Further RPG thoughts
Apr. 12th, 2020 06:28 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
jackI feel like I've finally speculated and played enough I might be ready to run some of the other ideas I have in mind. Current forerunners, something set on Barrayar, and a swords-and-sorcery wander-the-landscape-fighting-dark-lords.
But I keep having further ideas for what can work well.
One is to borrow the idea from various places of a "reputation" track, where progress is measured in terms of how much, when NPCs meet you, they treat you as a famous wizard/scary badass/etc/etc. Or how much your standing with your personal god, or patron organisation, etc rises and how much support and lattitude they're willing to give you. Since having responsibility is fun, but only when it feels real.
The other is, that in order for players to relax and have fun, they have to be able to go into fights clowning about and it not being a big deal if they lose. Be able to play their character and have the scared one and the CHARGE one, etc, etc. But you only really get to that point if they can try things out and see what happens. Which is POSSIBLE if you have a "beaten up but victorious" mode (i.e. a big buffer of healing potions always). But maybe easier if you assume that losing means "embarrassingly driven back" or at worst "left for dead" not "throat slit". So I think I should try building that in from the start, both in terms of plot (i.e. have most enemies have a reason to skirmish and retreat, and fighting for a goal which can be lost without dying), and in terms of mechanics (i.e. make dying default to 'knocked out' not 'dead', and make more forgiving healing, but be more ready to provide informal consequences for losing, like just acting like it was a failure.)
But I keep having further ideas for what can work well.
One is to borrow the idea from various places of a "reputation" track, where progress is measured in terms of how much, when NPCs meet you, they treat you as a famous wizard/scary badass/etc/etc. Or how much your standing with your personal god, or patron organisation, etc rises and how much support and lattitude they're willing to give you. Since having responsibility is fun, but only when it feels real.
The other is, that in order for players to relax and have fun, they have to be able to go into fights clowning about and it not being a big deal if they lose. Be able to play their character and have the scared one and the CHARGE one, etc, etc. But you only really get to that point if they can try things out and see what happens. Which is POSSIBLE if you have a "beaten up but victorious" mode (i.e. a big buffer of healing potions always). But maybe easier if you assume that losing means "embarrassingly driven back" or at worst "left for dead" not "throat slit". So I think I should try building that in from the start, both in terms of plot (i.e. have most enemies have a reason to skirmish and retreat, and fighting for a goal which can be lost without dying), and in terms of mechanics (i.e. make dying default to 'knocked out' not 'dead', and make more forgiving healing, but be more ready to provide informal consequences for losing, like just acting like it was a failure.)
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Date: 2020-04-17 02:09 pm (UTC)Your last para about the deadliness of fights is something I have given some thought; the way I am used to thinking of that is that I am a gentler DM before the equivalent of about 7th level in 3.5e where people start having reliable access to raise dead, because once that is available to them it changes the landscape there (and it's quite possible to salt in a couple of scrolls of raise dead as valuable treasures in the run-up to a more dangerous sequence). I am generally not inordinately fond of the "everyone should be able to be fully healed up before every encounter" style of play, because I have seen it tend in the direction of "OMG that arrow messed up my hair let's all teleport home", and I do value games having some sense of jeopardy, but how best to do that is an ongoing issue and varies a lot between tables. Having raise dead to hand does mean you can do things like "enemy martial kills this PC and enemy magic-user immediately reanimates them as a zombie, now you have to put your companion down before you can bring them back to life" though.
Are you familiar with Starfinder? I have not played it, but I have read a fair bit about it, and its combat system of "you take damage from points A which you can restore all of with a brief rest, but it takes a very serious situation to exhaust points A and get into points B which take longer to heal" (I am simplifying here) seems like it might fit with the approach you talk about wanting.
Also, I read something about 13th Age having a mechanic whereby rather a lot of powers &c. reset after every fourth encounter rather than on an in-game timescale, so you have a system that is enforcing "first encounter in the session should be fairly straightforward when you are fully stocked, last one may be very difficult if you don't husband your resources" which is not a shape of thing I would be drawn to personally (it is more predictable than I like to DM) but has potential for fitting well with some shapes of plot where you want mooks along the way to be inherently easier fights than the climactic boss.
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Date: 2020-04-18 03:14 pm (UTC)Yeah. I think a lot of the ideas I have are things to support a particular style of play, but with SOME gms and players that just happens and doesn't need any support. I've thrown out a lot of mechanic design one way or another in favour of GM notes saying "make opportunities for this".
But if it's things like, "promoted within Simic Guild, now you have a bigger research budget, and some lab assistants", having that formalised somehow, even if as guidelines not 'character level', will help a lot of groups. And the general basass reputation in the equivalent of that for wandering heroes who just smash stuff without thinking too hard.
I've tried to do that sort of thing in my game, but doing it ad hoc didn't work so well because it felt like, nothing happened, then respect came too fast and didn't feel 'real'.
I do think I need to just play with more variety of players and get to know what things work out differently with different groups.
A which you can restore all of with a brief rest, but it takes a very serious situation to exhaust points A and get into points B which take longer to heal" (I am simplifying here) seems like it might fit with the approach you talk about wanting.
Yeah, I was thinking something similar. In DnD terms, maybe hitting zero hitpoints and then a couple of levels similar to exhaustion level. Or giving people more hit dice (inherent short rest healing) but it recovers more slowly in long rests. Trying to find a balance where there's enough cost to spending regular health that people don't just always run it down to 0, but enough forgiving-ness in B health that you don't insta-lose once you start to lose it.
Also, I read something about 13th Age having a mechanic whereby rather a lot of powers &c. reset after every fourth encounter rather than on an in-game timescale
Yeah, I like the principle, but my feeling is to make players happier to play without their biggest guns, rather than forcing them to.