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100% GMing
Treasure Tables is dedicated to game masters, offering GMing advice and ideas and a community of GMs helping each other run great games since 2005. I'm Martin Ralya, and I've been GMing since 1989 and writing for the RPG industry since 2004.
Treasure Tables is on hiatus as of December 13th, 2007 -- after two years of daily posts, I needed a break. If you're looking for GMing material, I have two recommendations: the hundreds of posts in TT's archives, and my new project, the multi-author GMing blog Gnome Stew. Happy GMing! -- Martin
Negative Reinforcing Loops in RPGs
Tue. November 22, 2005
Team blog attacks of opportunity has started a series of posts about applying systems thinking to RPGs, the most recent being Green Slime.
This post is about identifying negative reinforcing loops in your gameplay, and then using them to address obstacles to meaningful play. Sound complicated? It is, a bit — but it also looks like an interesting approach.
More posts about: Common Problems
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23 Responses to “Negative Reinforcing Loops in RPGs”
The article referred to has a lot of invisible images, so I’m not quite sure if I’m missing some vital bit of information now. Anyway, I think I do have an example: combat in our Earthdawn campaign.
Earthdawn, like Shadowrun (and presumably D&D, but I don’t know much about that) is a pretty tactical game. Lots of special abilities, magical abilities, well-defined magical weapons, etc, etc. Quite a lot of these abilities are specifically related to combat.
So although we get our fair share of roleplay, investigation and puzzles, combat is really the time that everybody gets to use all their special skills. Outside combat, the big troll is just a dumb idiot, but in combat, he rules. The archer is just a regular elf outside combat, but during combat, he’s serious heavy artillery. My warrior has a couple of non-combat abilities, but isn’t very good at them. In combat however, she’s everywhere. The wizards were really the only exception. Also everybody had terrible charisma and no social skills, so combat very quickly became an important element, to the point that no session was complete without a serious test of our combat prowess.
And our prowess was impressive. Most of the time, we could afford to charge head-on. My warrior could really take mind-boggling amounts of damage without flinching, and as long as we protected the archer and the wizards, nobody could touch us. So we become arrogant, certain we can take on anyone.
We’re so good at combat, that normal opponents are starting to lack excitement. But we’re so bad at everything else, that complex social engagements aren’t a lot of fun either. We’re really little more than a group of violent sociopaths.
So the only way to keep the game exciting is more, or more powerful, opponents. Or opponents with weird abilities. Opponents that are nearly invulnerable. And we beat them all. Then the GM starts to put us in situations that we really can’t win without negotiations, stealth and subterfuge, and we still charge head-on. And we still win!
Actually we didn’t; the troll and the warrior died, but were saved within the hour by a quick rescue, so they could still be resurrected, and then we still beat the crap out of the bastards. And then we accidentally stumbled into a large contingent from a powerful scorcher band and wiped them out, which isn’t supposed to be possible.
The problem with very tactical game systems, is that they often encourage combat-oriented characters. And once most of the party is very combat-oriented, combat also becomes a very important part of the game (which may be boring for a lone non-combatant in the group). And to keep things exciting, you need more, bigger, and more outrageously powerful opponents to give the players a challenge. But for real excitement, you need a chance to fail. And failure at combat means somebody dies, and that’s not always a lot of fun.
It’s a valid style of play I suppose, but the focus on combat really risks overshadowing all the other parts of the game, and I kind of like those. Nevertheless, we had a lot of cool moments and fun, but it was kind of one-sided.
The same thing happened when we did Shadowrun long ago. Interesting tactical stuff, but they weren’t really real characters. So the next time we did some Shadowrun, the GM made characters for us who had interesting, detailed backgrounds, lots of fun but useless background skills, and not really a lot of useful abilities. And we had a lot of fun. We couldn’t do much, but we tried. We worked around our massive weaknesses, avoided combat wherever possible, and had a hell of a time. I really hope we ever get back to that game with those same characters.
(Man, this is long.)
Good observation that a tactical combat system definitely forms a reinforcing loop. The positiveness or negativeness of it depends on the interest of the playes, and whether the system actually does a good job of providing challenge. D20 (specifically Arcana Evolved, but presumably D&D also) does a pretty good job of this. Somewhere between 7th and 10th level it does start to break down for me, but I can see the system is actually still working, I just got tired of the increasing amount of work it took to come up with encounters.
But a group that really wants to do something else is going to see the loop as negative.
And a system that promises combat, but doesn’t deliver may result in a negative loop.
Frank
(mcv) The article referred to has a lot of invisible images, so I’m not quite sure if I’m missing some vital bit of information now.
I’m not sure what you mean — missing? Broken? Something else entirely? As of the time I linked to it, and at the moment, I don’t see any problems with the post. Weird.
As for tactical games encouraging combat-oriented characters, that seems like it’s only a problem if you try to do things that fall outside of the game’s purview (”core story”). That’s why a lot of folks find D&D play a bit uneven, because it’s not an ideal system for non-combat activities in a lot of ways.
Like Frank said: A group that wants to do other stuff will probably see that loop as being negative.
(Frank) And a system that promises combat, but doesn’t deliver may result in a negative loop.
What do you mean by “promises combat,” Frank? I know of games that aren’t intended to involve combat at all (i.e., don’t “promise” combat), but I can’t think of any that include combat and don’t deliver.
Unless you mean games that don’t provide satsifying or engaging combat — is that what you’re getting at?
Unless you mean games that don’t provide satsifying or engaging combat — is that what you’re getting at?
Yea, that’s what I was getting at, or games which have a combat system, but other mechanics or game play actually makes combat not happen.
Frank
“House rules” often create a viscious cycle or positive feedback loops or “negative reinforcing loops”, but I haven’t run into that in quite a while. The worst time was when our gaming group was evolving a new rules system back in 1989-1991.
A vague rule would be abused to a ridiculous extent. Then the rule revised (usually with additional rules) to “solve” the problem. Then it was on to the next vague rule. The positive feedback came in the form of an advantage during gameplay granted to the most creative abuser.
An exercise for the reader: You have “Farming” as a skill, and no one has really defined it. Think up at least 5 ways you can use Farming-based abilities in combat, marketplace negotiations, etc. Here’s an example to get you started - “Increasingly accurate weather prediction leading to actual weather *control* at high levels.”
With D&D, especially using published modules, I have noticed a tendency for parties, especially higher level parties, to become the “all problems solved with combat” types that mcv describes.
When you have a hammer, every problem takes on nail-like attributes, and D&D hands every PC a big-ass Combat Hammer.
D&D non-combat role-playing can be summed up thusly, “Do you surrender? No? Charge!”
-David
Dadid said: D&D non-combat role-playing can be summed up thusly, “Do you surrender? No? Charge!”
That’s almost exactly what happened during one particularly big fight in our Earthdawn campaign: we were looking for a guy that had a thingy we needed. A gang finds out, and abducts the guy, hoping for a ransom. We visit their fort, they ask for 2000 silver, I offer them 500 silver and their lives, they refuse, so we decide to take their lives. That’s really all the negotiation we did before leaping over the wall (the troll and the warrior had Great Leap) and charging.
Now I’m not against combat. There are many settings were combat is very fitting, and some action can add a lot of excitement to the game. But I think it’s actually more fun when the PCs think: “We might die! How are we gonna get out of this?” instead of “Goody! People/monsters to beat up!”
But if the game system, and therefore the characters, are focused on combat, then combat will eventually become a goal in itself instead of an obstacle on your path towards a goal. This can be a lot of fun if it is all you want, but I happen to like intrigue, mystery, puzzles, etc. And that’s hurt. Our Earthdawn campaign used to have a lot of intrigue, mystery, political background and such, and our GM really did a good job to keep those in as our power level rose, but our changing focus was unmistakable; it slowly became less the real goal, and more an excuse to meet new and dangerous foes and beat them up.
The (formerly) missing images seem to work again. Looks like the site is tied to some bandwidth limit and couldn’t show the images when past that limit.
Frank: Gotcha — thanks for clearing that up.
David: Agreed. House rules are a good example of a reinforcing loop that often becomes negative. (And your farming example makes me cringe!)
(mcv) But if the game system, and therefore the characters, are focused on combat, then combat will eventually become a goal in itself instead of an obstacle on your path towards a goal. This can be a lot of fun if it is all you want, but I happen to like intrigue, mystery, puzzles, etc. And that’s hurt.
This one isn’t fully formulated yet, but I’m curious what games handle intrigue, mystery and puzzles well in a mechanical sense. In other words, which RPGs have systems that make those things part of the core of the game?
Call of Cthulhu comes to mind, because of skills like Library Use and an emphasis on puzzle-solving — but that emphasis is as much in the “soft” elements (”Here’s how you run CoC”) as it is in the system.
Is that true with most games — are puzzles and the like always a soft system element, or ancillary to other concerns (like combat)? Do there need to be systems for these kinds of things?
I’m probably overlooking something obvious here.
Martin sez: This one isn’t fully formulated yet, but I’m curious what games handle intrigue, mystery and puzzles well in a mechanical sense. In other words, which RPGs have systems that make those things part of the core of the game?
Intrigue is helped a lot by the presence of social skills, contacts, favours, status, that sort of thing. Mystery by investigative skills. Puzzles are more something for the players to solve, but somethings skills can play a big role there too.
CoC is a good example of a game that does this well. So is GURPS (very much so, IMO), Fudge, and probably a lot of other skill-based systems. Earthdawn doesn’t support these things very well; it has some social skills, but skills are overshadowed by Talents, and social talents tend to be a bit weird and often very specific.
Ofcourse pieces like “Here’s how you play CoC” help, but ijn the end, players look at their character sheet. If it says ‘Fast Talk: 14′, they’re gonna look for things to fast talk. If it says ‘Smite Monsters In New Ways’, then that’s what they’re going to do. They’re looking for suitable nails for their hammers.
I think mystery and puzzle solving is always going to be a difficult one in RPGs. The problem is that puzzles only really work when it’s the player solving the puzzle. Which leaves the only thing for the mechanics to operate on is finding clues. But if you fail a roll and miss a clue, the puzzle may become unsolveable. Of course there’s always the tension of “My character is smarter than me, so can’t I make an intelligence check?” which is fine, except it takes the wind out of the sails of the puzzle.
Now intrigue and political manuevering is a different story. And I think the best mechanics for that are a conflict resolution system with an expectation of player/GM well defined stakes (which Fudge, GURPS and CoC all do not have).
Just having a list of skills on the character sheet itself isn’t going to do it. The system needs something that transforms the skill rolls into something with meaningfull choice.
The reason combat ends up being so popular is that it’s relatively easy to build a combat system that adds those meaningfull choices on top of the skill rolls.
Now some GURPS, Fudge, and CoC games do ok because the GM and players are able to add an informal system that allows for well defined stakes. But it’s all to easy for the stakes to be totally controlled by the GM, and to be kind of wishy washy and mutable at that, which is one of the roads which leads to illusionism (and some illusionist games work ok because the players don’t discover the illusion, or they become participationist [or the players willfully ignore the hints, which seems like it deserves a different name than illusionism or participationism]).
I had an interesting, and mildly painful, exercise when I was invited to a GURPS game that was going to be some sort of special ops investigative thing. I was trying to ferret out how the GM actually intended on running things. I didn’t get a good feeling, and declined the invitation (I was busy enough that it would have been hard, but after inviting the GM to my Tekumel game just as it was collapsing, I felt some obligation to try and find an opportunity for play with this guy and his buddy).
I’m not sure their game would have been illusionist, but it was clear to me that the “system” was GURPS plus a lot of informal stuff.
A note about GURPS - from a lot of what I’ve heard, it’s actually still played as a combat game. The trick is that instead of going for a closely matched scrap like is the usual for D&D, the game mostly involves the players using their other skills to get an overwhelming advantage in the fight. Which is fine, but I think a lot of people might be kidding themselves that the game is not ultimately about combat.
I’m curious, is anyone aware of a really long running GURPS game? I’d be curious if it really avoids the degeneration into combat that people have seen with D&D when they’ve tried to make D&D be about something different from combat.
Frank
Man, there’s a lot in Frank’s reaction I want to respond to.
I think mystery and puzzle solving is always going to be a difficult one in RPGs. The problem is that puzzles only really work when it’s the player solving the puzzle. Which leaves the only thing for the mechanics to operate on is finding clues.
I don’t quite understand why you’re lumping mystery and puzzles together like this. They can be related, but don’t have to be. But yeah, puzzles are usually intended to be solved by the players, not the characters.
But if you fail a roll and miss a clue, the puzzle may become unsolveable.
The trick is not to make every roll a game-ending roll if it fails. I mean, if you fail to kill the monster that needs to be killed, that’s also a problem, right? Have you read the recent blog entry about Robin Laws’ “gimme’s”?
Now intrigue and political manuevering is a different story. And I think the best mechanics for that are a conflict resolution system with an expectation of player/GM well defined stakes (which Fudge, GURPS and CoC all do not have).
Could you explain what you mean by that? I don’t quite understand.
Just having a list of skills on the character sheet itself isn’t going to do it.
I think it helps a lot. “When all you have is a hammer, every problem looks like a nail.” Players often look at their character sheets to see what abilities they have, and their abilities and skills suggest different approaches for a solution. Having “Diplomacy” suggests to them that they don’t need to kill everybody to get what they want. Perhaps they can try to negotiate.
The system needs something that transforms the skill rolls into something with meaningfull choice.
Again I don’t quite understand what you mean. Is this the same as the well-defined stakes? I hope you can explain what you mean.
It sounds to me like you want to turn social interactions into the same kind of tactical system that combat often is, but that sounds like overkill to me.
But it’s all to easy for the stakes to be totally controlled by the GM, and to be kind of wishy washy and mutable at that, which is one of the roads which leads to illusionism (and some illusionist games work ok because the players don’t discover the illusion, or they become participationist [or the players willfully ignore the hints, which seems like it deserves a different name than illusionism or participationism]).
This is interesting. I’m not completely sure I understand, but if I do, this ‘illusionism’ may be exactly what roleplaying is about for me. You sound like you prefer a more wargaming-like approach to RPGs, and less an “improvised theatre” one.
Now I like wargames quite a lot, but to me, wargames — and computer RPGs too, in fact — aren’t really what roleplaying is about. In an RPG you don’t need rules to describe absolutely every little detail, because you’ve got a GM who can improvise those things.
A note about GURPS - from a lot of what I’ve heard, it’s actually still played as a combat game. The trick is that instead of going for a closely matched scrap like is the usual for D&D, the game mostly involves the players using their other skills to get an overwhelming advantage in the fight. Which is fine, but I think a lot of people might be kidding themselves that the game is not ultimately about combat.
Really? I think you’re playing with very different people than I am. I like GURPS because it’s pretty balanced between combat, social and investigation. It can be about combat, but doesn’t have to be. Some games undoubtedly are, but many games aren’t, and combat often plays just a minor role.
I’m curious, is anyone aware of a really long running GURPS game?
I don’t think I’ve ever played in a really long running GURPS game, but I know plenty of people who have. Take a look at the SJG forums.
Ok, tried to respond earlier and I accidentally closed the window… and I felt like I had to spend some time working before going home early…
I lumped mystery with puzzle solving because I feel that what is actually interesting about a mystery at it’s core is the puzzle that is being solved. There may be additional color surrounding that puzzle that doesn’t surround what we generally consider puzzles.
As to failing a roll and missing a clue: it’s pretty hard to make an interesting puzzle where you have to make rolls to negotiate it, and make it interesting. The trick to making it interesting is that each roll needs to be tied to a meaningfull choice on the part of the player. Meaningfull choice means either that the player can use analysis of current information to make an informed choice. Rolling to see if the secret door which lets you find one of the keys to the puzzle isn’t interesting. Also key is that failure of the roll has to be interesting.
Tactical combat does actually resolve down to a puzzle. In a good system, the player’s choices are very meaningfull, and in fact there are multiple right options (if there’s only one correct choice at EVERY stage, then the game will be boring - everyone will use the same weapon, and the same tactic in every situation). Failure at any step in a tactical combat is also interesting since it changes the puzzle state. Now it’s true that sometimes failure of one task leads to failure of the entire combat. And that’s important.
Robin’s gimme’s are related to “say yes or roll the dice”, where instead of making a meaningless roll, you just say yes (and I argue that saying no is an option if the thing the player is trying really has no chance of success - and really you’re just saying yes to a different player in that case [possibly yourself]).
In a conflict resolution system, at it’s simplest, each roll resolves a situation. Will the player convince the noble to his cause or not? If not, what is the fallout? Conflict resolution systems may add an extended contest to some conflicts. What this does is breaks the conflict down into steps, and allows more possible outcomes, and generally allows the players to set higher and higher stakes (for example, in The Shadow of Yesterday, a PC can not die in a simple contest, but if the player sees a failure, and really wants to succeed, the GM can say “how badly do you want to succeed? Is this worth the possibility your character dies?”).
I believe a conflict resolution system would be ideal for an intrigue setting. It allows the players to cut straight to what are the stakes, which is what intrigue is all about. What are YOU willing to give up?
Having a list of skills on the character sheet is only going to help make everything not a hammer if the system actually empowers those skills. And by system here, I mean system in the Lumpley Principle sense - not only the rules text, but the unwritten rules the players abide by (sometimes even unspoken). This empowering is what creates meaningfull choice. It’s also important that the skill rules make it clear how the success is to be played.
D&D 3e’s diplomacy skill is an example of something that may not work well. Many GMs will not play the skill as written because they see it as too strong a choice. Since the DCs don’t go up with level, a high level character could guarantee converting every enemy they can communicate with (language wise and time wise) into a friend. So GM’s start to castrate the rule. And all of a sudden your skill doesn’t actually matter, what matters is whether the GM thinks you should be able to diplomacise this enemy. Which we were doing way back in the 1e days by using Charisma.
On the other hand, at least D&D’s diplomacy skill tells you (mostly) what success means (it doesn’t define helpfull and friendly very well though). But other skills don’t tell you at all what success means. And that’s a problem. Just having a skill list doesn’t help if the skills don’t actually do anything because the system doesn’t direct the players (and GM) how to use the results of the skill rolls.
There is also a danger if the presence of the skills results in meaninless play to exercise them. I’ve long been dissatisfied with the D&D thief because it seems like most locks and traps just exist to give the thief something to do. So I see a danger with having a big skill list when the GM just calls for meaningless skill checks (perhaps not realizing how meaningless they are), and then feels that by doing so, there is better “role play” because his game isn’t “hack ‘n slash”.
In one sense, yes, if we have a tactical combat system, I want social interraction to run at a tactical level. If there are two different resolution systems, there is probably a difference in effectiveness, and eventually the feedback loop will let the players identify which is more effective, and they will use it more and more often. And if the social system is just a single roll system with no serious input from the player as to what he’s actually trying to do, then if it actually turns out to be effective, it may also turn out to really not be fun. And as I see it, the only way to bring meaningfull choice into a D&D Diplomacy roll is for the GM to award bonuses for how the player presents his case, and now the skill may become meaningless (because what really matters is how the GM percieves your argument).
The way I perceive it, it’s actually better to just acknowledge that social interraction will operate at the player level, and to make it clear that it is NOT the way to succeed in encounters. It’s a way to gain information, to gain help etc. The results of the player level negotiation should then feed into the tactical combat system. And sure, there may be some things the players have a choice of fighting or not. And that’s cool.
Illusionism: this is a term I learned at the Forge which describes the situation where the players actually have no meaningfull choice because the GM will never let his story be derailed. The players will succeed when his story needs them to succeed, and fail when he needs them to fail. Now see how this applies to my discussion of diplomacy above. If game play actually depends on the diplomacy instead of the combat, it’s real easy for the GM to bring illusionist technique to bear. As long as the GM doesn’t fudge rolls on the other hand, the tactical combat system is hard to enable illusionism.
The wargaming approach is not incompatible with the improvised theatre approach. That improvisation is part of what differentiates an RPG from a wargame for me, but you’re right, I enjoy a strong wargame aspect (but I could enjoy other types of role play also). The key for me is how the improv part drives the combat. For example, in our first Cold Iron game session last night, the final bit of play was the players talking to some people in a village that had been being attacked by undead wolves. They’ve found there is a bounty on wolves (undead or not), and that there is a reward for capturing a necromancer. This increases the reward they will get from the combat. They also talked to a fellow who has a map to some caves and is even willing to lead the PCs there. This will get them to the combat quicker (and perhaps with additional opportunity to prepare). They also traded some of the stuff they have found already for weapons they can make better use of. And there was a charisma check or two in there. All of this was very non-wargamy, but it drives the wargame aspect.
Now to bring this back to feedback loops - the players will respond to the feedback the system gives. If there is no real power or meaningfull choice behind the list of skills, the feedback will show that to the players, and they will ignore the skills. If it gives too much power, the players will start to push as hard as possible, and the GM may suddenly find himself running a very weird game (and perhaps not really playing the published game as the combat rules that take up half the book get less and less use).
Frank
(mcv) They’re looking for suitable nails for their hammers.
Agreed — but are those hammers really all that interesting? I know there’s a need to accomodate skills that players don’t themselves possess, but if solving a puzzle just requires rolling against Solve Puzzle, where’s the fun?
Take Burning Wheel as an example: BW has a kickass system for debates called the Duel of Wits. It’s played out a lot like combat, and you get bonuses for roleplaying well during the debate. It’s a blast partly because it fuses player involvement with PC involvement so well — that’s the kind of thing I’m thinking of.
(Frank) Just having a list of skills on the character sheet itself isn’t going to do it. The system needs something that transforms the skill rolls into something with meaningfull choice.
This is exactly what I’ve never seen for puzzle-solving (etc.).
(This thread has gone to some unexpected places, and yet stayed more or less on topic. I dig it. :))
Martin wrote: I know there’s a need to acoomodate skills that players don’t themselves possess, but if solving a puzzle just requires rolling against Solve Puzzle, where’s the fun?
A Solve Puzzle skill isn’t much fun, but like I said, puzzle solving is more a job for the players than for their characters.
But what about social skills? Should a shy, tongue-tied player not be able to play a con man or diplomat?
There are many situations where a skill like Fast Talk or Acting can substitute for Sneak or Strangle Guard, but if those skills aren’t on the character sheet, the players may not think of that approach. Or they’re afraid it won’t work, since they don’t have a skill that says they can do it.
Ofcourse you could decide that if it doesn’t hurt the story if a bluff works, it automatically succeeds, but if that’s the case, then why not also decide they automatically slaughter the orc guards without rolling any dice? Is combat that much more exciting than social interaction? I don’t think so.
It’s true that many RPGs give much more attention to combat than to everything else, and in a way that’s understandable, because combat is literally about life and death, and just fudging it may remove a lot of the excitement. But that doesn’t mean that everything else doesn’t matter. I’m not proposing to social and other non-combat skills get the same detailed treatment as combat does (on the contrary, I think that combat against flunkies often doesn’t have to be played out in full detail), but that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t take them seriously.
I’m not familiar with the details of D&D3’s Diplomacy skill, but if it allows you to convert everybody to your side, that’d be a pretty stupid approach. Many NPCs will have goals that conflict with helping the players. It should, however, allow a slightly more favourable reaction. A neutral NPC won’t immediately join their ranks, but might decide to share some information he wouldn’t share with anyone (as long as he wasn’t determined to keep it secret, obviously). A good bluff might get you past guards that should know better. Or perhaps you can bribe him.
There are lots of things that social or investigative skills may let you do that aren’t easily substituted by a more aggressive approach. And the system doesn’t need to have rules describing everything that can possibly be done with the skill in excruciating detail (although GURPS for example does have rules for using social skills for Reaction Tests), as a GM should be able to figure out on his own if an NPC can be bought, persuaded or conned. And if a PC tries something that is really unlikely (getting someone to lend his car to a total stranger), give him serious penalties on his roll.
This thread has gone to some unexpected places, and yet stayed more or less on topic. I dig it.
I’ve beed trying to make sure I keep in topic…
You know, I just thought about something. Vincent’s Fruitful Void is relevant here. The fruitful void shows a positive feedback loop. A negative feedback loop could have the arrows pointing towards the outside…
So yes, skills are good for rounding out a character, but they have to participate in the fruitful void loop. The tracking skill which gets you into yet another combat in a combat centered game works perfectly. A diplomacy skill may break the positive feedback loop though, because it directs the gameplay away from the combat. Of course if the game isn’t combat centered, then a diplomacy skill may work just fine.
I think I’ve known for quite some time about keeping games focused, but every once in a while I get seduced into adding skills or something that points an arrow in the wrong direction. Thankfully now I’m in a stage where I understand what I was doing wrong, and I’ve made sure prospective players understand the type of game I’m going to run.
Frank
The trouble with two different resolution systems is that invariably they don’t work. One problem, you suggest (and part of me agrees with you) that the GM should be able to decide if a social roll has a chance against a particular NPC. Here’s the problem with that - the player is actually totally disempowered by the fact that GM fiat can negate his character design and high roll.
The GM can’t do that in the detailed combat system (without fudging the monsters hit points). If you crit the monster for 100 points of damage and it only has 80 hit points, it’s dead. Now the GM can make the monster have as many hit points as he wants, but he will either be caught out as being unfair, or the PCs will be able to blast through a finite number of hit points given the right combat abilities and die rolls.
This is where a conflict resolution system comes into play (or something like Burning Wheel’s “tactical” social system). In a conflict resolution system, the GM puts right up front the NPCs ability. And then the player and GM negotiate stakes. And then the player rolls. Now there is a possibility that the GM won’t give on the negotiated stakes (”No, you can’t make the stakes be that you turn your sworn enemy into your best friend.”), but again, because there are explicit detailed rules (and conflict resolution is the center of the game as opposed to some side system), the GM again will be caught out if he doesn’t present reasonable challenges and empower the players.
Now as to a socially imperfect player: First off, I’m willing to give the player some benefit of the doubt. Second, my current set of players has proven that even when the socially challenged players have the social skills, they still haven’t a clue as to when or how to use them (and one of said players actually totally froze up when we wanted “translator” character to translate - she just couldn’t deal with even saying “my character translates everything they say” allowing us to conduct the conversation without her having to repeat what I told her to the other players and actually serve as a go-between). Meanwhile, in my just ended Arcana Evolved campaign, the player who was the most adept at talking had a character with a 6 Charisma (and no social skills). I eventually let him have Intimidate so he at least had one social skill.
In my new Cold Iron campaign, I have a new system. Charisma equals character level plus renown. You can buy renown points during character generation, but you can also earn them in play (and lose them in play - also how you earn them will color reactions). And earning them in play is totally separate from the experience system so the fighter need not trade off combat ability for social ability.
So how will I use renown? Well, for one thing it will supply a bit of color (in fact, since we’re using the same setting as my 2nd college Cold Iron campaign, I’ve already dropped the name of the PC who is probably the inspiration for this renown system - that PC came back from his first expedition to the wilds without ANY of his companions, a neat TPK. Then the next time he came back to town, they had a body or two in stasis. Oh, and he went to taverns and spread stories of adventure. Boy did he become known (the guards started greeting him “Hi Regulus, brought some more suckers back in a body bag?” or something like that). So we had a lot of fun at the players expense (but all in good companionship kind of fun), BUT the PC also did gain some benefit from his being well known. Far more effective at producing fun play than a laundry list of social skills (though I did have such a list and Regulus had leadership 5, entertainer 8, diplomat 6, jester 5, and a few more social skills, he also had 52k XP in social skills, 46k in combat, and 47k in magic).
But bringing back to feedback loops - see, all of that social stuff Regulus did didn’t try and drag the game away from it’s combat focus. It helped focus the game, and in fact made it a lot easier for players to bring in new characters (they heard about him in the taverns).
Back in the 1st edition D&D days (hmm, 1st edition of what, D&D?, AD&D?, Basic D&D?…), we actually did pretty well without skills. First off, characters had a charisma, which had NO impact whatsoever on the combat system (except eventually being a requisite for some classes). We always felt free to assign probabilities of success for non-combat activities based on attributes and character class. People tried non-combat solutions all the time. And much of that play was probably more functional because instead of the player pissing all his points into skills the GM is never actually going to let work (I’ve seen that happen regularly with skill systems - and I’ll include D&D 3.0/3.5 here - actually it started with the thief back in the Greyhawk supplement…), the GM was always right up front whether you had a chance or not.
Oh, and the last time I played - I had a character with some social skills. And I was totally shut down because what counted was MY social ability (actually, mostly what counted was the players ability to get a word in edgewise). I sat through several hours of Fudge totally disempowered. What a loser of a game. Talk about negative reinforcement loops up the wazoo.
On the other hand, I do agree with one point of yours. If there’s no rules for it, and it isn’t on your character sheet, it won’t (and shouldn’t) come into play. So if you want to have social solutions then you need to at least have something like a charisma attribute, and rules that at least suggest how it can be used.
I think the lesson here (as if this is a school or something…) is that you need to look for those feedback loops. Try and figure out how to use them to be positive and drive fun play rather than be negative. If you want more non-combat play, make sure the feedback loop actually rewards non-combat solutions (but at the same time, make sure you haven’t created a new feedback loop that renders your combat system irrelevant - if that is really what you want, look at a different game system rather than trying to turn a combat system into a social system).
Frank
I’m not sure that the “PC social skills vs. player social skills” issue — a valid subject for discussion, and a very sticky wicket — is related to feedback loops.
I suppose if the GM based social skills on player skills, then it’s a very short loop: player gives PC social skills, discovers they’re useless, get’s frustrated (and rightly so). But I’m not sure there’s any feedback, or that it loops again.
Hmmm.
Hmm, good point about feedback loops. Isn’t there generally going to be an issue with any negative feedback that if does create a negative feedback loop that the loop terminates pretty quickly since it can only go so far before even the most generous thinking person realizes things aren’t fun any more?
On the other hand, since folks can easily blind themselves, it may take a while before the players realize the skills on their character sheet really are meaningless.
Still, I think my main point is to make sure you understand your feedback loops, and that they are driving the kind of play you want (which presumably relies on positive feedback).
Frank
(Frank) Still, I think my main point is to make sure you understand your feedback loops, and that they are driving the kind of play you want (which presumably relies on positive feedback).
Your main point is an excellent one, Frank. It would be interested to see feedback loops presented in a rulebook — “Here’s why this part if the system works the way it does.”
For D&D, the DMG II would have been a perfect place for something like that.
Frank Filz wrote: A diplomacy skill may break the positive feedback loop though, because it directs the gameplay away from the combat. Of course if the game isn’t combat centered, then a diplomacy skill may work just fine.
That seems to be the biggest difference between our gaming styles. Your games revolve around combat, and the rest of story serves to provide an interesting background to the combat, to give the combat meaning, if you will.
My games are about the story or the experience (or I want them to be, anyway), and the combat either provides background to the story (it’s a violent world, and to get that message across, there should be some combat every now and then), or it is an important plot-point in the story (if heroes defeat the evil necromancer to take his treasure, there should be an actual (preferably climactic) combat where the necromancer is defeated). But other than that, combat doesn’t play a very big role in my games. Sometimes they’re more about avoiding combat.
So these are goals to keep in mind when you’re looking for feedback loops in your game. Do you want combat to be the focus of the game? Then you need a system that supports combat, and doesn’t have too many other things to distract from it. But if you want combat in a smaller or even serving role and prefer other aspects in the limelight, then you need a game that supports those other elements, and doesn’t allow combat to short-circuit everything (if you’re bigger than Conan and can wade through endless hordes of baddies, how much resistance can a simple bureaucrat or shopkeeper offer if you want something they have?).
One problem, you suggest (and part of me agrees with you) that the GM should be able to decide if a social roll has a chance against a particular NPC. Here’s the problem with that - the player is actually totally disempowered by the fact that GM fiat can negate his character design and high roll.
But doesn’t the whole world exist by GM fiat? It’s the GM’s job to make sure the game is interesting for the players, and that means, among other things, that the PC’s abilities should mean something. Combat abilities are just as meaningless if there is no combat in the game, or every opponent is either way too strong or way too weak to get an interesting fight.
Similarly, if the GM wants social skills to play a role in the game, he should make sure that high social skill matters. That doesn’t mean he can bribe the king, bluff a hardened diplomat or convince his biggest enemy to help him (although he might, if he rolls a sufficiently good success), but the game should have situations where good social skills make a difference. Just like the game should contain some meaningful and challenging combat if you want combat to play a role.
As for Reknown, GURPS has something similar in Reputation. Very underestimated part of the system, and giving players some free Reputation bonus when they do something that would help their reputation, can be a lot of fun. Note that Reputation can also be negative; being known as a sociopath and murderer can add a nasty twist to your social encounters.
But doesn’t the whole world exist by GM fiat? It’s the GM’s job to make sure the game is interesting for the players, and that means, among other things, that the PC’s abilities should mean something. Combat abilities are just as meaningless if there is no combat in the game, or every opponent is either way too strong or way too weak to get an interesting fight.
Assuming a GMfull game, yes the world exists by GM fiat. What I was trying to get at is that combat systems generally have concrete ratings, and GM determined modifiers tend to play a pretty small role, so once the GM has set the numbers, the difficulty of the fight is pretty well set. D&D 3e even reinforces this further with it’s challenge rating system which gives a lot of guidance to the GM as to how to set encounter difficulty.
In order for a social interraction system to have this same level of systemic support (which hopefully is part of a feedback loop - in a lame attempt to keep this on topic…:-), the system needs to quantify NPCs convictions to their causes. If we know the diplomat has a 20 rating in “loyalty to country” and the PC only has a 10 bribery rating, well then we know it will be hard for the PC to bribe the diplomat in betraying his country. On the other hand, if the diplomat has a “weakness to dwarven ale” we know the PCs chances can be improved if the bribe includes dwarven ale.
Of course, always, the GM gets to set those ratings (unless the system goes as far as telling the GM exactly what ratings he can give the NPCs). But with the ratings, the GM is forced to a consistent depiction of the NPC. And the PCs have a specific target difficulty they can strategize to overcome.
Frank
Oh, should have responded to Martin also…
Yea, having designers notes is definitely useful. I’ve been slowly working on fleshing out Cold Iron to provide some of this kind of information. As I do so, I’ll definitely want to point out potential feedback loops.
Frank
I don’t think social interaction needs quite the same level of systemic support as combat. It needs some support, yes, but it usually involves much more roleplay and improvisation than combat does, so I don’t really like nailing it down with to many rules.
Usually, you need to bribe each NPC only once (and if not, the situation is bound to have changed a lot by the second time the PCs talk to him), and different people have very different standards when it comes to bribery and other forms of social interaction. Ofcourse in cultures where bribery is common, there’s bound to be some sort of informal rules about it, so the GM needs to stay aware of those in order to keep things consistent, but I’m still not too big a fan of hard rules for those situations.