mrteapot (![[info]](http://p-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small} mrteapot) wrote,@ 2006-05-06 13:29:00 |
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Underdog stories
People love underdog stories, wherein the main character goes through horrible defeats only to come out on top. Sports movies are full of this sort of thing, what with the boxer being pounded on for round after round only for a final KO or team of comedic hockey playing misfits losing their first few games, barely making the playoffs to eventually face the Evil Team and win through pure integrity and determination. Other genres are full of this sort of thing, too, it's just most codified and obvious there. In high school comedies you get a loser guy who eventually wins over the girl of his dreams (beating out her jock boyfriend), following a similar pattern of defeat leading to success.
Roleplaying games aren't very good at modelling this sort of thing. In a typical rpg, your best way of winning a conflict is not to lose initially, but to win initially and keep winning. Sure, over twenty levels a D&D character goes from plucky farmboy to walking legend, but in each individual conflict he's better off pulling out the big attacks early in the conflict rather than later. (If D&D combats lasted more than 8 rounds or so, a Barbarian would want to save his Rage until he thought the conflict was almost over. But most fights only last 5 or so rounds, and there's the Extend Rage feat).
This has to do with the fact that most games have a positive feedback loop (aka "death spiral") where winning makes you more likely to win. You could have a negative feedback loop (winning makes your future actions less successful), but that will make a conflict drag on forever when using standard rpg pacing methods. Each time I get ahead, you'll get ahead, so instead of an unstable equilibrium tending to resolve the conflict, you have a much more stable equilibrium, which means longer conflicts. Possibly never ending conflicts, which doesn't sound like a good idea at all.
The standard way to pace conflicts, or at least combats, is via hit points. Hit points provide a simple counter telling you how close you are to finishing the conflict. Or more realistically, how close your enemy is to finishing a conflict. (In a lot of games, the GM know the NPC HP totals and the PC totals, whereas the player only knows the PC's HP total, which is a bit unfair on a game level.) You move along the track while the other guy moves along his, and you hope he reaches -10HP before you. When one or the other does, the conflict is clearly over. as characters become more powerful, the scale of a conflict increases, as potentially so does the length and therefore detail provided to an encounter (though higher llevel D&D splits into drawn out slugfests and combats that are over in two rounds or less).
What I'm thinking right now is that you could have an underdog contest using a negative feedback system and a different pacing mechanic and have it work out better. I'm thinking about a couple alternative ways of handling this. One involves a pacing system entirely separate from the damage you dish out, and having the damage counter either randomized or hidden information (e.g., both players write a number down at least equal to their skill rating, the conflict goes until the turn count equals the higher (? lower?) number). The damage you get dealt is then a resource you can spend to increase your damage output later on. Whoever dealt out the most damage wins the conflict. So since using the resource increases the damage that I do, I want to save it up and use it near the end of the conflict. At the end of the conflict, because if I spend that reource too soon it'll boost my opponent's damage on the counterattack. If we knew when the end of the conflict was for certain, then we would both just save it up until the last round or so. But in a conflict where we don't know, then we're gambling on the ending of the conflict.
The hidden information pacing system (mentioned paranthetically above) when based on higher picked number has the interesting point where one player, who picked higher, knows how long the conflict will be while the other does not, thus giving a tactical advantage. I'm not sure how that would play out, but it could be really cool. It also uses the idea that PC skill ratings are a way for the player to "flag" areas that interest them: you put a bunch of points in "Drive Like a Maniac" because you want there to be car chases and drag races and stuff, and more detail on those events than places where you put few points. Whereas D&D and other games often give lots of detail to something like combat with little or no detail to other parts of play (e.g., and skill in D&D is a single d20 roll + modifiers) regardless of the wishes of anyone at the table. The hidden info pacing system has a minimum length determined by character skill level, so that means detail where people want it and not where not.
Closer to a standard setup, you could have a game where you add the HP damage you've taken to your skill roll. You can pick any standard die size to roll for damage, but beware: if you don't drop the other guy this round, the more damage you do, the worse he'll be coming back at you, and the more likely he'll be to drop you. So do you play it safe, and try pinging him to death with d4s, or take a big gamble and hope your d20 rolls an 18 for the knockout? Cause a 17 or less on the d20 means he'll live and get a meaty +17 on you, almost guaranteeing he'll knock you out.
As always, Dogs in the Vineyard seems to be well ahead of my thinking on this, and subtly breaking from other rpgs, even Forge made ones. The pacing for a conflict doesn't involve how much damage you take (Fallout isn't even rolled until a conflict is over): it involves which traits you bring to the table and whether someone escalates or not. Note that a conflict's length is naturally and invisibly determined by how much the participants care about it: each trait I bring into play is a statement that I care about the conflict, as is escalation. And it's a viable strategy to bring your flaws into a conflict early on and collect Fallout before things escalate too far, as that's as likely to earn you good traits as bad. Heck, it's a lot smarter to use you flaws early on and collect little d4 Fallout than it is to save the flaws for later when the guns and the d10 Fallout come out. So underdogs work better in Dogs than in D&D or even Nine Worlds.
People love underdog stories, wherein the main character goes through horrible defeats only to come out on top. Sports movies are full of this sort of thing, what with the boxer being pounded on for round after round only for a final KO or team of comedic hockey playing misfits losing their first few games, barely making the playoffs to eventually face the Evil Team and win through pure integrity and determination. Other genres are full of this sort of thing, too, it's just most codified and obvious there. In high school comedies you get a loser guy who eventually wins over the girl of his dreams (beating out her jock boyfriend), following a similar pattern of defeat leading to success.
Roleplaying games aren't very good at modelling this sort of thing. In a typical rpg, your best way of winning a conflict is not to lose initially, but to win initially and keep winning. Sure, over twenty levels a D&D character goes from plucky farmboy to walking legend, but in each individual conflict he's better off pulling out the big attacks early in the conflict rather than later. (If D&D combats lasted more than 8 rounds or so, a Barbarian would want to save his Rage until he thought the conflict was almost over. But most fights only last 5 or so rounds, and there's the Extend Rage feat).
This has to do with the fact that most games have a positive feedback loop (aka "death spiral") where winning makes you more likely to win. You could have a negative feedback loop (winning makes your future actions less successful), but that will make a conflict drag on forever when using standard rpg pacing methods. Each time I get ahead, you'll get ahead, so instead of an unstable equilibrium tending to resolve the conflict, you have a much more stable equilibrium, which means longer conflicts. Possibly never ending conflicts, which doesn't sound like a good idea at all.
The standard way to pace conflicts, or at least combats, is via hit points. Hit points provide a simple counter telling you how close you are to finishing the conflict. Or more realistically, how close your enemy is to finishing a conflict. (In a lot of games, the GM know the NPC HP totals and the PC totals, whereas the player only knows the PC's HP total, which is a bit unfair on a game level.) You move along the track while the other guy moves along his, and you hope he reaches -10HP before you. When one or the other does, the conflict is clearly over. as characters become more powerful, the scale of a conflict increases, as potentially so does the length and therefore detail provided to an encounter (though higher llevel D&D splits into drawn out slugfests and combats that are over in two rounds or less).
What I'm thinking right now is that you could have an underdog contest using a negative feedback system and a different pacing mechanic and have it work out better. I'm thinking about a couple alternative ways of handling this. One involves a pacing system entirely separate from the damage you dish out, and having the damage counter either randomized or hidden information (e.g., both players write a number down at least equal to their skill rating, the conflict goes until the turn count equals the higher (? lower?) number). The damage you get dealt is then a resource you can spend to increase your damage output later on. Whoever dealt out the most damage wins the conflict. So since using the resource increases the damage that I do, I want to save it up and use it near the end of the conflict. At the end of the conflict, because if I spend that reource too soon it'll boost my opponent's damage on the counterattack. If we knew when the end of the conflict was for certain, then we would both just save it up until the last round or so. But in a conflict where we don't know, then we're gambling on the ending of the conflict.
The hidden information pacing system (mentioned paranthetically above) when based on higher picked number has the interesting point where one player, who picked higher, knows how long the conflict will be while the other does not, thus giving a tactical advantage. I'm not sure how that would play out, but it could be really cool. It also uses the idea that PC skill ratings are a way for the player to "flag" areas that interest them: you put a bunch of points in "Drive Like a Maniac" because you want there to be car chases and drag races and stuff, and more detail on those events than places where you put few points. Whereas D&D and other games often give lots of detail to something like combat with little or no detail to other parts of play (e.g., and skill in D&D is a single d20 roll + modifiers) regardless of the wishes of anyone at the table. The hidden info pacing system has a minimum length determined by character skill level, so that means detail where people want it and not where not.
Closer to a standard setup, you could have a game where you add the HP damage you've taken to your skill roll. You can pick any standard die size to roll for damage, but beware: if you don't drop the other guy this round, the more damage you do, the worse he'll be coming back at you, and the more likely he'll be to drop you. So do you play it safe, and try pinging him to death with d4s, or take a big gamble and hope your d20 rolls an 18 for the knockout? Cause a 17 or less on the d20 means he'll live and get a meaty +17 on you, almost guaranteeing he'll knock you out.
As always, Dogs in the Vineyard seems to be well ahead of my thinking on this, and subtly breaking from other rpgs, even Forge made ones. The pacing for a conflict doesn't involve how much damage you take (Fallout isn't even rolled until a conflict is over): it involves which traits you bring to the table and whether someone escalates or not. Note that a conflict's length is naturally and invisibly determined by how much the participants care about it: each trait I bring into play is a statement that I care about the conflict, as is escalation. And it's a viable strategy to bring your flaws into a conflict early on and collect Fallout before things escalate too far, as that's as likely to earn you good traits as bad. Heck, it's a lot smarter to use you flaws early on and collect little d4 Fallout than it is to save the flaws for later when the guns and the d10 Fallout come out. So underdogs work better in Dogs than in D&D or even Nine Worlds.
