that rules don't matter.

Were Frank's stats actually mistaken or was it a legal-but-unwitting murder machine? Was it exactly as he said, and one PC wasn't as tough as he thought they were? It's one thing to be dyslexic and read +24 damage as +42 damage, it's another thing to put something together by the rules that turns into the Ruiner of Worlds or that winds up being the bane of a particular PC.

I'm with you on fixing the math error situation. You added wrong or transcribed a number backwards--that shit happens. But if you're playing oWoD (for example) and discover after rolling 7 aggravated damage that the PC in question doesn't have Fortitude.... What are the players that actually invested character resources in Fortitude supposed to think if you just undo that?

[infected slut princess]

The people talking about the necessity of DMs following through with character death, or people complaining about the same thing, are completely missing the point.

The players are supposed to "win". The DM is supposed to set up challenges so that the players will win. Some will be more or less difficult, but overall the players should emerge victorious at the end of the tale.

So once again, it comes down to relative challenges and not objective ones.

So what are you comparing when you talk about relative challenges?

Encounter X is relatively less difficult for This Party, because it is all wizards and clerics. Encounter X is relatively more difficult for That Party, because it is all Fighters. But clearly there is something in Encounter X that we can talk about meaningfully when it comes to difficulty. Something separate from the individual DM running a game, and something different from the specific party facing the encounter.

Difficulty Skeptics who are attempting to explain why there is a difficulty difference when stuff is relatively different, are actually betraying the utter vacuity of their own argument.

What the Difficulty Deniers must account for his how we can talk about difficulty in different RPG situations with a shared meaning. Because that is something even the Difficulty Deniers do, and it is not just meaningless babble when they do that.

How is this possible? Because when we talk about a given situation in an RPG game, we presuppose a practical understanding that is made possible by a commonality we share. The commonality is the game's rules and the roles of the antagonists.

When the DM introduces a bad guy to the game, the bad guy has a role. Since it's a BAD guy, that role is to defeat the PCs. The DM himself is not trying to defeat the PCs, but he is roleplaying a character who has that as a goal.

Now the assumption must be that the ideal role of the NPC or monster stays the same from DM to DM. Different DM's may approximate that role to a greater or lesser extent. It's this from which the difficulty level emerges -- the rules and the roles.

The antagonists are roleplayed by the DM, and the DM is supposed to embody their roles as well as possible. Just like the players are supposed to be consistent with their character's roles, the DM's choices are supposed to be consistent with his characters' roles.

That's why it is meaningful to design a game and say "this monster is more challenging than this monster." Because you assume the monster's role will be portrayed within a reasonable range of interpretation. So while there may not quite be "objective" difficulty, there is certainly an intersubjectively valid difficulty. Which is fine when you are dealing with RPGs run by humans.

So when Mordax the Devil Tyrant refrains from using his most effective attacks to destroy his mortal enemies, the PCs, we would probably say Mordax was "poorly roleplayed" and so easier than otherwise. But easier than what exactly? Easier than a Mordax Devil Tyrant roleplayed well. The same as we would say the Mordax fight where the DM forgot all the Devil Tyrant special rules is easier than one in which the DM remembered how they worked.

So then, it is possible to talk about RPG difficulty in a rational way, and all without shitting one's pants about merciless killer DM's justifying their rather bad game style.