What people want and what makes them happy rarely coincide.

[shadzar]

Most think of characters they like to play, taken from books and movies. And not many of those switch weapons and dresses at the drop of a hat.

in case you arent aware, that is where many, including the MMO crowd; still come to TTRPGs. wanting to play out action as if they were a character. they just happen to read more cultured books or see movies other than someone stuck with a single weapon..or stuck up about a single weapon.

they read better stories than those created for MMOs. MMO stories are there jsut a set dressing so you can have the graphics and fights. they are characters only in the lightest sense of the word.

maybe you should look to D&D's roots and find what stories were being used as reference:

gray mouser, conan, LotR, elric, etc etc...

these people were epic character (not epic heroes) because they gave you something as they went on. they weren't one trick ponies you expect to try to do everything the same way.

just accept that some people dont like playing in games, like 4th edition, where all you do is wait for the right time to do your hadoken move.

[A Man In Black]

"Clownsuit: the scavening" is not really what people think of when they hear "Fantasy roleplaying game". Most think of characters they like to play, taken from books and movies. And not many of those switch weapons and dresses at the drop of a hat.

You mention "fantasy roleplaying game" and its associations.

When I think of fantasy roleplaying games, I think of the legions of descendants of Diablo, including the vast majority of fantasy RPGs, and those frequently are Clownsuit: the Scavenging. In fact, many of them involve spending lots of time and effort pursuing new pieces of your clownsuit.

Alternately, I think of Japanese fantasy RPGs, which also have a strong tradition of wearing a (literal or figurative) clownsuit because your appearance is strictly defined by your role, or because you get your powers from your gear or suit of gear, or just because Tetsuya Nomura was the character designer.

[Swordslinger]

"Clownsuit: the scavening" is not really what people think of when they hear "Fantasy roleplaying game". Most think of characters they like to play, taken from books and movies. And not many of those switch weapons and dresses at the drop of a hat.

Yes, pretty much any video game RPG (from ROGUE to Skyrim) has characters get new weapons and items. The original version of D&D (and every version afterwards) expects characters to get new weapons and items.

I have no idea where the "Fantasy RPGs aren't like that" notion comes from. The only people who might be thinking that are people who have never played a FRPG before.

[Josh_Kablack]

Oddly though, Fire Mages are enjoyable all the way through their career. Either it's because setting people on fire will always be fun*, or because their abilities actually do get bigger (set a city on fire) or more varied (make a specific wall of fire to thwart enemy plans, set someone's mind on fire), whereas "I HIT HIM WITH MY SWORD", no matter how many fancy turns you make, is always the same unless you do it like Disgaea.

Then why in the context of your "like Disgaea" game is my choice between taking my character's next level as Monk 2 to enter into Storm Blade earlier and end up with N levels of Storm Blade and taking my character's next level as Snowscaper 5 (delaying my enter into Storm Blade by a level) to end up as a Monk 1 / Snowscaper N with a single dip level of Storm Blade such a difficult choice?

Or, should I accept this thread's premise and trust that I don't know what will make me happy in that game and take my character's next level in a randomly rolled class instead of either of those options? I doubt it, because despite the psychobabble, my direct experience of having rather more than six options every session in that game has not reduced my overall happiness with it.

[hogarth]

I played Basic and 2nd edition with arbitrary random no-trade magic items and spells. The items I ended up getting with various characters could not be planned for, and thus always required me to adapt to them, which was part of all my character concepts because it had to be.

And when I specialised in something dumb like a two-handed sword, I expected to be using non-magic weapons for a very long time, and maybe get a better cut of the other types of treasure because of that, like boots and belts.

You can't want specific magic items if the game doesn't give them to you. Well, you can, on account of you'll bitch forever about it if you don't and your DM has no spine, but you get what I mean.

I don't know what to tell you. I was in a 2E game where one melee character had a Girdle of Hill Giant Strength, another melee character had a pair of Gauntlets of Ogre Power, and the third melee character got squat.

If you had told Guy #3 that he can't want one of those specific magic items because of the rules of the game, he probably would have thought you were mentally retarded.

[Fuchs]

"Clownsuit: the scavening" is not really what people think of when they hear "Fantasy roleplaying game". Most think of characters they like to play, taken from books and movies. And not many of those switch weapons and dresses at the drop of a hat.

You mention "fantasy roleplaying game" and its associations.

When I think of fantasy roleplaying games, I think of the legions of descendants of Diablo, including the vast majority of fantasy RPGs, and those frequently are Clownsuit: the Scavenging. In fact, many of them involve spending lots of time and effort pursuing new pieces of your clownsuit.

There's a reason every new MMOG has an appearance tab or similar mechanic. Even Asian ones like Aion. There's also a reason the games nowadays offer quests with guaranteed rewards and multiple choices, so people can quest for gear they want. And there's a reason modding is so common - people want to play characters that look how they want them to look, not how some game designer or random roll decided.

People ma yscavenge, but they surely don't want to look like they are.

[Koumei]

Alternately, I think of Japanese fantasy RPGs, which also have a strong tradition of wearing a (literal or figurative) clownsuit because your appearance is strictly defined by your role, or because you get your powers from your gear or suit of gear, or just because Tetsuya Nomura was the character designer.

Since when did clowns wear BELT AND ZIPPER?

Josh: clearly you should randomly roll your next level.

[DSMatticus]

my direct experience of having rather more than six options every session in that game has not reduced my overall happiness with it.

Intimate familiarity raises the threshold. You drunk.

[Fuchs]

Also, if we take the silly notion that letting people play what they want makes them unhappy further we arrive at the point where we decide what game we play randomly, since we'd be unhappy when we had to pick a game out of hundreds of options.

Sorry, that does not work that way. People have more fun if they can choose what they play, game or character.

[DSMatticus]

Also, if we take the silly notion that letting people play what they want makes them unhappy further we arrive at the point where we decide what game we play randomly, since we'd be unhappy when we had to pick a game out of hundreds of options.

Sorry, that does not work that way. People have more fun if they can choose what they play, game or character.

Now we are just strawmannin' all up in this joint. Lago and I disagree about a lot of things (everything but WoF, it seems like, though I'm not nearly so fanatical about it and merely prefer it as 'better than Vancian for dealing with shit tons of abilities at once'), but the things you (and a few others) are responding with are bullshit non-responses.

The actual claim is that "people's spoken wants don't always align with their actual interests." That does not mean, "do the opposite of what people say, always." That does not mean, "the only way to determine things is therefore random chance." And it does not mean, "the only way to overcome this problem is arbitrary mechanical hard limits." And the whole spoken wants vs actual interests is totally legitimate. People will beg you to do things that make them unhappy, and this is something anyone who creates anything for some sort of audience should remember and it's pretty well demonstrated.

Now you gave some hyperbolic lol-crazy examples, like "hundreds of games exist! How can anyone be happy with their decision to play any of them?" Well, because they don't choose from giant lists. Choosing a TTRPG, for example, is a really easy task, because people aren't choosing from every TTRPG ever, they're choosing from a short list they have/remember/feel like playing. This is the rough decision process for my group: "Genre: fantasy, cyberpunk, modern, space?" "Game: {1-3 items here}" There are exceptions and shortcuts and sometimes, "ooh, look what I found! Let's try it!" but every decision is really short and easy. Totally consistent with the theory.

My Steam account is actually starting to piss me off, by the way. The list of games has gotten large enough that it is hard for me to parse them. The good news is I get more work done. The bad news is I get more work done.

[PhoneLobster]

The actual claim is that "people's spoken wants don't always align with their actual interests." That does not mean, "do the opposite of what people say, always." That does not mean, "the only way to determine things is therefore random chance."

Except. That is exactly what Frank and Lago have claimed in the WoF thread. The "Where The Fuck Are We?" positioning system. The recent treasure and weapons thread. This thread. And every other WoF spin off thread Lago has spawned.

They really ARE taking the "sometimes people like things they didn't choose!" and using that as a basis to demand that people should never or almost never choose.

The people Frank and Lago went out of their way to demonize as "Katana" fans and "Clown Suit" collectors, for the most part when it came to practical examples only ever really presented ways to mitigate randomly generated materials, or to avoid the draw backs of using randomly generated materials.

And in the Treasure and Weapons thread, where Frank and Lago were rather... struggling... to extend their WoF metaphor in an attempt (AGAIN) to justify it even THEY were, quietly and without open admission slipping in, in their very few references to practical solutions, references to regional and cultural weapons, specific selected entirely non randomized item drops based on the character that drops them, and all the other almost IDENTICAL randomization mitigation mechanics all the people they were criticizing use.

I didn't even bother with the Treasure and Weapon thread itself because it clearly WAS all about hyperbole. Frank and Lago were arguing WoF again and like hell were they going to let a little thing like how they ACTUALLY in practice want to do treasure drops get in the way of accusing ANYONE who likes the idea of having SOME control over their character of being somehow "too stupid to know what they want".

It isn't surprising Fuchs came out of it thinking Lago and Frank DON'T want to do randomization mitigation and don't want players to ever get to pick their gear. Because Frank and Lago seriously ran the hyperbole on that one so damn hard.

And really if I am staying out of a discussion because the hyperbole is too ridiculous then there is so much hyperbole that it is threatening to collapse the entire universe into a singularity.

[Koumei]

I wouldn't mind seeing not how Frank would theoretically do it in a game that doesn't exist, but how he has handled, for instance, treasure and item drops. Or advancement. Or whatever.

Because this is something that has happened, and thus presumably there are records. And IIRC, there are like 3-4 people on this forum (possibly less, given I think Crissa was one of them?) who have played in his games and spoken highly of them. Which suggests that in practice he did something right.

So how he handled it in practice would be worth looking at (given you totally can just use whatever method of handing treasure out without writing a new whole system - it's just that the game might break in one direction or the other - and we'd then be able to use that information as a "don't do this").

Likewise if Lago has in fact done such things in games (and I have no idea if he has, or is only thinking about a theoretical future product) then it'd be great to hear feedback on that. That way, if it boils down to "Okay, so actually it's a bad idea, I didn't do that." then it's out in the open, and if it worked, we get testaments to it having worked (and how it did), and possibly those of us who don't like handing stuff over to random results might shut up.

But not likely.

[Fuchs]

This thread was made because Lago and Frank claim that letting people play a character they want to ploay is a bad thing and letting people have the things they want is somehow making them less happy than refusing them those things in favor of having them play the lottery.

And if I choose a character the list is also very short - I don't have that many character concepts I like to play, not after 20 years of trying them out. All I do when building a character is going through the lists and picking what fits my concept. The idea that I somehow would be happier if my character was even partially chosen at random for me, be it by rolling stats, class or gear, is off-base.

And I gather most players are like me, in that they have a few favored concepts/builds, and know what they want. They might try something new to see if they like it too, but they generally don't like getitng told they have to take something else than what they want.

[Username17]

my direct experience of having rather more than six options every session in that game has not reduced my overall happiness with it.

Intimate familiarity raises the threshold. You drunk.

it's also important to note that "Here's 10 things, you get all of them" is not the same kind of question as "Here's 10 things, pick one." There is very little buyer's remorse after any selection from the list when you actually get everything on the list.

In that way, I would actually suspect that vancian casting (as opposed to preparation) would be more motivating than preparing vancian spells or using a Champions style Multipower. Certainly, my own experience is that people are usually able to handle casting from a D&D magic user's list of prepared spells (where it is analogous to the drinks on the table where you ultimately get everything no matter what your choice is at the moment), and freeze up and default when it comes time to prepare new spells (where it is analogous to the candy store problem, where any selection not made is not gained). My experiences with characters who have medium sized multipowers, large multipowers, and cosmic power pools would seem to bear that out as well.

-Username17

[Fuchs]

I wouldn't mind seeing not how Frank would theoretically do it in a game that doesn't exist, but how he has handled, for instance, treasure and item drops. Or advancement. Or whatever.

What I can say worked well is a mix of loot hand-picked by the DM after considering player preferences, party dynamics and campaign style, and random treasure.

And the baseline is and remains: Give people what they want from a game.

If a player doesn't want to swap weapons all the time something better comes up, I give him a weapon that levels with his character - through various means.

If a character just wnats a certain type of weapon, but doesn't mind changing within those lines, I make sure such weapons are dropped or offered as a reward at fitting points in the campaign.

I also design treasure with the intent to even out imbalances between characters, if if a character build is failing and the player doesn't want to rework the character. (Which is allowed as long as the basic concept remains the same. I if at level 16 you want to swap your 16 barbarian levels to 3 rogue, 5 barbarian and 8 warblade ones since you got ahold of ToB, go ahead and change it, it's no biggie, it's still the same character past the mechanics.)

Once those "core things" are taken care of, random treasure adds variety to the campaign. So players can look forward to surprises, but know they do not have to worry that they will never get anything needed or wanted if those random rolls are going against them.

We don't use wealth by level though.

Best of two worlds.

[ModelCitizen]

Which is what this thread is about. People want something which is very different from what will actually make them happy. The goal of design, then, is to perform sleight of hand so that the people think they are getting what they want, but actually getting what they will enjoy.

The character class example is pretty solid. People want a large number of character classes, but they don't actually enjoy making selections from long lists. What to do? Give them a list of class categories that each contain a manageable list of character classes, and then advertise the high number of total classes to get people into the book. The bait and switch where they end up picking off the Arcanist List that has Wizard, Illusionist, Warlock, Necromancer, and Conjurer won't offend them nearly as much as it would demotivate them to find themselves combing through a list that also had all the rogues (Assassin, Bard, Swashbuckler, Ninja, and Thief) and all the champions (Paladin, Hero, Knight, Warlord, and Baneguard) and so on and so on.

-Username17

Ok, so this is a cynical attempt to trick players into accepting fewer choices. Essentials tried to hide more rigid classes with exactly this kind of meaningless restructuring (more "classes" instead of more builds) and even the fucking 4rries didn't go for it. That should tell you this is a dead end.

[Fuchs]

It's also important to note that "Here's 10 things, you get all of them" is not the same kind of question as "Here's 10 things, pick one." There is very little buyer's remorse after any selection from the list when you actually get everything on the list.

If faced with the three choices (only 3, no option paralysis) "get all you want in a game" "Get some of what you want in a game" and "You might get something you want if you're lucky in this game", I know which option I'd drop like a hot potatoe, and which option I prefer, and which option I could live with.

And I assume most people would make the same choices.

[DSMatticus]

PL, you are taking every idea of their's you don't like and lumping it together in some incoherent blob to target your rage at. WoF and abstract positioning and the recent loot thread are all based on entirely different principles. It is entirely possible to discuss their position on any one of those things without even touching the others. I'd say it's actually difficult to draw any meaningful common ground between them, actually.

You hate WoF so much you are jumping at every metaphorical shadow of its existence, and clutching at straws to find hints of it in everything they say.

They really ARE taking the "sometimes people like things they didn't choose!" and using that as a basis to demand that people should never or almost never choose.

I like that you said this, and then we drop to the bottom of your post and read this:

And really if I am staying out of a discussion because the hyperbole is too ridiculous then there is so much hyperbole that it is threatening to collapse the entire universe into a singularity.

I concur. You are obviously not a man afraid to get his hands dirty with a little excessive hyperbole.

This thread was made because Lago and Frank claim that letting people play a character they want to ploay is a bad thing and letting people have the things they want is somehow making them less happy than refusing them those things in favor of having them play the lottery.

No, this thread exists because they claim "giving people certain things when they ask for them will make them unhappy: also, Lago and Frank happen to think those things are X,Y,Z" and now we're arguing about the X,Y,Z. The part where Lago and Frank say, "giving people certain things when they ask for them will make them unhappy" is totally true and you should not be trying to contest that part. What you should be contesting (and really easily can) is just what you said: that denying people a choice of certain character archetypes does not demonstrably make them happier.

But really, the last time I was in the loot thread that wasn't even the debate. The debate was:

Frank/Lago: I think character archetypes that are associated with a particular brand of weapon suck, so we shouldn't build D&D as a game that facillitates that.
Other people: I don't think that thing you think.
Everyone at everyone else: Fuck you. Conversation that goes nowhere for a few pages. No one is swayed, because ultimately neither side can demonstrate any value beyond personal preference. Lots of related side conversations, like "what about magic items as horizontal advancement (that was me! Shameless plug)?", "what about reforging?" blah blah blah.

I'd seen zero evidence to indicate why this particular choice is one that needs to be limited.

Ok, so this is a cynical attempt to trick players into accepting fewer choices. Essentials tried to hide more rigid classes with exactly this kind of meaningless restructuring (more "classes" instead of more builds) and even the fucking 4rries didn't go for it. That should tell you this is a dead end.

That's just terrible. 4e didn't work because it gave zero choices. Everything is the same. The point of this is to give many choices in a specific structure that minimizes the size of each decision. Which is easier to do? "choose 1 of 4 categories: choose 1 of 5 classes in that category" or "choose 1 of 20 classes." And that's not a trick nor a bait or switch. That's called, "should I be a warrior, sneaker, arcane, or divine?" and it's how most people start 3.5's character creation process.

"get all you want in a game" "Get some of what you want in a game" and "You might get something you want if you're lucky in this game"

That's just silly. That doesn't even mean anything. Also, it's wrong: World of Warcraft is "you might get something you want if you're lucky this quest/event/chest," and it's wildly popular and addictive. So no, you probably don't know which option would have you coming back for more in this wildly generic, meaningless example that wasn't a refutation of anything to begin with.

[Fuchs]

WoW has guaranteed drops as quest rewards. Do the quest, get that loot. It is "Get some you want".

[Username17]

I wouldn't mind seeing not how Frank would theoretically do it in a game that doesn't exist, but how he has handled, for instance, treasure and item drops. Or advancement. Or whatever.

Because this is something that has happened, and thus presumably there are records. And IIRC, there are like 3-4 people on this forum (possibly less, given I think Crissa was one of them?) who have played in his games and spoken highly of them. Which suggests that in practice he did something right.

So how he handled it in practice would be worth looking at (given you totally can just use whatever method of handing treasure out without writing a new whole system - it's just that the game might break in one direction or the other - and we'd then be able to use that information as a "don't do this").

My two longest running games as DM for 3rd edition both used "persistent items" and contained a strong element of randomized loot. Enemy equipment would be drawn up in reference to whatever the enemies actually were, and if the players chose to go after them, they could get whatever those enemies were carrying. If players wanted to look for specific items, they could make Gather Information checks to find where they would be and then barter or fight for them if the party chose to travel there for that purpose.

When items dropped, players could choose amongst themselves who got them or they could decide to hang them on mantle pieces, try to barter them off to other people in the future, or simply destroy them. When "random" enemies were encountered, I would roll dice to determine the strength (and for the Rokugan game, the taint) of items in the enemy possession, and then I would let my imagination run wild as to what those items might be based on what and where the enemies were.

Players ended up with some fairly odd items that caught their fancy, Emma's Pokemaster was running around with an otherworldly ax that caused fear effects based on how windy it was at the time and Miguel's monk-variant (an earlier effort to the Tome Monk) was running around with a Kyton Chain. As for characters who insisted on using specific weaponry, Daiv's Halfling Mongol insisted on using a short bow, on account of that is the only weapon he could use from wolf-back at range, and Spike's Paladin insisted on using a one-handed weapon and a shield, on account of she had that 3e feat chain where you could use your Charisma bonus for the enhancement bonus of your shield and stuff (the 3.5 versions nerfed the shield paladin into a joke, but we weren't using them). Still, the weapon varied tremendously because it wasn't super important. Tracking down short bows wasn't terribly difficult, because it is a common weapon, and only once did they end up having to barter for one from a Goblin tribe.

The point is: having a small list of items that the players have run into in-game that have real history to them in-game and are not simply bonus items off an equipment list in the book is good. People prefer that to being able to buy "anything they want". Because you can't buy "story relevance" or "personal achievement".

People got into real arguments in-character for the Rokugan game about whether it was better to use or destroy tainted items. Rather than simply have a taint number, I went out there and had tainted items do crazy crap to you based on their taint level. And players were always worried about whether strongly or even medium-tainted items would do. If you could melt that shit down for power crystals, that entire portion of the game would have amounted to nothing.

-Username17

[shadzar]

WoW has guaranteed drops as quest rewards. Do the quest, get that loot. It is "Get some you want".

and how many raids do you have to be a part of before YOU get the item?

a mob doesnt drop one item for each person in the raid/zone/building.

[DSMatticus]

WoW has guaranteed drops as quest rewards. Do the quest, get that loot. It is "Get some you want".

No. The vast majority of items people actually want are found as random drops. There are 100% certain ways to get certain items, but most of the time it's a hunt for random shit and seeing how awesome the random shit you get is.

[Username17]

Ok, so this is a cynical attempt to trick players into accepting fewer choices. Essentials tried to hide more rigid classes with exactly this kind of meaningless restructuring (more "classes" instead of more builds) and even the fucking 4rries didn't go for it. That should tell you this is a dead end.

Uh... Essentials went from a format with 8 classes per book to a format with 5 classes per book. So you are objectively wrong.

They tried to make the "builds" more distinct, but they advertised it as "five classes per book", which offended even more people than "eight classes per book" did. It is entirely possible that people would have been more interested if they had advertised the thing as having 10 classes per book instead. Although, the Essentials books also only had 1 build per class per book, so they really were 5 classes per book no matter how they structured it. In a setup where they explicitly told the players that one of them had to play a Leader, providing one build of one Leader class was well below the optimum list length for a character defining choice.

Essentials is a good example of not giving people what they want and also not giving people what would make them happy. You tell them that they are going to get 5 classes to choose from, but then they want to play a Striker and their only choices are Thief and Ranger. I suggest actually looking at Essentials before you start ranting about why it didn't take hold.

-Username17

[Koumei]

Thanks, that sounds a lot less like actual "and now we roll on the AD&D treasure chart!" than previous hyperbole seemed to imply. Yes I know that's the point of hyperbole. So generally people got "Stuff that makes sense for what they were punching in the face", and sometimes "Things that will make you awesome at what you do, but maybe not in the exact way you envisioned it", and if all else fails they can say "I want X", research it, then go and get it with some kind of appropriate adventure.

Essentials is a good example of not giving people what they want and also not giving people what would make them happy.

So you kind of do want to advertise having "roles" (or power sources or whatever), even though it's just so you can break lists down (advertise 20 classes, which people want, then they can go "I pick spell caster from this small list, and then warlock from that sub-list", which makes them happy). I would suggest, then, that it's best to try to give them something that gives them both what they want and what makes them happy, when there is a difference between the two.

[Fuchs]

As long as players get what they want the method does not matter much.