The Five Worst Ideas in Role-Playing Gaming

[whswhs]

This is a complement to a previous thread, in a way that should explain itself.

Here's my picks:

Linear dice rolls: If you're rolling a d10 or a d20, the chance of a critical success or failure is just too good. If you're rolling percentile, the difference between succeeding on 50% and on 52% is just too small. Either way, the probability distribution is boring.

Alignments: If you take it seriously, you have good guys doing good things because they want to do good, and bad guys doing evil things because they want to be evil; you get conscious villainy for the sake of villainy. And often it's worse: "Good" and "Evil" turn into labels for two sides whose behavior is essentially indistinguishable. Either approach is a bad substitute for actual motivation.

Death during character creation: For some reason, sf games tend to fall into this pit: Traveller characters could die before the first session, and so could Blue Planet ones. I think it's an annoying waste of effort to develop a substantial life story and then have to throw it away.

Script immunity: Sort of the opposite side—the PCs can't die unless the players actively seek death. This gives the PCs a license to do stupidly reckless "heroic" things.

Metaplot: On one hand, having the publisher develop the overall storyline basically says the PCs can't do things to change the world. On the other, it encourages the players to demand that the GM accept as canonical things that the publisher decides happened, and thus limits the GM's creativity and ability to surprise the players. When I'm running a campaign in a published setting, from the first session on, it's my world and if I want to change something I will.

Bill Stoddard

[Johan Larson]

Originally Posted by whswhs

Script immunity: Sort of the opposite side—the PCs can't die unless the players actively seek death. This gives the PCs a license to do stupidly reckless "heroic" things.

Actually, I think this is part of a larger problem that we've never really been able to sort out. We want the excitement that comes from having the PCs in real danger. But we also want characters to reliably last through long-running campaigns. Fitting the two together is hard, perhaps impossible. We sort of fudge it by having the GM step in -- hopefully not TOO obviously -- to declaw the opposition if the PCs are in danger of hard failure. Not a satisfactory solution.

[PK]

Hmm... my choices. I've only got three, though I agree with Bill's.

1. Random Character Generation

Seriously? If I'm going to sit down to play a game, and I want to build a starship captain, I don't want to roll, "Dishonorable Discharge: Lost pilot's license and can never command a ship." Or say I want to play a barbarian and roll ST 5 and IQ 14. Sigh. Let me play what I want, please.

2. Level-Based Character Advancement

Specifically, D&D-style, not Dragonquest-style. It's fine to have abilities that level up, or a system for leveling certain skills, but I cannot wrap my head around the concept of an overall "character level." You adventure for weeks with absolutely zero change in any of your abilities, then suddenly you go to sleep and when you awaken, you can do everything better! That kind of simplicity should be reserved for card, board, and video games -- and frankly, even the latter has moved past it in many cases.

3. Hyper-Granularity

Some games allow you to build a character, but don't bother distinguishing between power level. A great example is In Nomine, where (e.g.) Haagenti offers a band attunement that lets a demon recover +1 Essence, once per day, while Vapula offers one that doubles the demon's Essence (+9 for beginning PCs!) and magic glasses with a powerful ability. But because "a band attunement is a band attunement," these both cost the same. A point-buy system (which is really what any "build it yourself" system is, even if it's not called that) has to make some effort to ensure that a point spent on A is at least roughly equivalent to a point spent on B.

[Kyle Aaron]

Your "worst" ideas will be someone else's "best" ideas. And vice versa.

I don't think we need go into detail on each one of these.

[whswhs]

Originally Posted by Kyle Aaron

Your "worst" ideas will be someone else's "best" ideas. And vice versa.

So is there a particular reason you felt it necessary to make this point on this thread, and not on the "five best ideas" thread?

Bill Stoddard

[MattStriker]

Originally Posted by Rev. Pee Kitty

but I cannot wrap my head around the concept of an overall "character level." You adventure for weeks with absolutely zero change in any of your abilities, then suddenly you go to sleep and when you awaken, you can do everything better! That kind of simplicity should be reserved for card, board, and video games -- and frankly, even the latter has moved past it in many cases.

I can see the justification from a player and developer perspective.

Developer: Levels make it easy to adapt the difficulty of any given scenario.
Player: A massive payoff in ability gain that you have to work towards for a while can feel a lot more satisfying than a slow, gradual increase.

With GURPS and other point-based systems there are no real 'milestones' to aim for in stat development, there's less anticipation and thus less satisfaction.

I can definitely see the point of both types...levels are better for the more competitive, dungeon-crawling DnD mindset, point-based advancement is for storytelling-driven games where character development is more important than numbers. For something quick, dirty and hack-and-slashy I definitely prefer DnD4 over GURPS, for example. A long, deep campaign is another matter entirely, GURPS wins easily there.

[whswhs]

Originally Posted by MattStriker

With GURPS and other point-based systems there are no real 'milestones' to aim for in stat development, there's less anticipation and thus less satisfaction.

GURPS players who want milestones can pursue them. For example, getting +1 to IQ costs 20 points, which take between 5 and 10 sessions to earn. On the other hand, the player who really wants their character to learn a skill or technique or gain a (narratively plausible) perk doesn't have to wait till their character makes level.

Bill Stoddard

[pyratejohn]

Originally Posted by whswhs

GURPS players who want milestones can pursue them. For example, getting +1 to IQ costs 20 points, which take between 5 and 10 sessions to earn.

I've jokingly said that one of the worst ideas in GURPS was the point buy system. Not that the system itself is a bad idea, but the costs, and that everything needs to be multiplied by a factor of 10 to be more appealing. What looks better, a 200 point character, or a 2000 point character? What looks like something you would rather buy, +1 IQ for 20 points, or +1 IQ for 200 points!?!?!
;^)

[pyratejohn]

I don't know that I can think of five, but this one...

Originally Posted by whswhs

Linear dice rolls: If you're rolling a d10 or a d20, the chance of a critical success or failure is just too good. If you're rolling percentile, the difference between succeeding on 50% and on 52% is just too small. Either way, the probability distribution is boring.

... I totally agree with.

In my last campaign (D&D4e) one of the players rolled misses every time he attempted to use his daily and encounter powers in the campaign's big finale. Because his character was one of the party's strikers, thus capable of dealing out huge damage, those misses nearly led to a total party kill.

I guess some might say that level of unpredictability is fun, that it makes for dramatic ebbs and flows, but for me it's too much of an all or nothing situation.

[RogerBW]

Originally Posted by MattStriker

Player: A massive payoff in ability gain that you have to work towards for a while can feel a lot more satisfying than a slow, gradual increase.

I don't think that the evolution of D&D, or of MMOs, agrees with you: a steady drip of low-value rewards seems to be a much more effective way of getting people to come back for more than rare high-value rewards. (D&D4 explicitly combines both, but even level gains now come after "eight to ten encounters". DMG p.121 goes further: "Some DMs let characters gain the benefits of a new level as soon as they have the required XP to reach that level, while others prefer to wait until the characters take an extended rest or even until the end of a session before letting characters level up." It seems pretty clear from this that in a D&D4 campaign played "as designed" there will be one or two level gains somewhere in the party per play session.)