Reserving some space for min-maxxers to roam.

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Lago PARANOIA
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Reserving some space for min-maxxers to roam.

Post by Lago PARANOIA »

There has been a lot of talk over the past few years over making the game more balanced. Fair enough. It is in a way bogus that one player gets screwed over because he picked up a paladin instead of a rogue.

Except that...

Except that in a way, you kind of do want to have some space for some people to make 'optimal' choices. Not to an extent seen in any other RPG, but you do want some space. If a methamphetamine-gobbling number freak with all of the books ends up with a character just as good as Trevor's first attempt at character creation, what's the incentive for the former to learn the rules? Like it or not, the powergamers and min-maxxers tend to have the most brand loyalty for a current edition and are the ones most likely to play.

Now mind you, the closest I've ever come to playing a game which has an acceptable cushion for min-maxxers to be superior to casuals is Mutants and Masterminds d20 2E and I still think it's too much--meaning that for the most part you can just write your rules to be as balanced as possible anyway and just let normal human error/failures in foresight be the said cushion. But while I think that a game that doesn't reward system mastery even a little bit is achievable, I don't think it's desirable.
Josh Kablack wrote:Your freedom to make rulings up on the fly is in direct conflict with my freedom to interact with an internally consistent narrative. Your freedom to run/play a game without needing to understand a complex rule system is in direct conflict with my freedom to play a character whose abilities and flaws function as I intended within that ruleset. Your freedom to add and change rules in the middle of the game is in direct conflict with my ability to understand that rules system before I decided whether or not to join your game.

In short, your entire post is dismissive of not merely my intelligence, but my agency. And I don't mean agency as a player within one of your games, I mean my agency as a person. You do not want me to be informed when I make the fundamental decisions of deciding whether to join your game or buying your rules system.
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Re: Reserving some space for min-maxxers to roam.

Post by hogarth »

Lago PARANOIA wrote:There has been a lot of talk over the past few years over making the game more balanced. Fair enough. It is in a way bogus that one player gets screwed over because he picked up a paladin instead of a rogue.

Except that...

Except that in a way, you kind of do want to have some space for some people to make 'optimal' choices.
In other words, you want a game that rewards "system mastery"?
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Post by Lago PARANOIA »

hogarth wrote: In other words, you want a game that rewards "system mastery"?
I'm sorry, that was ambiguous.

What I want is a game that slightly rewards system mastery. Enough that you bothered. I think someone mentioned before that the definition of a perfectly balanced character creation system were 10 random characters all being equal in generic usefulness to a deliberately created one--this doesn't happen, obviously, but you can point to games where the gap in usefulness between the randoms (which is something a casual person would create) and the deliberately-created characters (which is something a powergamer would create) isn't as large as other games. For example, the gap between a randomly created high-level 2E D&D character isn't as big as a randomly created 3E one.

Secondly, I also mean rewarding system mastery at the strategic, not tactical level. The part of a game where a player has control a priori (this is usually just character creation) rather than the phase in which they're reacting to challenges they couldn't have predicted or controlled ahead of time (such as dungeon crawling--PCs generically don't get to change the initial tactical situation).
Josh Kablack wrote:Your freedom to make rulings up on the fly is in direct conflict with my freedom to interact with an internally consistent narrative. Your freedom to run/play a game without needing to understand a complex rule system is in direct conflict with my freedom to play a character whose abilities and flaws function as I intended within that ruleset. Your freedom to add and change rules in the middle of the game is in direct conflict with my ability to understand that rules system before I decided whether or not to join your game.

In short, your entire post is dismissive of not merely my intelligence, but my agency. And I don't mean agency as a player within one of your games, I mean my agency as a person. You do not want me to be informed when I make the fundamental decisions of deciding whether to join your game or buying your rules system.
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Post by Ice9 »

I'm with you on that. "A newbie can make a reasonably effective character" is a good thing. "Throwing darts at a PHB will make as good a character as anything you could design" is not.

And while I think that there shouldn't be any inherently bad options (like Toughness), I don't see a problem with options that are more useful for one type of character than another. You plan to hide and snipe, but you took Screaming Battle Charge? Yeah, that's not going to help you so much.
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Post by Daztur »

I really don't care for system mastery helping in the form of making a character, having it help in the form of actually knowing how to use a character? That's a whole different thing. It sucks if a new player makes a crap character and then later learns the system and can't do anything about it except for scrap their character and roll up a new one, if they can roll up a decent character, fumble around a bit and then actually learn how to use said character effectively then that's a lot more fun.
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Post by Koumei »

I think that's largely what Lago is saying, Daztur. For instance, let's pretend the baseline numbers are the same, no, fuck you Skill Focus (etc).

Now you can't fail to at least be able to do whatever it is you do.

Next step: classes and feats and special abilities and whatever the fuck you want to call the "things you choose as you go along" should:
[*]Do what they sound like they do
[*]Provide abilities, not bonuses
[*]Have some kind of obvious thematic grouping

So if you randomly pick them, then sure, you might end up with "You are invisible to everyone at least 30' away" and "When you run screaming at someone from at least 50' away you knock them over and make them keep bleeding on the next turn" and "If you walk up to someone and then make a single point-blank shot with a ranged weapon, they are knocked out for a round".

Yeah. They don't really go well together - though the invisibility thing helps both of the other affects happen without first being shot, granted. But they still each provide a thing you can do that you couldn't otherwise, and you can probably figure out a decent fighting style that gets you through the game.

Of course, ideally the invisibility thing would have the [Ninja] tag (or whatever), and you then look for all the other [Ninja] abilities such as "If you are invisible and attack someone, they are Stunned for a turn" and "If you are invisible at the start of the turn, then the invisibility carries over to the end of the turn" and "Any time you hit a Stunned person, the duration of being Stunned increases by 1 round and you get one of their kidneys for free".

So a newbie would be encouraged to go "Oh, I'll take all the [Ninja] ones!" (And then later can take the insane charge so they start invisible, are still invisible when they charge in, and cause Stun + Prone + Bleeding - as you gain more abilities, it's more likely other abilities will synergise practically by accident).

Meanwhile the master can look at them and go "So if I take these like this, then my tactics will be to ____" - their mastery is mostly helping them know how to effectively use the abilities, and which abilities to take to make the combos.

Am I close to the mark here, or more incorrect than a person who thinks bananas grow on trees?
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Post by K »

I don't think min-maxxers will ever be left out in the cold.

I mean, I've gone to conventions and played a 3e 1st level Rogue and shocked people with what I could do with a rope and some decent tactics.

The game needs a place for masters, but not broken combos. Broken combos can be replicated by the newb who checks the boards, but master play is a function of someone who is trying hard for a while.
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Post by Daztur »

I think that's largely what Lago is saying, Daztur.
I think you're misunderstanding what I was saying, you're still positing a master making a much more effective character than a newbie, which I don't much like (although it can't be eliminated entirely of course and may screw up parts of the game if you try to work too hard to eliminate it), I think the difference between a master and a newbie should come from how you use what the stuff on your character sheet says, not how you choose what to write down on the character sheet, since the newbie can always change how they use their character, but it's much more of a pain to change what it says on the character says.
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Post by Lago PARANOIA »

Daztur wrote:I think the difference between a master and a newbie should come from how you use what the stuff on your character sheet says, not how you choose what to write down on the character sheet, since the newbie can always change how they use their character, but it's much more of a pain to change what it says on the character says.
If that's the case then the master will perform just as well making a random character than if they planned it out--which is bad for the long-term health of the game because it discourages system mastery and splatbook buying.
Josh Kablack wrote:Your freedom to make rulings up on the fly is in direct conflict with my freedom to interact with an internally consistent narrative. Your freedom to run/play a game without needing to understand a complex rule system is in direct conflict with my freedom to play a character whose abilities and flaws function as I intended within that ruleset. Your freedom to add and change rules in the middle of the game is in direct conflict with my ability to understand that rules system before I decided whether or not to join your game.

In short, your entire post is dismissive of not merely my intelligence, but my agency. And I don't mean agency as a player within one of your games, I mean my agency as a person. You do not want me to be informed when I make the fundamental decisions of deciding whether to join your game or buying your rules system.
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Post by Murtak »

Is there not enough reward in being able to use more complicated abilities correctly? Even if a completely random selection of abilities is exactly as powerful as a handpicked selection of abilities, some of these abilities are likely going to be easy to use and some are going to be harder to use. So a newbie picks up the game and either outright rejects some picks because "that's too much text" or "that sounds complicated" or even "negate another power? how do I know what to negate?" or he ends up with abilities he does not know how to use. A veteran on the other hand can pick exactly the abilities he likes and use them well.
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Post by Lago PARANOIA »

Murtak wrote:A veteran on the other hand can pick exactly the abilities he likes and use them well.
Or he could just pick the abilities at random and end off just as well.
Josh Kablack wrote:Your freedom to make rulings up on the fly is in direct conflict with my freedom to interact with an internally consistent narrative. Your freedom to run/play a game without needing to understand a complex rule system is in direct conflict with my freedom to play a character whose abilities and flaws function as I intended within that ruleset. Your freedom to add and change rules in the middle of the game is in direct conflict with my ability to understand that rules system before I decided whether or not to join your game.

In short, your entire post is dismissive of not merely my intelligence, but my agency. And I don't mean agency as a player within one of your games, I mean my agency as a person. You do not want me to be informed when I make the fundamental decisions of deciding whether to join your game or buying your rules system.
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Post by Daztur »

Lago PARANOIA wrote:
Daztur wrote:I think the difference between a master and a newbie should come from how you use what the stuff on your character sheet says, not how you choose what to write down on the character sheet, since the newbie can always change how they use their character, but it's much more of a pain to change what it says on the character says.
If that's the case then the master will perform just as well making a random character than if they planned it out--which is bad for the long-term health of the game because it discourages system mastery and splatbook buying.
A few points:
A. Unless you strip a system down to bare bones (like Risus or something) they'll always be room to minmax it. Purposely leaving in space for minmaxers seems to me like an exercise in dev hubris (as if there wouldn't be any space for minmaxing unless they specifically allowed for it).
B. Splatbooks should be about presenting more options, not more powerful options.
C. A well-balanced system is often more fun to min-max in than a poorly balanced one, since there's actually some challenge to it.
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Post by Lago PARANOIA »

Well, since no human being is perfect it's of course theoretically impossible for someone to design a system with large amounts of choices with no min-maxxing in it. Same for shooting and making 20 out of 20 full-court baskets. So you should go ahead and try to get perfect balance anyway since you'll probably fall short regardless.

I'm just saying that if it was possible to design a perfectly balanced system you'd still want to leave some room.
Daztur wrote:B. Splatbooks should be about presenting more options, not more powerful options.
Why would this convince anyone to buy splatbooks if the new options are theoretically the same in gameplay effect as the old options? Now while I agree that a lot of people like breaking the routine of always picking Storm/Sentinel/Magneto, Complacent Gaming Syndrome is much more common.
Josh Kablack wrote:Your freedom to make rulings up on the fly is in direct conflict with my freedom to interact with an internally consistent narrative. Your freedom to run/play a game without needing to understand a complex rule system is in direct conflict with my freedom to play a character whose abilities and flaws function as I intended within that ruleset. Your freedom to add and change rules in the middle of the game is in direct conflict with my ability to understand that rules system before I decided whether or not to join your game.

In short, your entire post is dismissive of not merely my intelligence, but my agency. And I don't mean agency as a player within one of your games, I mean my agency as a person. You do not want me to be informed when I make the fundamental decisions of deciding whether to join your game or buying your rules system.
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Post by Koumei »

Daztur wrote: A. Unless you strip a system down to bare bones (like Risus or something) they'll always be room to minmax it. Purposely leaving in space for minmaxers seems to me like an exercise in dev hubris (as if there wouldn't be any space for minmaxing unless they specifically allowed for it).
Ah, I see what you're getting at now.
C. A well-balanced system is often more fun to min-max in than a poorly balanced one, since there's actually some challenge to it.
This. I can't feel proud about achieving big things in Rifts, because it's easy mode and pointless (and you can add 20 options from 20 books to make a Psi-Stalker awesome, or you could do better by simply rolling a bog-standard Dragon). Likewise Nobilis (pick "all you fuckers have to do what I say when we're at home base" -> win the game) or EP (the only important stat is Will, otherwise you see something scary, take heaps of mental trauma, are stunned for "the fight" and then have your character changed).

In games where you do have to, well, master it for this, it's different.
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Post by Bill Bisco: Isometric Imp »

Let's put this thread in a slightly different and better direction (imho).

Do we really want to deny the players and the base game system story powers?

By that I mean fun stuff we hear others do in stories: Raise armies of the dead, create abberant clones of our enemies in underground pits, enchant cities to protect them from attacks, manufacture artifacts of great power, teleport, fly, etc.

That's really my question. NPCs and movie villains and organizations outside of the protagonists control always seem to have these amazing and interesting powers and abilities. Is the game truly better off by removing their inclusion from the game system rather than removing their inclusion via the DM?
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Post by Ice9 »

I think the difference between a master and a newbie should come from how you use what the stuff on your character sheet says, not how you choose what to write down on the character sheet, since the newbie can always change how they use their character, but it's much more of a pain to change what it says on the character says.
I have to disagree a bit. Tactical thinking in play is great. But it's not the only kind of thinking that can, or should be, valid. Character building is as legit - or not - as precise combat positioning.

Also on the newbie front, I'd point out that most newbies would rather have someone tell them what to pick when building a character than tell them what to do while playing. With a robust retraining system, you don't get stuck with your initial choices, anyway.
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Post by Daztur »

Why would this convince anyone to buy splatbooks if the new options are theoretically the same in gameplay effect as the old options? Now while I agree that a lot of people like breaking the routine of always picking Storm/Sentinel/Magneto, Complacent Gaming Syndrome is much more common.
The same (roughly) in overall power doesn't really mean the same in gameplay effect, or at least it damn well shouldn't.
Do we really want to deny the players and the base game system story powers?
They're good to have as long they're put in well, so you don't get scry and die silliness. For those sort of spells, I'd like them really narrow and quirky so they can't be used at will, but require some MacGyvering to use well. Usually in stories using those powers are hard which is why you can have a whole plot center around if you can pull it off.
Character building is as legit - or not - as precise combat positioning.
Yes, but one takes place in game and one doesn't. I'm a bit leery of games that require a big out of game time investment from players.
Also on the newbie front, I'd point out that most newbies would rather have someone tell them what to pick when building a character than tell them what to do while playing. With a robust retraining system, you don't get stuck with your initial choices, anyway.
Good points, especially about training. That does ameliorate the problem a lot.
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Post by Ice9 »

Yes, but one takes place in game and one doesn't. I'm a bit leery of games that require a big out of game time investment from players.
Require - no. But allow - sure. I think the idea of tagging powers ([Ninja] for instance) is good. Then if you just want to quickly set up a character, pick a bunch of powers with the same tag and you're good to go. But if you want to fiddle with your character and custom-tune the perfect selection, you can.

I guess it comes down to RPGs as entertainment vs hobby. For entertainment purposes, time away from the table is pointless - you don't have to solve a crossword puzzle to play a DVD. But for hobby purposes, taking extra time is kind of the point - a pre-assembled, pre-painted ship in a bottle would be rather useless.
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Post by TheWorid »

Bill Bisco: Isometric Imp wrote:Let's put this thread in a slightly different and better direction (imho).

Do we really want to deny the players and the base game system story powers?

By that I mean fun stuff we hear others do in stories: Raise armies of the dead, create abberant clones of our enemies in underground pits, enchant cities to protect them from attacks, manufacture artifacts of great power, teleport, fly, etc.

That's really my question. NPCs and movie villains and organizations outside of the protagonists control always seem to have these amazing and interesting powers and abilities. Is the game truly better off by removing their inclusion from the game system rather than removing their inclusion via the DM?
That's a good question; I suggest giving it it's own thread so that it doesn't get drowned out. I think we all want to give PCs abilities like that, they're just so hard to balance when they get weird. Few RPGs are geared towards time-consuming or really large scale effects, partially because they're much harder to write well than how to attack.
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Post by fbmf »

FWIW, I read the title of the thread and thought, "I agree. That's why I pay for this webspace."

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Post by Murtak »

Lago PARANOIA wrote:
Murtak wrote:A veteran on the other hand can pick exactly the abilities he likes and use them well.
Or he could just pick the abilities at random and end off just as well.
Please don't quote me out of context.
Murtak wrote:Even if a completely random selection of abilities is exactly as powerful as a handpicked selection of abilities, some of these abilities are likely going to be easy to use and some are going to be harder to use.
My point was that veterans essentially get more options - even in a hypothetical compeltely balanced game - because some options are worse for the newbie. Yes, the veteran can pick anything - but the newbie can not. Additionally the veteran can presumably understand what he is picking, and what that means for his character. So the veteran gets to play exactly what he wants to play, while the newbie will just get something more or less close to what he imagined.

And this is in a hypothetical game. A real game, no matter how well-balanced, will probably have synergy between some abilities, even if they are equally powerful as other powers individually. Veterans can capitalize on that, newbies can not.
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Post by Koumei »

fbmf wrote:FWIW, I read the title of the thread and thought, "I agree. That's why I pay for this webspace."
That made me actually laugh out loud. Nice one.
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Post by Lago PARANOIA »

Daztur wrote: The same (roughly) in overall power doesn't really mean the same in gameplay effect, or at least it damn well shouldn't.
You think that it wouldn't, but even in games that are relatively balanced across broad character options like Team Fortress 2 gravitate towards Complacent Gaming Syndrome. Discounting the Demoman of course. Sure, there's occasionally some curiousity over the new geegaw, but long-term players (a year plus or so) tend to resort to the same 1-3 characters.
They're good to have as long they're put in well, so you don't get scry and die silliness. For those sort of spells, I'd like them really narrow and quirky so they can't be used at will, but require some MacGyvering to use well. Usually in stories using those powers are hard which is why you can have a whole plot center around if you can pull it off.
If the power is hard to use but has the same general effectiveness as the easy-to-use powers when mastered, why learn to use it at all?
Daztur wrote: Yes, but one takes place in game and one doesn't. I'm a bit leery of games that require a big out of game time investment from players.
Unless you're running a game that can be played at the expert level after 30 minutes' explanation like Monopoly, you actually want to reward people for spending some time reading about the game. This is why people play the hell out of Chess but no one gives a shit about Checkers or Risk except on a whim. Otherwise people won't care about playing the game as much, which means less emotional investment and that means less sales.

I'm not saying that tabletop games should require a 5-hour reading session before you start, I'm just saying that there should be some benefit to sitting down with the book for a few hours and reading through it. And hopefully some other sourcebooks as well. That's how you build brand loyalty.
Murtak wrote: My point was that veterans essentially get more options - even in a hypothetical compeltely balanced game - because some options are worse for the newbie.
Then you don't have a balanced game. We refer to these as trap options. The fact that some abilities are difficult to figure out how to work them doesn't in of itself to excuse the fact that they're better than the easier stuff.
Murtak wrote: And this is in a hypothetical game. A real game, no matter how well-balanced, will probably have synergy between some abilities, even if they are equally powerful as other powers individually. Veterans can capitalize on that, newbies can not.
Once again, this musing was just a hypothetical. I'm aware that it's pretty much impossible for any human being to get 20 holes-in-one in a row on the U.S. Open during a windstorm so it's not worth talking about practically but assuming that there was a chance of it ever happening it might be worth speculating about.
Josh Kablack wrote:Your freedom to make rulings up on the fly is in direct conflict with my freedom to interact with an internally consistent narrative. Your freedom to run/play a game without needing to understand a complex rule system is in direct conflict with my freedom to play a character whose abilities and flaws function as I intended within that ruleset. Your freedom to add and change rules in the middle of the game is in direct conflict with my ability to understand that rules system before I decided whether or not to join your game.

In short, your entire post is dismissive of not merely my intelligence, but my agency. And I don't mean agency as a player within one of your games, I mean my agency as a person. You do not want me to be informed when I make the fundamental decisions of deciding whether to join your game or buying your rules system.
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Post by K »

I think the best and only bonus a min-maxxer should get is that he gets the character he wants while the newb is probably experimenting with character types he doesn't enjoy as much.
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Post by Koumei »

K wrote:I think the best and only bonus a min-maxxer should get is that he gets the character he wants while the newb is probably experimenting with character types he doesn't enjoy as much.
Says the lawyer.
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