Game Systems: when a disadvantage is not a disadvantage

[rapanui]

Yeah, OK, but special circumstances like that are what would create a need for border patrols and stuff like that in a fantasy game. Indeed there are people in real life dedicated to making sure some of the stuff you described doesn't happen. How successful they are is up for debate.

What I need is either:

a. A good argument as to why I'm in over my head in trying to create a campaign world like that.

OR

b. A neat viable idea for a pre-industrial system of long distance communication and a viable system for mobs of angry peasants being stronger than the sum of their parts.

A good example of peasants kicking the lord's butt is in some old Spanish literature called Fuenteovejuna by Lope de Vega, basically a whole town of peasants storm a keep after a young maiden gets raped by armored and fortified SOB. Then they take his head. It was actualy pretty cool, because then the King has to decide whether or not to execute the whole town for treason against the crown.

Anyhow... enough of my rambling...

[User3]

What if some jerks showed up who had almost (but not quite) unlimited power to take on entire governments on their lonesome? As in, the government could take these folks down, but the conflict would cost tens of millions of lives and would stand a good chance of toppling their own government? Like Superman or Sephiroth.

If Vegeta came up and demanded completely unreasonable things that the borders of the year 2000 were re-inforced, corporations relinquished their imminent domain, and all non-humans be rounded up to be slaughtered in the streets by the humans... or risk having the entire planet blown up while he laughs off your silly nukes... what do you see happening to a modern society? At what point in this escalating conflict will the resulting chaos or spite or discontent be so great that the victims might as well not even comply?

Would it be necessarily bad for the game if there was a special clause for PCs to reach the point where they could enslave the planet? It would end the game, but so would failing a shadowrun or retiring.

[Username17]

Conquering the planet does not necessarily end the game. It just requires that the game take on a new dimension. Either the game must become galactic or planar in scope, or it needs to shift focus and become Sim City. It can even do both.

-Username17

[RandomCasualty]

1085761067[/unixtime]]
The communications system mentioned by Sma is also key. Outlying and isolated villages are ripe for PC extortion unless they have a way of communicating with the larger group or organization they are loyal to. Would it be possible for such a system to exist with low tech/low magic? Would a system of large flaming pyres a la LotR work?

Well, I'd figure such a system would be easy to thwart. All you do is kill the guys in charge of one pyre (whcih are themselves isolated).

Fantasy is largely based on isolation, which is what makes it especially hard to deal with this sort of thing. Quite simply the best way is to do what 2nd edition did and make gold not all that valuable. Fantasy should be about the quest for the holy grail, not carefully managed balance sheets of taxed villages.

While taxing villages lets you get money to make castles and hire some troops and all, it shouldn't equate to personal power. So let people extort weak villages, just don't allow them to get any useful stuff out of it.

As for defenses versus offenses, all that may be necessary there is to alter the defense over offense cap. Basically if you make 19-20 an autohit, you'll go a long way to solving the problem, as you effectively double the damage of lesser things. Then you'll just have to worry about DR.

I've also always believed there should be some mass grapple rule, for when the angry mob just grabs the wizard or surrounds the knight, pushes him over and then a bunch of guys grab each limb and people start beating on him wtih hammers and pitchforks. Because I don't care how strong you are, if you've got 20 men surrounding you and holding you down, you should be screwed.

The absolute defenses like flight and incorporeality are really the big problem here, and honestly I don't think you should get either of those for a good amount of time, or they should come with some disadvantages, like flying mounts are really vulnerable to ranged weapon attacks.

[Username17]

The problem with that take on things is that whether Wizards get their flight early or late, eventually they will get it. If the huge number of peons is a serious threat to even powerful characters, being a powerful swordsman is a waste of time - after all a wizard is always going to be able to float around the ceiling and rain fire or poison gas on people. If the swordsman can't accomplish similar feats of crowd control by wading in there with a rapier, he might as well not show up at all.

If you're going to go for the feudal fantasy model at all, you've got to let knights push around peasants pretty much at will, since that's supposed to be the basis for the entire economy.

-Username17

[RandomCasualty]

1138043561[/unixtime]]The problem with that take on things is that whether Wizards get their flight early or late, eventually they will get it. If the huge number of peons is a serious threat to even powerful characters, being a powerful swordsman is a waste of time - after all a wizard is always going to be able to float around the ceiling and rain fire or poison gas on people. If the swordsman can't accomplish similar feats of crowd control by wading in there with a rapier, he might as well not show up at all.

Well, the idea is that by the time you're high enough level to nullify villagers, you no longer really gain anything worthwhile from them. By then you should be so rich that looting a village just isn't all that impressive or even worth your time.

It's ok to have supervillains but by then tasks like taking over villages should be beneath them.

If you're going to go for the feudal fantasy model at all, you've got to let knights push around peasants pretty much at will, since that's supposed to be the basis for the entire economy.

Well, mostly it was fear that kept the peasants in line. Any one individual knight could quite easily get swarmed by a bunch of peasants. However, then the king ends up sending his army and taking out the village eventually, so the villagers won't get away with it in the long run. So while a village won't lose to one knight, they'll lose to a bunch of knights. So their fear of the army keeps them in check and allows the lone knight to prush them around.

In real life, it's mostly fear that keeps governments going. Any government, modern or medieval, could pretty much be overthrown if all the peasants actually rose up as one. The actual problem is getting everyone organized and motivated to do so.

[User3]

The easiest way to instill the fear of society into D&D characters would be, in my humble opinion, to institute the following changes:

1) Have democracy be the dominant political system;

2) Switch all opposed d20 rolls to d100 - 40;

and 3) Eliminate rapid long-range teleportation and easily-accessable invisibility and flight.

Thus, characters can't simply kill kings and take over countries, because citizens wouldn't accept their rule, and, more importantly, characters can't go raising all sorts of bedlam, because they can no longer easily flee the scene and because commoners can now actually feasibly defeat them (at the lower levels, at least), given a large enough number of said commoners.

[Username17]

2) Switch all opposed d20 rolls to d100 - 40;

I'm not sure what you mean here. A d100 - 40 is the same as a d100 straight as long as it is an opposed roll. I'm not really sure where you are going with this.

An opposed roll on Edit:d100s would of course be much closer to a coin flip. Even a +4 bonus is just a shift of 3.94%. That's less than a +1 bonus on a normal roll. And you know that people don't notice those very much. On a d100 opposed roll, you'd have to really be dominant for you to win perceptibly more often. Individual peasants are going to be pinning elephants all the time.

-Username17

[Neeek]

1138141164[/unixtime]]

An opposed roll on d20s would of course be much closer to a coin flip. Even a +4 bonus is just a shift of 3.94%.

Err...Did you mean an opposed d100 roll here? A +4 on an opposed d20 roll has 70% chance of winning if you win ties(and a 66% chance if you don't).

[Username17]

Uh... yes. Yes I did. The math is right, the typographical error is wrong.

-Username17

[RandomCasualty]

Changing the RNG isn't really all that helpful. As frank said, that moves everything closer to a coin flip. And we certainly don't want that. We want heroes to be good, just not untouchable.

The way you modify that is by tightening the cap on the maximum power gap you can have. Right now, you always hit on a 20 regardless of how powerful your opponent's AC is. This effectively means that you can be reduced to 5% of your average damage. If you allow all 19s to autohit too, then you're up to 10%, and all 18s, then you're looking at 15%. And that's not actually all that bad.

It certainly isn't going to get adventurers to run in fear from 6 goblins, but it will make them think twice about fighting 50, because it's much easier for the goblins to wear them down now.

[Crissa]

There's also just plain bonuses to groups - but make it a small scale, with limits, like the 'x number of critters fit in a square' rules.

Having team tactics be a Feat Tree instead of just Something That Can Happen is also another way that group combat becomes less dangerous - so these should be maneuvers which are balanced and available.

Lastly, having autohits without crits - in WoW, there's a base Dodge and a Base Crit, these always dodge and always hit for instance - can make for some damage to be dealt in mass situations, like RC said. That makes durability and damage resistance actually useful in the game.

-Crissa

[Username17]

I actually don't think that "piles of goblins" should be the asnwer, or even an answer for anything at high level in a D&D setting. The fantasy story arc is fundamentally different from the future/modern story arc, and allowing piles of guys with hoes to amount to anything severely undermines it.

In the future/modern story arc we have heroes like Fox Mulder or those guys from CSI. They can be substantially less bad ass than the things they fight because they are backed up by the almost incomprehensible might of modern society. They are picked by society to go find the monsters because they have the skills to track down the monster and call in the hammer of the sheriff's office.

In the Fantasy story arc we have heroes like Saint George and Dorothy. The monster lives in a cave or a tower on the other side of the woods and everybody knows where that is. Society brings in the heroes because society lacks the strength to beat the monsters in open conflict, and hopes that teh heroes have the power to prevail against this known threat.

If the village militia is a meaningful military threat to high level characters, the fantasy character does not exist. Of course, you could have a "gritty" set-up in which characters in a nominally fantasy setting run around with swords performing the genre tropes of the future/modern story - but that would be weird.

Yes, by having the fantasy world have republics and paper money and militarily significant civil militias you can run stories that are much more plausible and "realistic" to the modern observer. But since this fantasy world then runs on the genre conventions of modern society, one is tempted to wonder why you bother setting it in a "fantasy" world at all. At that rate, why not just run your games in the modern world and cut all the crap?

-Username17

[RandomCasualty]

1138237719[/unixtime]]
In the Fantasy story arc we have heroes like Saint George and Dorothy. The monster lives in a cave or a tower on the other side of the woods and everybody knows where that is. Society brings in the heroes because society lacks the strength to beat the monsters in open conflict, and hopes that teh heroes have the power to prevail against this known threat.

Well fantasy monsters behave by different rules than fantasy heroes. Fantasy monsters generally have all kinds of crazy immunities that require special means to deal with. Whether its a flying dragon, an incorporeal wraith or a golem immmune to normal weapons or whatever, fantasy monsters tend to be exceptionally resilient which generally requires heroes.

And this sort of thing isn't by any means unique to fantasy stories. Lots of sci-fi and horror stories set in modern times deal wtih this. Whether it's Freddy Kreuger or the wolfman, the police force is ill equipped to handle these sort of magical beasts, thus requiring heroes. Mythic monsters have all kinds of crazy immunities or stealth powers. Some of them, like dracula simply get by with ignorance and fear, others really are virtually untouchable except for a specific weakness.

And of course, there are more normal fantasy monsters like ogres and orcs, which really are dealt with by common men, but these types of creatures usually travel in large packs themselves and amount to "like a peasant, only bigger". Mechanically they'll behave just like the party fighter does, and so having a unit of ogres is the same as just having some high level warrior types.

The main problem with fantasy doesn't come from explaining why the city's low level guards didn't wipe out the threat but why other high level characters didn't already do it. When you've got Elminster who can teleport in and nuke pretty much anyone, that's where you get a consistency problem with fantasy.

[User3]

Well fantasy monsters behave by different rules than fantasy heroes. Fantasy monsters generally have all kinds of crazy immunities that require special means to deal with. Whether its a flying dragon, an incorporeal wraith or a golem immmune to normal weapons or whatever, fantasy monsters tend to be exceptionally resilient which generally requires heroes.

If the fantasy heroes can find means to bypass the BBEG's immunities, than so can the peasants.

This goes doubly so for fantasy heroes who aren't appreciably tougher than peasants and can be taken down by a crowd of 10 or 15 of them.

In fact, the fact that there are chimeras and dragons in the world are the reason why fantasy heroes have to have a good deal of immunity against regular peasant attacks. Otherwise, they themselves wouldn't be able to stand up to the monster. Monsters that are immune to conventional peasant attacks but don't have the ability to dish out the pain in return are rare.

And of course if the heroes can stand up to an angry balor swinging a flailing sword at them (because they're tough as nails, because they teleport faster than Nightcrawler, because they're Hatake Kakashi and can just mind-control them into missing) then there's no reason why these abilities wouldn't transfer over towards peasant-killing.

The main problem with fantasy doesn't come from explaining why the city's low level guards didn't wipe out the threat but why other high level characters didn't already do it. When you've got Elminster who can teleport in and nuke pretty much anyone, that's where you get a consistency problem with fantasy.

Think of it like 21st century superpower politics.

While the United States or whoever can pretty much invade almost anyone they feel like and kick their ass, the fact is that this ass-kicking expends resources. If you expend too many of these resources, you open yourself up to having your own ass kicked by an enemy.

The same thing should work theoretically for high-level fantasy wizards. While they can go teleporting around and installing rulers they want and killing monsters, these expeditions use up resources. Resources like hp, scrolls, magic spells, or just time. And in a world where your enemies can usually get a good idea of your status (especially if you're doing high-profile ass-kickings), they can take advantage of your weakness and kick your own ass.

The balance of power works so that high-profile characters only decide to kick ass when it's in their best interests to, rather than personally show up at each and every situation where they CAN kick some ass. While Chiesse the 18th level wizard will venture out to stop a rampaging terrasque or balor (since he's the only one who can stop these things), he also has to keep in mind that there's a lich king who wants to kill him but risks his neck too much to fight Chiesse at anything more than 80% power. So Chiesse can outsource the plantar/marilith killing jobs to Jonathan the Black, a 15 level wizard. And so on and so forth.

The fact that in D&D that doesn't happen is a problem with the game mechanics, not setting. Characters like The Wish and The Word prove that it's actually possible to kick everyone's ass in the universe and not expending a single resource. But that's not supposed to happen in the first place.

[The_Matthew]

The same thing should work theoretically for high-level fantasy wizards. While they can go teleporting around and installing rulers they want and killing monsters, these expeditions use up resources. Resources like hp, scrolls, magic spells, or just time. And in a world where your enemies can usually get a good idea of your status (especially if you're doing high-profile ass-kickings), they can take advantage of your weakness and kick your own ass.

Except that any decent high level wizard can easily have an effectivly unlimited amount of all of those resources. When there exists an Elminister in a game world the entire 'the world is in peril' thing dosn't actually work because our uber-wizard can just make effectivly infinite copies of himself and clean up any mess without risk. To be honest any high level wizard that gets himself caught in a situation where his enemies can do anything really deserves what's coming to him, because he's an idiot.

EDIT: Underline tags - fbmf

[Username17]

Think of it like 21st century superpower politics.

But fantasy settings never work like 21st century power politics. In fact, even the most industrial game systems I've ever seen tend to work at best like 19th century power politics - as soon as one party begins ramping up they have an incredible advantage, meaning that war is inevitable and constant.

More often, however, it works like 16th century power politics, which is just like 19th century politics except that there's no real advantage to being the defender and only a few people have boats and cannon anyway - so they just roll over everyone and take their gold.

If there's going to be any restraint, any detente, any borders at all - there has to be a fvcking reason. And I have yet to see a high fantasy game that delivered one. Possible reasons include:

[*] Magic power only extends a certain distance from prepared power sites, making actual progress against an entrenched opponent almost impossible.

[*] The effects of magical attacks are known about for a long time before they actually take place, either because of the efficiency of divination or the inherent special effects of the powers themselves, allowing for marked enemies to retaliate in full even as their own fate is sealed.

[*] Magical defenses are very effective and highly non-portable, leaving the world divided up into tiny enclave power bases surrounded by free-fire zones.

You could do something like that, but I've yet to see a setting hat actually did. In general, the only reason that a world war doesn't begin and end within the month is that apparently everyone else in the campaign world is a moron.

-Username17

[RandomCasualty]

I wouldn't say fantasy worlds work like any real world politics at all.

It's a totally different situation for a number of reasons.

Offense Trumps Defense: Building castles and other fortifications mean absolute dick because people can teleport past them, easily nuke them with magic or just fly over them.

Zero Cost Warfare: Wars in the real world cost a fuckload of money. Whether it's supplying food and weapons to tens of thousands of men or building stealth bombers, it's expensive. D&D warfare on the other hand isn't. Wizards really can churn out spell after spell without any funding at all. While it costs money to build magic swords and such, they're not expendable and require no upkeep. Meaning that you can continue ramping up power almost infinitely.

Spellcasters are islands: In the real world, the peasants actually play a legitimate role in the economy of the world. They grow the food, make the weapons and breed the horses that keeps the war machine going. When you factor in casters, they really don't need peasants for anything. So the whole idea of protecting cities becomes an almost moot point.

The Leader is the important one: In modern wars you can stop the enemy by wiping out his army. You don't have to kill Hitler, you can just crush the German army and win the war. In fantasy situations, you really can't do this. Killing off the high cleric is the important thing, since he is both the leader and the heavy artillery.

The dead don't stay dead: High level guys are the only resource and they're effectively a renewable resource because you can keep true resurrecting them.

[Crissa]

...I suppose RC's points are why there aren't many built up realms in D&D fantasy unless they're just plain useful to the high-powered mages. You can go to town and get your jollies off if there's no town there, so there's no real reason to blow up the world when that's where I keep my stuff.

Still, I think that the militia or peasants should be useful at least in defending against low-CR opponents. The point of peasants isn't that they could take down the CR-10 guy with no special defenses - they wouldn't want to because it would involve most of them possibly dying.

I still say there should be a way for an army of squirrels to defend their territory from peasants, and peasants from an ogre, etc. But in current D&D, there isn't. One peasant is the same challenge for the ogre as twenty - the latter just takes longer.

There hasta be a way for a group of peasants to at least have a chance to tie up the strong man. The whirlwind expert might have an advantage - until they brought out the pitchforks and nets.

The world scales too quickly and is therefore less challenging.

Remember, while you were a lord by level 10 in earlier editions, you have the power to be one at level 5 now.

I'm not sure that's the setting I want to be in.

-Crissa

[RandomCasualty]

1138343374[/unixtime]]
The world scales too quickly and is therefore less challenging.

Remember, while you were a lord by level 10 in earlier editions, you have the power to be one at level 5 now.

I'm not sure that's the setting I want to be in.

Yeah, the world does scale way too quickly IMO. The power gap is so extreme in some cases that you've got the leader of the group so far ahead of his followers that his followers don't even matter.

Further, there's a ton of crap in D&D that's specifically designed to kill off or defend against large numbers, which makes armies more or less garbage. And really I think before we can design a consistent fantasy world, we need to figure out how to mechanically fit armies into the mix.

Having a world that's continually sustained solely by heroes doesn't work as a good model, because that means the PCs are only a handful of heroes among hundreds or thousands, and likely there are heroes with higher levels who could do their work real easy.

[Desdan_Mervolam]

It's too early to worry about armies. The first concern should be how to make peasants worth a damn within the economy.

-Desdan

[Username17]

Basically, there needs to be something that Labor can provide and Kapital can't, or the multitudes simply starve away in a competitive economic model. That's not news, it just isn't true with the D&D model of magic.

Anything that can be provided by Labor can be provided faster and better by Sorcery. From Raw Materials to Finished Goods, to Consumables, to Services, and even Security there's really nothing to be gained by having a workforce.

And yeah, as long as that's true, there's never going to be a cogent explanation for anything. As written, I perceive the world to look like Calcutta, with 3 story shanty towns pumping out babies like mad. The only thing that can ever get you out of grinding poverty is having a child with ass-kicking potential. There's no work to be had, only church charity and the promise that if one of your children is a successful adventurer, you might get taken care of in your old age.

-Username17

[RandomCasualty]

Well it's sort of weird because there's really no reason society would continue. The thing is that with reincarnate, True Resurrection and other spells, it's possible to live forever when you're high enough level, so there doesn't ever actually have to be much new blood entering the arena.

There really isn't any reason to build cities or strongholds as making any kind of money means that high level guys are going to want to kill you and steal it. Basically you'd be looking at crude mud huts and subsistence farming with people just sitting back hoping that no high level people bother to kill them for fun.

I really don't see coin money going very far, because the high level guys would control all the mines and they flat out have no reason to buy anything from or pay the peasants, so you'd be looking at a completely barter based economy among peasants. That way some guy could steal your hammer or your cow, but high levels won't bother because they can already conjure their own milk and fabricate things without tools. And since none of those goods are actually worth coin money to high level characters, nobody will really bother stealing them unless they need them to survive.

[Crissa]

However, peasants don't have magic cows or reincarnate, and they don't have defenses from wolves or whatnot.

And making citidels and unseen servants and whores is all about comfort, which is what bored high-levels would do.

In our world, if you haven't made a significant contribution by age 30, you generally aren't going to make any at all - even if you live to 100. I wonder what that means for nearly infinite lifespans...

-Crissa

[RandomCasualty]

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In our world, if you haven't made a significant contribution by age 30, you generally aren't going to make any at all - even if you live to 100. I wonder what that means for nearly infinite lifespans...

Well, as far as D&D is concerned, that doesn't even factor in. In D&D all characters get better with age. Wizards don't become all senile and stupid, they get intelligence and wisdom from aging. And of course you never lose levels, you only get more experience. Unlike in the real world, D&D heroes never fall out of their prime and are at best remaining stagnant, if not improving.