The Longest Round
Dec. 15th, 2005 12:08 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
bluegargantuaHey,
So I'm writing an RPG.
I'm still struggling with the how the mechanics will work.
I need to playtest this sometime before Vericon -- I'm probably going to subject it to the scrutiny of two designers who are the Harlan Ellisons of RPGs. I expect their criticisms to be very hard, but ultimately useful so it'd be nice if they didn't waste time on stuff that's obviously wrong.
And here, I refer to Theory in the sense that there is a general rule that should be followed to produce a good game. The problem is, I don't know what the Theory is and I'm not sure if anyone does.
I want to know: How long should a conflict last?
The obvious answer is: As long as it needs to. A more precise answer would be: The more important the conflict is to the players, the longer it should last. So if my PC is tying his shoe that’s probably not even worth a roll, but if he’s fighting for his life, then we want to break it down into round-by-round combat and build up a detailed picture of what happens. Again, it’s the importance to the players. One roll could determine the outcome of a World War while hours could be spent rolling dice to determine how well the dishes were washed if that’s what’s really important to the Players.
Heh, Remembrance of Things Past, The RPG.
But even here, there can be some grey area. Our main conflict is to defeat the Evil Overlord, but it’s not like we’re going to sit down, start rolling and three hours later resolve it. Instead, we break down the conflict into sub-conflicts and resolve those. These sub-conflicts have differing amounts of importance and run for different amounts of time. Some conflicts are so important to us that we’ll never hinge it on a single conflict resolution.
Sometimes, a conflict is more important than a single roll, but perhaps less important than the usual round of resolution. Say…a wandering monster in D&D. Ultimately, it’s more important than a single roll (we are being threatened by something), but you don’t want to get dragged down into a drawn-out combat (because we haven’t even reached the dungeon yet). Unfortunately, the rules don’t readily support some kind of “middle ground”.
So what does this have to do with me? Well, a couple of things:
1.) The other night I was running some simple conflicts between two evenly matched opponents and I realized that when you’re that closely matched, luck plays a large roll in whether or not you succeed. It was also obvious that 3 rounds usually telegraphed the winner and no conflict ever went beyond 5 or 6 rounds. Is that enough? If I lose out in 2 rounds can I say “no, way, I want a do-over” and go again?
2.) The game uses a rotating GM system. When you’re in the driver’s seat, you have control over all the major problems in the game. This includes everything from a drought to a broken arm. Most of these problems simply provide modifiers, although any of them can take center stage depending on what the PC wants to do. Each of these problems has a pool of dice that it can use to cause problems for the PC. Once those pools are emptied, the problem has resolved itself. (note, that when problems win a conflict with PCs they spawn new problems so if the PCs launch a number of losing encounters with the problem to run it out of dice and magically resolve it) So figuring out how big a given pool is for a given conflict has a big effect on how long it will take to resolve it.
Ugh. There’s currently a good thread in the Forge right now about mechanics that encourage people to set good stakes. I’m thinking that there a potential solution in that for what I’m doing.
The real answer is that I really need to finish up the alpha rules and get them out to people rather than waste time dithering over theory issues.
Later
Tom
So I'm writing an RPG.
I'm still struggling with the how the mechanics will work.
I need to playtest this sometime before Vericon -- I'm probably going to subject it to the scrutiny of two designers who are the Harlan Ellisons of RPGs. I expect their criticisms to be very hard, but ultimately useful so it'd be nice if they didn't waste time on stuff that's obviously wrong.
And here, I refer to Theory in the sense that there is a general rule that should be followed to produce a good game. The problem is, I don't know what the Theory is and I'm not sure if anyone does.
I want to know: How long should a conflict last?
The obvious answer is: As long as it needs to. A more precise answer would be: The more important the conflict is to the players, the longer it should last. So if my PC is tying his shoe that’s probably not even worth a roll, but if he’s fighting for his life, then we want to break it down into round-by-round combat and build up a detailed picture of what happens. Again, it’s the importance to the players. One roll could determine the outcome of a World War while hours could be spent rolling dice to determine how well the dishes were washed if that’s what’s really important to the Players.
Heh, Remembrance of Things Past, The RPG.
But even here, there can be some grey area. Our main conflict is to defeat the Evil Overlord, but it’s not like we’re going to sit down, start rolling and three hours later resolve it. Instead, we break down the conflict into sub-conflicts and resolve those. These sub-conflicts have differing amounts of importance and run for different amounts of time. Some conflicts are so important to us that we’ll never hinge it on a single conflict resolution.
Sometimes, a conflict is more important than a single roll, but perhaps less important than the usual round of resolution. Say…a wandering monster in D&D. Ultimately, it’s more important than a single roll (we are being threatened by something), but you don’t want to get dragged down into a drawn-out combat (because we haven’t even reached the dungeon yet). Unfortunately, the rules don’t readily support some kind of “middle ground”.
So what does this have to do with me? Well, a couple of things:
1.) The other night I was running some simple conflicts between two evenly matched opponents and I realized that when you’re that closely matched, luck plays a large roll in whether or not you succeed. It was also obvious that 3 rounds usually telegraphed the winner and no conflict ever went beyond 5 or 6 rounds. Is that enough? If I lose out in 2 rounds can I say “no, way, I want a do-over” and go again?
2.) The game uses a rotating GM system. When you’re in the driver’s seat, you have control over all the major problems in the game. This includes everything from a drought to a broken arm. Most of these problems simply provide modifiers, although any of them can take center stage depending on what the PC wants to do. Each of these problems has a pool of dice that it can use to cause problems for the PC. Once those pools are emptied, the problem has resolved itself. (note, that when problems win a conflict with PCs they spawn new problems so if the PCs launch a number of losing encounters with the problem to run it out of dice and magically resolve it) So figuring out how big a given pool is for a given conflict has a big effect on how long it will take to resolve it.
Ugh. There’s currently a good thread in the Forge right now about mechanics that encourage people to set good stakes. I’m thinking that there a potential solution in that for what I’m doing.
The real answer is that I really need to finish up the alpha rules and get them out to people rather than waste time dithering over theory issues.
Later
Tom
