It’s been a hell of a month. For me. Not the world. I don’t care about the world. The world ain’t my problem.
I’m talking about July, by the way. If you’re not one of my patrons and don’t get to read these articles the moment they’re done, you might not realize this is the last of the four July articles and not the first of the August articles. When my schedule isn’t completely f$&%ed up, I release articles to my Patreon feed on Fridays and the put them here for the rest of the world on the following Wednesday. So Friday is when I count my articles.
Anyway, because of all the s$&% going on in our lives – that’s the Tiny GM’s life and my life – I’ve ended up with a limited amount of time to get things done. So I’m rounding out the month of July by opening the mailbag and answering some reader questions. Which is something I want to start doing more of in the coming months. But I’ll get to the coming months later.
If you want to submit a question for a future mailbag, send it to ask.angry@angry.games. And if you want to maximize the odds that your question will actually be chosen for a future mailbag article, there’s two things you need to do. First, tell me in no uncertain terms, unambiguously, clearly, and concisely what the f$&% to publicly call you when I answer the question. That seems to be the biggest hurdle people face. I don’t know why it’s so hard to type a simple sentence like “call me Fred” right at the start of the e-mail, but it just f$&%ing vexes my readers. Apparently.
Second, for the love of f$&%, be brief. Get to the point. I get a lot of these e-mails. If I can’t suss out your question at a glance, I’m just going to delete it. And when I say be brief, I mean the whole f$&%ing e-mail should be readable at a glance. Don’t start with a question and then add three paragraphs where you clarify or explain or provide additional context. If I see too many paragraphs, I hit delete. Simple as that.
That said, let’s get started…
A whole lot of people asked…
Where the hell are you, Angry? Where are the articles? When do you even publish articles anymore? Can’t you stick to a regular update schedule for five frigging minutes? And when are you going to write an article in my favorite series again? Argh!
I’m sorry to waste space in the mailbag with this, but my impromptu disappearance from the universe garnered a lot of correspondence. And even before I disappeared, I had a lot of e-mail from people who really like my work but who find it hard to follow me – or support me – because my update schedule is random and unreliable and I don’t deliver the things I promise consistently. And those people can just go right down to the store and buy themselves a cookie because they’re completely right and what they’re saying is totally valid and fair. Hell, this article was supposed to be an AngryCraft article. But I ran out of time to finish it.
I’m deeply sorry that I disappeared for two weeks. Things were rough, but they weren’t so rough that I couldn’t have gotten a message out about it. I didn’t. That was wrong. I’m usually more transparent. I know better. It was a bad call on my part. That’s all I can say.
Beyond that, I agree that lately, all I’m really good for is posting stuff late, scrambling to catch up, changing plans, and apologizing. My plan was to start putting out six articles a week in July. Life happened. I missed that target. If it was the first time I’d missed a deadline or if missing targets was at all rare for me, then everyone would forgive me. But it isn’t rare. I miss a lot of plans. I overplan, overcommit, manage my time poorly, handle my health and my emergencies poorly, and then apologize. It’s a major flaw. It has cost me work opportunities, it’s cost me followers and support, and it’s going to wreck this site and all of my future plans if I let it.
I am working on this stuff. Medically, I mean. There’s mental and physical health issues playing into this. Issues that have been decades in the making and that have gone denied and ignored for a long time. I’ve been diagnosed. I have access to help. It’s going to be a lot of work to get them all under control, but it’s something that I am working on every day of my life now. That might be ‘too little, too late’ for some of you who feel like I’ve failed you. I can’t blame you for that. You’re right. And I take full responsibility for my failures. I’ve never been afraid to own my f$&% ups. I own this.
That’s why I’ve made the conscious choice – the commitment – to work triple-hard to make it up over the coming months. Which is all I can do. I can’t fix yesterday. I can only be better today.
As of today, July 31, this article is in early access. That’s a Friday. And on Wednesday, August 5, it’s live on my main site. That means that at this moment, it’s on time and I’m on schedule. From here on out, I’m committing to posting one article for early access every Friday in August. And to then put that article out to the world on the following Wednesday. And to prove my commitment, if an article is not posted into early access on its due date on Friday, I will not collect any Patreon support for that article. If I post an article late, I don’t get paid for it. I’ll still put it out, but I won’t earn anything for it.
I know some of you will think that’s extreme, but I think it’s necessary. I need some accountability here.
At least one of those four articles will be an AngryCraft article and at least one will be about Adventure Building. I might do more than that.
That’s my commitment for August. And that’s all the commitment I’m making right now. I actually have plans to do more than that commitment, but I’m making the smallest promise I reasonably can right now. I have to break the pattern of overcommitting. If I can live up to that promise – or even surpass it – in August, I can make a bigger promise in September. And a bigger one still in October. If I can’t live up to that promise, I’m going to have a very difficult month. Financially.
As for when your personal favorite series will show up or when I’ll revive an old project, I’m not going to commit to anything else right now. I will make more commitments in the future. But I have to take things one step at a time. I have that on very good authority from someone who has my best interests at heart.
Thank you for your patience and tolerance. And, to my supporters, thanks for your support. And, to those of you who had the balls and/or ovaries to call me out on this bulls$&%, thank you. Seriously. Some of you didn’t mince any words. Some of you weren’t nice. That’s okay. Sometimes, the only thing that makes you listen are unminced, unnice words.
Now, on to fun gaming questions. Let’s see if I can burn through three of them in one go after all that.
Someone who doesn’t know how to clearly tell me what to call them asks…
How you would handle a giant monster adventure. Specifically one akin to the recent Godzilla: King of Monsters film where the humans and the monsters are both equally important to the story. Could I have the players switch between controlling the two different groups or should I just let them control the humans?
Thanks for the question. And thanks for being unclear about what to call you. That makes my job so much easier. I was going to assign you an acronym based on that header, but that would be too much effort. I’m just going to call you Wiggles. I got that from a random clown name generator I found online.
Now, I didn’t actually see Godzilla: King of Monsters, but I have to admit it’s the first Godzilla movie in recent memory whose previews intrigued me. Truth is, I haven’t seen any of the Godzilla movies. I do intend to see the original 1954 film. It’s one of those turning points in film history that I feel guilty for not having seen. But I haven’t gotten to it yet. It’s only been around for 66 years. Cut me some slack.
That said, I have an understanding of the gist of G:KoM, and I will present it in a very vague, general, and spoiler-free way for my readers. There’s a device that controls giant monsters. Humans are struggling for control of the device because some humans want to do bad things with it. The device has caused bad monsters to show up. The good humans are friendly with the good monsters and the good monsters fight the bad monsters while the good humans counter the bad humans. Got it?
Now, let me be as clear as possible. Much clearer than you were, Wiggles, about what I should call you. That thing you said at the end about letting your players control a party of humans and a party of giants monsters? That idea is absolutely f%$&ing great. It’s the perfect way to handle this game. Spot on. I could just stop right here and move on to the next question. But that’d be boring for everyone. So let me elaborate.
Having the players switch between two different parties is a really neat way to offer two different modes of play in a game. Which helps keep the game fresh and exciting. And it’s not that hard to do. Let me tell you about one of the times I did it.
Years ago, I ran a space opera campaign using TSR’s awesome Alternity system. The 1993 one. It was a spacefaring, Star Trek kind of setup. The players were part of a spacefaring organization and crewed a starship. Alternity had this neat starship and space combat system. Space battles as naval combat. Like Star Trek. Each character had a specific position on the ship and had a job to do during space exploration and combat. Characters were pilots or gunners or engineers or tactical officers or sensor technicians or whatever. To build such a character was a little demanding though. Building a character who could fill a role on a starship ate up resources and made it hard to make a character who was also an effective space marine or explorer or whatever. So, I did an upper deck/lower deck setup. Each player made two characters. One member of the ship’s command crew and one member of the exploration party. A marine or a medic or a scout or a diplomat or whatever.
Some adventures were entirely about the ship’s command crew dealing with that week’s ‘negative space wedgie’ or imperial dreadnought or whatever. Some adventures were entirely about the ship’s exploration team making contact with an alien race or exploring a drifting derelict or whatever. And some adventures switched back and forth between the two. The command crew might have to fight through an imperial blockade or navigate the ship through a plasma storm and then drop off the exploration team so they could rescue a prisoner or repair a subspace communications array. Once the players got comfortable, they’d even use the different teams strategically. When a space battle turned against them, for example, the command crew focused all their resources on the ship’s defenses while they sent the exploration team on a shuttle to board the imperial frigate and overload its reactor core.
That sort of juggling can get pretty tricky. It takes time for you – the GM – to get used to it. And it takes time for the players to get used to it too. So you want to build up to it. My game started with a couple of short adventures starring the exploration team. They’d take a shuttle down to a planet or over to a starbase and have an adventure. The command crew was just a vague presence. Then, we had an adventure with the command crew. And then we went back and forth for a bit. But each adventure featured only one of the teams. Then, one day, we had an adventure in which the command crew dropped off the exploration team and then had to abandon them to deal with an emergency. The command crew handled it and returned to pick up the exploration team. And the next week, we played out what had happened to the exploration team in the meanwhile. After that, I started building adventures that switched between the two teams.
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I wasn’t just training the players, you see. I was also testing myself. I was trying to see how far I could push the idea. Trying to see if I could run adventures that switched back and forth, scene by scene, between the two parties. And to see if the players could keep up. I could and they could. Until I tried to run one, simultaneous event where everything was happening to both the command crew and the exploration team on the same initiative track. It was a little too much. I’d found our limit.
For the most part, we just switched back and forth between command adventures and exploration adventures with an occasional adventure that featured both. In time, we came to favor the exploration adventures. The command adventures – naval exploration and combat in space – just weren’t as interesting, exciting, and varied as the exploration stuff. So the players came to view the exploration team as their ‘real characters.’ The command crew games became interesting diversions. A change of pace. But I made sure they happened often enough that we didn’t forget how the starship rules worked.
That’ll probably happen in your game. The kaiju stuff will be big and flashy, but it won’t be as varied and interesting as the human stuff. The players will end up more attached to the human characters and think of their story as the ‘real story.’ The kaiju stuff will be a fun change of pace. And given your setup, the kaiju stuff will probably end up being the sort of thing you switch into for an occasional encounter rather than an entire session or adventure, but that should work fine.
One last random idea you might consider: maybe don’t tell the players they’re going to be the kaiju outright. Present the game as an intrigue/thriller game against the backdrop of giant monsters destroying cities. Then, at the end of the first or second sessions, when the players find the kaiju controller or they awaken the good-aligned kaiju from their thousand-year slumber, that’s when you pull them aside and walk them through kaiju creation because they have to fight off the giant monster that’s trying to destroy the kaiju cryo-facility with the human characters trapped inside.
Good luck with it, Wiggles. Hope it goes well.
Halrax asks…
How important is mechanical balance in TTRPGs? How important is it to balance the different characters in the party against each other and how important is it to balance them against the challenges they’ll face. Is it possible to worry too much about mechanical balance? And don’t give me the standard answer about weighing costs and benefits and considering style preferences and rules complexity.
Thanks, Halrax, for the clear, “call me Halrax” right at the start of your e-mail. That almost makes up for the impossible f$&%ing question you posed.
I reworded the question a little. Mostly for brevity’s sake. But I didn’t change the meaning. Halrax really did ask me to expound on the importance of mechanical game balance without discussing cost-benefit issues, style preferences, or the problems associated with overdesigned rules. And that just shows that Halrax has exactly the same problem everyone does with the idea of game balance.
Mechanical balance – how tightly tweaked all the numbers are to ensure that every player has the same basic experience and that every challenge offers the same odds of success – is a design decision. At least, deciding how much to tweak and tighten the balance is a design decision. And when it comes to design decisions about entertainment products, there’s no objective right-and-wrong. Design decisions are based entirely on weighing the costs and benefits of this or that and on how well the design fits the style of game you’re trying to design. You can’t talk about design decisions without referencing that s$&%.
People think there’s objective rules and right things and wrong things to do in game design. And people also think that game balance – even mechanical game balance – is about math and numbers and odds. It isn’t. It’s a huge mess. Most of the balance in D&D, for example, is about comparing damage outputs and hit points. But look at the warlock as compared to the sorcerer or wizard. They’re both arcane spellcasters and they both have the same basic damage potential, but lots of people complain that the warlock feels limited because of the way their spell slots work. Especially at low levels. They’re not any less powerful than any other character mechanically, but they feel like they are. No amount of math can see that issue coming.
There’s way more to game balance than math and numbers and mechanical issues. And those things matter more. People think they care about mechanical balance, but they really don’t. They care about the subjective feel of things. And most of the s$&% that contributes to that is incomparable anyway. How does the ability to turn undead, for example, compare to the ability to forage for food automatically in a given type of terrain? D&D says they’re equal. Equal-ish. Okay. But what if the party never fights any undead? Or if the party never traverses the right kind of terrain? Are they still equal?
But we can put all that s$&% aside, right? We can just restrict ourselves to the stuff we can balance. We can make sure die rolls are balanced, we can make sure combat is balanced, and we can make sure that the players can contribute equal amounts of damage regardless of their character generation choices. Should we care about that s$&%? How much should we care?
If we’re not allowed to discuss costs and benefits and we’re not allowed to talk about play preferences and rules complexity, I really can’t answer that question at all. But I will offer a personal opinion and then deliver some high-minded conceptual bulls$&% to support it. TTRPG designers and GMs – especially the ones making D&D and Pathfinder – are way too f$&%ing preoccupied with mechanical balance. I think it’s one of the most overvalued things in the whole of RPGdom.
At its core, balance is about ensuring that everyone has a comparable experience, regardless of what they do or how they do it. At least if they work within the game’s framework. As long as the players make characters according to the rules and the GM doesn’t introduce a bunch of optional rules, every possible player-character will be able to contribute roughly equally to the game. At least during die rolls and combat scenes. Every player will provide the same minimum contribution and every character will be able to add roughly the same extra gravy icing to the top of the potato sundae that is the game. Roughly.
And as long as the GM – or the adventure designer – creates challenges within the game’s framework, any group of players will have roughly the same play experience in that adventure. In the case of D&D, they will succeed on roughly 65% of all of their actions and that rate of success will be enough to win six encounters each adventuring day and no one will die. That’s assuming they do nothing special. If they just play the game in the most obvious way possible, they’ll win six encounters a day and never die.
There are actually two different design decisions wrapped up in this balance s$&%. The first is the idea that every player should have the same basic experience regardless of the decisions they and the GM make. A player really can’t make a bad character. And the GM who follows the guidance in the system can’t really make an overpowered encounter. Which would be bad for the players. The second is that that experience – the basic experience – is that the players will overcome every challenge and win every adventure.
The problem with that assumption is that an RPG is supposed to be an open-ended experience where your decisions actually matter. Where they change the outcome. That’s the reason why people play RPGs instead of playing video games or watching movies. If the game is tightly balanced to ensure that, no matter what decisions you make, the game will provide the same basic experience, do your decisions actually matter? Of course, that’s a purely philosophical question. That kind of perfect balance to a single point is impossible. Instead, there’s always going to be a range of possible experiences. It’s unavoidable. The players’ choices ARE going to affect the play experience.
But now, let’s assume that there’s also a perfect experience. A target experience. It’s the experience where the game feels best. It’s the one we want most players to have. Where, in that range of possible experiences, should the perfect experience be?
Well, D&D – and most RPGs like it – have set the perfect experience to be very close to the bottom of the range of all possible experiences. Whatever decisions you make, however you play, as long as you stay within the lines, you’re going to have the perfect D&D experience. I know that’s a vague thing to say but discussing the theory of flow would take an extra thousand words right now.
It might seem weird to call that wrong. To say there’s something wrong with designing a game whose sweet spot – whose flow state – is the experience you have with it the first time you sit down and play. But most games actually don’t work like that. Most games require you get good at them. The first time you play most games, you make some mistakes. You lose. You struggle. And then, as you get to know the game, you get better at it. Eventually, you hit the sweet spot. And that is extremely satisfying for most people. People LIKE to feel like they’re getting good at things. But they need some motivation.
Note, though, that amount of work needed to get good at the game can vary widely. That’s what creates challenge or difficulty. In some games, there’s a big gap between the first experience and the sweet spot experience, which means you have to put in a lot of work to get good at it. In others, the gap is much smaller. You can get good at the game pretty quickly.
A lot of GMs – and a lot of TTRPG game designers – think that mechanical balance means “a level play experience, whatever you do, right out of the gate.” And that’s a problem. Because if that’s where you start, there’s nowhere to go but up. D&D – for example – starts at “never lose; never die.” And if you have a natural talent for it or you get good at it or you try to exploit it, you can blast way past that to “utterly destroy everything and look amazing doing it.” And then, you don’t have any balance anymore anyway. Because the good players and the exploitative players will severely overshadow the merely average players. It’s impossible to make a truly bad character in D&D, but it’s possible to trivialize everything and everyone with a really good character. And no amount of bounded accuracy or any other mathematical trick will solve that problem. Because there’s always going to be a range in an open-ended game like a TTRPG. If the bottom of the range is already “you win,” there’s no drive for players to push themselves up the range to close the gap between themselves and the really good players.
Beyond that, I think RPGs are overbalanced. And I think that’s anathema to RPGs. RPGs are open-ended. They’re about making choices and dealing with the consequences. The conceit of a role-playing game is that there’s nothing more important than the choices you make. And you can make any choices you want. That means some choices must be good and some must be bad. And success and failure have to hang in the balance. Attempts at precise balance restrict the choices you can make and the experiences you can have and place the emphasis firmly on the game’s mechanics. Especially when the baseline experience is “never lose; never die.” There’s too much emphasis on the character sheet and too little on the risks and costs of wrong choices.
Or course, some people will read that as me saying “you should never balance anything ever in an RPG.” But then, those are the same people who think mechanical balance is an objective thing you can have and not a complex interplay of costs and benefits and design goals and preferences. So whatever.
Another unnamed person asks…
I’ve been playing with my group for over a year and, recently, one of the long-term players up and ghosted us after he felt a fight was unfair. Our DM put a lot of effort into that player’s story arc and we had just spent two months on a quest to find him a magic weapon. He rolled poorly and the weapon didn’t work. That’s why he got mad. How can I help my DM? He truly pours his heart into the game and cares about us as players, so we want to return the favor.
I’m not going to tease this person for failing to provide a good name. And beyond basic proofreading, I haven’t edited the question. I received it a few weeks ago and I felt compelled to answer it immediately by e-mail because I didn’t know when I’d be able to work it into an article. It’s so heartfelt and genuine and it comes from such a good place that I couldn’t ignore it.
Here’s what I said, more or less:
You can’t really help him. But you also can. All you have to do is thank your GM. It’s as simple as that. Thank him at the end of the session. Or at the end of every session. And, for maximum effect, be specific in your thanks. Tell him what, specifically, you’re grateful for and why. Specific gratitude has a tremendously positive effect on people. To paraphrase Scott Adams, creator of Dilbert, think about the difference between saying “thanks for giving me a ride yesterday” and “thanks for giving me a ride yesterday. I was really worried about how I’d get my chores done with my car in the shop. You really helped me out.” Specificity makes a lot of difference.
If your GM put a lot of work into that last story arc, think about what you enjoyed the most. Or just think about the fact that he put so much work into it. And tell him you’re grateful for it. That’s all.
GM’s are human. They’re proud of their work and they want to feel appreciated. Short but specific and genuine ‘thank yous’ are all it takes. And remember that I don’t give life advice. This simple way to spread happiness is not to be used outside of a gaming context.
I, for one, have been completely fine with you not keeping to a regular schedule, considering how bad I am at doing so myself. Sure, I’m a little sad that certain Series haven’t been left by the wayside, but as I don’t contribute to Patroen I can’t exactly complain about what sorta things I’m being given for free.
I don’t mind if you delete this though, as although my opinion is probably worth as much as my Patreon donations, I know you’ll have read it anyway.
Same, looking at my google docs library of house rules, settings treatments, and game projects, 99% of my “portfolio” if i can call it that while sipping my tea with my pinky out, is either less than half finished or just a series of notes, diagrams and back of the napkin spreadsheet layouts. I think maybe two of them could be edited and arted into saleable products, but only after actually running them through playtesting and addressing all the oversights that are probably lurking in every sentence. There’s a reason I do blue collar work for a living. My deadlines are measured in quantifiable, physical outputs, not the esoterisms of words per minute, drafts, and editing timetables. Professional writing is like an eldritch horror from my perspective, I’ve a great deal of awe and suspicion for those that survive by it.
That was very helpful advice from Scott Adams. Thank you for passing it on.
Balance is so tricky to get right. Sometimes you want to give players an easy victory, sometimes you want to push them, and sometimes an encounter gives them many unexpected difficulties.
I had a fight last week where the party faced an eldritch knight npc (pair monster) with a few crossbowmen (gang monsters). The knight was a tank; high AC and hp but not a lot of damage. Crossbowmen the other way around.
I thought they’d figure it out soon enough and take out the damage dealers quickly but the fight lasted 8 rounds. The system worked brilliantly from the npc’s perspective but boy did I underestimate how difficult it can be to figure out what is going on. For this party that is, others may fare better..
I’m coming to realize that maybe the GM shouldn’t be concerning himself so much with what kind of difficulty to throw at the players. Sure, it’s okay to differentiate in broad ways between encounters, nuisance encounters, and climactic encounters. But, after that, the GM should really only be concerned with fair encounters. As you note, there’s so much playing into how difficult the encounter actually ends up being for the players – their choices, your reactions, the fickle hand of dice fate – that it’s kind of a fools errand. And the things that effect a sense of pacing – like the way you introduce foes and then mix and match them – are completely separate from numerical balance anyway. I’ll have more to say about this, but it just further emphasizes my point: GMs are overly obsessed with balance and it doesn’t really get them a whole lot.
I agree, you’d end up taking so many things into account the DMG would need a chapter on differential equations.
Follow the table, throw in a twist for flavour (terrain effect, interesting tactic or fighting style), sit back and relax.
Little things I’ve noticed: players nuke threats that get a grand entrance, step through a portal, or get highlighted by description. And they fall back to attrition and maneuver tactics against mobs while casually steamrolling even numbers. The only real threats are surprise one-shots or SoD effects they didn’t know were in play, the sources of one-shots/SoDEs that get demonstrated/telegraphed by way of unfortunate mooks or hirelings get the same management style as big solo bosses.
Tldr; only real way I’ve seen to TPK with sure chances is “be mean and drop mortars on them”.
I concur, any whiff of casting ability appears to attract this kind of attention.
This is clear with combat. Do we have more control tuning the difficulty of adventures as a whole? Time limits, solving various problems, dealing with dilemmas, convincing npcs not to do the stupid thing, those aspects. There are no numbers involved so we’re not fooled by a false sense of accuracy.
Perhaps the concept of “difficulty” can only be seen as an aspect of actual play rather than a design element. We can vary the rough level complexity we’re adding, ie normal combat but in a stream so players could fall and be swept away a short distance, or there’s a fire slowly creeping up, pushing the PCs towards a cliff, but how difficult that ends up being depends on players’ choices throughout the game.
Perhaps we should remove the word from our vocabulary entirely.
I mean, considering it’s hard to accidentally create a TPK encounter that isn’t obviously overwhelming or a rocks-fall scenario, it’s probably better to make an encounter fun and thematic with interesting props and scene elements to play with than to try to dial the challenge meter into crystal clarity like we’re the opening announcer for the Outer Limits. Or at least that’s what I think Angry himself is dancing around along with the rest of us: where’s the goldilocks zone between fun and challenge.
Yeah tpk or even player death is not a desirable outcome for anyone (or shouldn’t). The threat should be there but you don’t want to aim for it.
Combat design then mostly revolves around making it varied, interesting and/or epic as you say.
Oh, i remember what I wanted to say now, it’s a big spiel about how you don’t need to make literal puzzles or literal “can you roll x before y rolls z” gamist challenges. A puzzle could be an evironmental oddity with an answer hidden in the context of the scene (the players find a staff of Icewrath in the dragon cult antechamber and now it makes sense why red kobolds are working with frost wraiths) and a challenge could be figuring out the theme of your encounter setups and adapting group strategues to deal with the trend. Like, emergent play instead of “planned”.
Yes exactly. Yesterday I saw my players figure out that it’s better to cast shatter in the middle of a group of zombies and kill them by dual wielding torches than repeatedly try single hits with high damage weapons.
Overcoming their ability to keep a hit point on a Con save was a challenge, especially when there’s a large group of them, and they did it by paying attention and changing their approach. None of them lost significant health but they were certainly struggling..
This kind of goes for social interactions too, doesn’t it? Players tend to zero in on NPCs that are highlighted, have certain content flags in their description, and to carry the analogy, crowds are managed more than confronted, while surprises and trap interactions should be used sparingly if at all. There’s probably a general rule of scene construction and suspension of disbelief that’s been done to death five articles over and this commentary is well past stating the obvious, so I’ll shut up instead of trying to squeeze my rambling thoughts from the last two hours in here.
Balance is tricky to get right because you can never work out how dense your players are nor how whiny.
All right, all right. Let’s be a bit kinder. You will never get perfect agreement between yourself and the players on what constitutes an easy encounter or a difficult encounter. Difficulty is perception, not a mathematical equation, and the players, being out on the receiving side of the DM screen, do not have the same perception as the DM. Believing otherwise is to believe religiously in the CR system, and we know how wiggy that one is, even after three or four different editions.
About all the purpose I think CRs can ever serve is the purpose Michael Jai White gave to boxers wrapping their hands (in that erudite cinematic artpiece called ‘Never Back Down 3: No Surrender’): because “You don’t know how to punch without hurting yourself. Not your opponent — hurting your damn self.” And went on to explain how you could only learn proper technique by punching with bare knuckles.
I’m starting to think CR can only ever work as training wheels for a new or journeyman DM. CR was aimed at the lowest common denominator of players – game store casuals, etc, as Angry has pointed out before. And let’s remember that CR is meant as a DM tool, not a player tool. Hence, it’s aimed at the lowest common denominator of DMs … the game store casual, etc. I have a suspicion that much of the angst around CR and balance would be resolved pretty quickly the day D&D changes the phrase “Challenge Rating” to “Suggested Level of Party”.
Angry, is your answer to Halrax’s question supposed to apply to balancing different character concepts, or just to choices made during the game? The part about how skilled players should have a higher chance of success, and that should drive players to try to learn the game better, I mean. You don’t seem to draw a distinction between those two situations in the article, which I think might be a mistake.
For choices made during play, the fun comes mostly from trying to figure out what the best option is to achieve your goals. Should I cast fireball or stinking cloud? Shall I risk an attack of opportunity to heal my ally? Should I ask for more money for rescuing the princess, or will that just annoy the king? (Of course, there’s also the possibility of doing something suboptimal because it’s in character, like honourably agreeing to rescue the princess even though you think you could squeeze out more money. But that’s relatively rare.)
On the other hand, your choice of base character concept isn’t about finding the optimal way to do things. I mean optimising builds is definitely fun, but I think most players and GMs would prefer to choose their core concept based on what they think would be interesting to roleplay or what class has interesting mechanics they want to use, not based on which class is mechanically the most powerful. I certainly would. Saying “monks are bad, so as your skill increases you’ll learn not to play monks and to play spellcasters instead” isn’t much help if I have a concept for a martial artist I want to play.
“For choices made during play, the fun comes mostly from trying to figure out what the best option is to achieve your goals.”
I’m honestly not sure that applies to all that many players.
If i asked my pathfinder groups they’d definitely all agree with you. But my DnD groups? At least half of them probably couldn’t care less about whether one AoE spell is slightly better than the other. They just choose whichever option is cooler/thematically relavent.
Which is where so much of what Angry is talking about comes in. For two groups it’s definitely a matter of balancing encounters, being aware that they’re above average players and tweaking things so that they are facing slightly higher CRs than usual.
With the other group i know that a great deal of their choices skew them closer to the “new player” power level even if they’re not new.
Completely agree. Angry asserts that for choices to have meaning, there must be good and bad options. This obviously isn’t true: choices in character creation are often expressions of identity rather than optimization. As you said, picking a class is an expressive choice, not a test of meta rules knowledge. It seems reasonable to me that TTRPGs could aspire to have no “bad” options for character power because, among PCs of equal level, that’s not what they’re meant for: they’re meant to be evocative and distinctive.
Angry, I need help! So, I’ve got this idea for a massive Iron Golem one-shot, where the PCs are delving into a fallen colossus to kill a disease spreading and creating a hive mind of shadow insects. But I’m trying to make a gigantic, static, organic map of its insides that have become gross and moldy for a dynamic that will be constantly changing where the scavengers of the wreck are fighting to survive against the disease. Does anyone have any map tips and/or tripwire tips for when certain things happen that change the game?
https://www.reddit.com/r/lfg/comments/i39sj6/onlineestfateother_oneshot_homebrew_golem_dungeon/
Thank you!
Look up the tension pool articles Angry wrote, they provide a mechanic to visibly “track time” as it were and triggers for rolls that decide whether complications occur.
One of my favorite ways to create maps (I’m lazy) is by taking a real-world map and reskinning it to fit the setting. I’m running an airship pirates game in Eberron right now and needed a cool map for Eston – so I reskinned Paris.
An easy way to make a golem would be a map of human anatomy, you’ve got a whole variety of tubes and channels you could send them through. Then just make it gross? And I love the idea of using the tension pool.
Better yet, take the internal schematics of something like an industrial power plant or diesel locomotive, the number of pistons and valves should give you a decent multibranch set of pathways to clog up and turn into a barely recognizable maze.
How many watch lists do I end up on if I Google the schematics of a power plant..?
Fewer than you’d think based on my experiences.
Sweet. I’ll try this out and take note of the pistons. Maybe I’ll get lucky with an automaton :D. I really want to confuse the players when they explore the belly of the beast, there’s gonna be all kinds of nasty dripping stuff on them as they get occasionally jump-scared by insectoid attackers who can see in the dark. Phyrexian.
I hope you and Tiny are doing well, and I wish you both the best of luck on getting the help you need. It is disappointing when a article gets delayed or a series gets dropped from the rotation, but for the time being, I can’t support on Patreon, so I have no complaints. Even if I were supporting you financially, for me, you’re like George Martin with the Song of Ice and Fire books – sometimes you make me wait and wait and wait for content, but it’s of such high quality that it’s always worth the wait. Stay awesome and stay healthy!
Half the issue is that it’s untenable for me to keep stacking all of my work at the end of the month. And because of the poor workflow, I end up with no time left to work on anything else I need to work on to grow and succeed. So, thank you. But I’m really doing this for myself and for my future success as much as for my supporters.
I’ve been a long time Patreon supporter at your lowest level. I think it’s the one where you don’t spit on me if you met me in public.
I’ve been where you are and have tried punishing myself financially when I don’t meet commitments. It didn’t work for me. I ended up not getting any more work done but having less money.
What worked was being realistic about what I could achieve, based on what I’d previously achieved. Only raising my targets when I was meeting my targets and scaling back my planned work when I wasn’t. If your health isn’t great and you’re doing things mostly right to manage that, it’s fine if you have a bad week because of that. Don’t beat yourself up and don’t say I have to work extra hard for the time I’ve lost. As long as you’re making consistent progress overall everything is fine.
I appreciate the quality of your articles, some of them have really changed my perspective on the game. So thanks a lot for that.
Thank you for the feedback, but I’m in a different situation. And I know myself. This isn’t really a matter of punishing myself financially. It’s a matter of using a psychological trick on myself to move my deadlines from the end of the month. I have no problem getting the articles out, as I’ve demonstrated. It’s a matter of when I get them out and how much work I stack at the end of the month. It’s a bit much to explain. But suffice to say this is the best approach for me and my situation.
That kinda sounds like what they’re doing to our shop, but not really, too vague to tell. Sales have been jumped up 25% but we’re working with the same production and shipping staff and have only increased available staging space in our docks by 5%. It doesn’t help that they also dropped a wad of cash on some austrian door sorting robot, costing us something like 20% of our warehousing while it’s assembled and troubleshot- and the damned roboticists can’t finish the job because of covid travel bans. Suffice to say, our docks are a mess and the ambitous overbuilding is causing every night, even the small volume shipments, to run past 12hrs.
If you ever need npc smalltalk for a scene, just have them gripe about their superiors being inefficient about their ambitions, not only is it humanly common to commiserate, you can give your players info on weakpoints.
I have to agree with Giles.
I was already worried when you said you were going to start churning out 6 articles per month. But hearing that you’re going to work triple-hard from now on, and you’re going to punish yourself with financial loss everytime you fail, sounds to me like you are demanding way too much of yourself, to the point of self-mistreatment.
I don’t know, maybe you work better this way. I, personally, would follow this moment of fragility after a really bad month by taking things easier, with rewards for success instead of punishments for failure. You know, the other side of the same coin.
Anyway, Maslow’s Pyramid has better arguments than I do. Don’t fuck up your base needs by overworking, don’t fuck up your finantial security by punishing yourself, and don’t shut people out while you strive to be better… or else you’ll have an even harder time reaching the creative potential at the top.
In the end, I’m just an admirer of your work.
Don’t die, or else I’ll end up having to listen to other, less-great GMs.
As much as I agree with all of this, Angry has stated multiple times that he’s sought professional help. It’s not as if he’s just diving into this by himself so give him a chance to figure things out.
If it doesn’t work this way I’m sure he’ll reevaluate and act accordingly, at the end we’re just internet strangers who know very few details of what’s going on here.
Thank you.
As for running two parties, this is a trick I’ve seen in a couple of mecha-based systems, where the pilot and the mecha are functionally different characters in that they have different stat blocks. This allows for quiet moments with the pilots as humans in addition to the flashy robot battles. The systems which try to have this both ways, using a subset of the pilots’ abilities (e.g. ability scores) in the mecha portion, tend not to see precious character resources invested in the on-foot-only parts.
While this raises the question of why you spend time on a less-interesting mode of play, the simple answer is that you maintain the interest curve with quiet moments. Adding context to action scenes helps elevate those action scenes beyond a board game.
Slightly unrelated thought:
D&D 4e provides a great bunch of rules to adjudicate mechwarrior combat. Discuss.
Most games already effectively have multiple parties built in, they’re just the same character. My players have a set of mechanics and interactions they use in combat, a set they use in more “technical encounters,” a set they use in social situations, and the characters they play while doing intra-party RP – there is very little overlap in the mechanics, or even the characterization, in each different play-mode.
I’m curious if anyone has examples of ways to make a more separated multiparty system like this one feel more integrated (I like the idea of the mecha/pilot dichotomy, it’s like a hybrid). I’m especially intrigued by the bridge crew/away team setup and wondering if anyone has ideas to help players be more invested in both of them
I ran a game with what I called “witches” who dealt with the physical plane and their familiars, which could directly interact with the spirit world. Long story short though I know this sounds obvious, keep the two parties connected. And each players two characters directly connected. I suspect that one story will eventually tend to dominate more than the other. So perhaps try to plan accordingly. Instead of 50/50 aim for 66/33 or 75/25.
I feel like the tendency to overbalance is what screwed over the D&D 5E Ranger. The Ranger’s signature ability is favoured enemy and terrain, which means they should be more effective in certain environments and against certain enemies. But 5E is build on a philosophy of “everything should be equal all the time” (which is why there are so few vulnerabilities among monsters), and this clashes with the Ranger’s identity.
Their solution was to basically only give bonuses to tracking, which kinda makes the Ranger feel lackluster, and very much like a fighter with spells
I meant to write a novel this summer. I’ve got 40 pages. I only got back to working on it after a two year hiatus that started from the traumatic birth of my son because of your article on lizard brain and the fear of trying . . . This is a specific thank you.
2 things.
1) I always read these articles on my mobile phone, and for some reason the formatting of the comments made anything after the first few replies unreadable at one word per line. This is now fixed, so thank you.
2) I appreciate the guidance on running multiple parties in an upper deck/lower deck style. I’ve always wanted to run this in my games, but wasn’t sure how to best pull it off.
I can’t take credit for it. That was thanks to a very helpful reader who provided me some CSS tweaks for the way the comment section displayed on small screens.
I am that helpful reader! It felt like the least I could do for the amount I’ve learnt from Angry’s teachings. Thanks for all you give us Angry!
Now we’ll be able to argue over our incorrect understanding of your articles with multiple words per a line in the comments sections on our phones! You can decide if this is a blessing or a curse 🙂
Thank you sir!
Thanks a lot!
I haven’t even read the article yet. I came straight to the comment section to see if anyone else had mentioned how it was amazingly readable today. So thank you very much for providing the code, and thank you Angry for implementing it.
This comment section is really nice now. Thanks a lot!
When you make an experience perfectly consistent, repeatable, and reliable, you get McDonald’s.
The problem is only when someone comes in and thinks they’re going to get something special, unique, or even delicious.
You can even make special, unique, and delicious consistent, repeatable, and reliable. It’ll just be Hawksmoor London ($25 burger, the best I have ever eaten in my fifty years on this planet) or Per Se, which is to say incredibly expensive and pretty inflexible. “Expensive” in a TTRPG is usually time, much more time than people have (to say nothing of more time than they’re willing to pay). It’s also commitment and skill.
Of course, most roleplayers don’t know the difference. I didn’t know what a burger could be until.
When I was in college my mentor drilled into a simple phrase that has done me very well over the years, especially professionally. “Under-promise. Over-deliver.”
I’ve noticed most people have good intentions, but life is complicated. It really helps to keep my personal commitments to myself (make a goal of 3 but I tell everyone else 1). If I complete 3, it’s either a pleasant surprise or, better yet, I have back ups for those days when I cant meet that goal of one.
All I’m saying is if your struggling on the workload, don’t try and force yourself to do 2x as much to catch up!
Not that I don’t think you can do it, I just don’t want you setting yourself for failure.
But that is not precisely what I’m struggling with.
Look, I appreciate that everyone just wants the best for me and wants to provide me with the wisdom of their years, but I find these comments kind of wearisome. Before you give a person specific advice about their life, it is imperative that you take the time to understand their life and their problems. Otherwise, you’re just offering aphorisms. I know me and my situation. Moreover, as I’ve stated in previous articles, I have the assistance of various professionals and other supporters in my life who do know what is going on and why it is happening. The problem is NOT in what I promise or that I promise more than I can deliver. Beyond that, it’s personal.
While I am grateful to everyone who wants to help, I’m going to ask you – as politely as I can – to stop. Not only is it wearisome, but it can be quite condescending. Especially when you oversimplify someone else’s issues through a lack of understanding the details or the person involved.
Please stop. Or else I will close comments on this post.
Larry Niven wrote a story once in which the first paragraph basically tells you that in the tale you’re about to read, the “game balance” is such that anybody who would want to play a barbarian in that world will find nothing but frustration and the glory will go to the wizard players. Because Niven values intellect over brawn and meant for the story to reflect that preference. So a licensed game based on the story shouldn’t even include a player barbarian option because that’s not what the game should be about. And that, in essence, is what “balance” at the rule design level is — it’s what the game is really about. A game is never really “not balanced”, though it might not be about what some players want it to be about.
Likewise, campaign balance is what the campaign is about. Adventure balance is what the adventure is about. Encounter balance is what the encounter is about. Party balance (brawn/skills/arcane magic/divine magic) is what the party is about. The interaction of all these in play is what the game is about, and “balance” is a buzzword that I’ve never seen help anyone to understand.
But imagine playing a barbarian in such a world regardless. Finding your own glory, or perhaps eventually bending the culture to appreciate and even celebrate barbarian exploits. the frustration they encounter only fuels their resolve. And that is where the real story lays
I see your point, and agree with it to an extent. But I wish I could find the story again to quote the entire first paragraph. Niven’s attitude was clearly such that what you’re describing in this case Is Absolutely Not The Way This World Works Or Can Work. In our real world, if I repeatedly bash my head against a three-foot thick brick wall in an attempt to knock it over, well, yeah, if it worked I’d have something to brag about. But what’s actually going to happen is that I’ll come away with a severe concussion as a best case scenario. I appreciate the Kirk solution to the kobiyashi maru as much as the next guy, but the point of that was that Kirk was not beating the game, he was actually insistent on playing a different one. “Balance” is just that this game is not that game over there.
Speaking about gratitude: Thank you Angry. Thank you for for providing genuine, passionate advice about an incredibly complex and rewarding hobby. GM’ing TTRPG’s is relatively easy to get into, but deceptively hard to master, and you provide a wealth of insight, in an entertaining and digestible way
Thank you as well for providing the work for free. I’m glad you’re finding ways to become more reliable to those that support you financially on an ongoing basis, i wish you the best of success. Sadly I cannot support you on Patreon, but I did buy your book, which is great! And I will likely also purchase an Angry RPG if it ever comes to fruition
I, for one, look forward to many more years of great articles, and always enjoy reading them at every opportunity. So once again, thank you
I agree with balance being overrated. I don’t play TTRPG’s because I want a sanitized experience regardless of the character I create. And I certainly don’t want to be hand-held into an ideal way of playing any given character just to maintain balance. To me that is specifically what video games are for: meta-gaming. You can cheese AI, you can apply effects that were never intended to stack, there is usually only one or two objectively “best” character builds in any given game
I play TTRPG’s BECAUSE they’re not balanced. I specifically roll random characters BECAUSE I don’t want to meta-game them. I want to forge their destiny into a world of my imagination. I like putting my characters through physical and psychological hell, so I can relate their experiences to myself without the risk of actually doing dangerous things. I enjoy filtering my perception through a set of differently-flawed lenses so I can learn something new about myself
I don’t even like the idea that each class should be balanced. I remember when paladins were rare because you had to roll high on quite a few stat rolls before you could even consider it. Part of the power fantasy, at least for me, is going from rags to riches, from weakling to demi-god, and having to earn it dagnabbit. The story has so much more meaning if you had to overcome incredible odds to get there. And it’s so often more about what we had to sacrifice to get there than it was ever about what we gained from success
Of course you can do this with any character, regardless of balance, but balance is not the key, and never was, not by a long shot