Here’s the deal…
This month’s been a complete disaster and I totally refuse to let it spread to next month.
No, you didn’t misread the title. This is an Ask Angry column, not Angry’s Log, Supplemental. I’m just explaining why it’s an Ask Angry and not an essay about open worlds, a follow-up lesson about scheduling, or more about scenario design. That shit’s all coming in July — along with a new fun podcast for everyone.
The problem’s that that six-thousand-word rant about scheduling that took three fucking rewrites absolutely killed me. So, today, you get a few thousand words of Ask Angry. I’ve pulled five questions from my mailbag and I’m gonna answer them all using as few words as I possibly can. But it’s me so that means three to four thousand. Whatever.
If you’d like to be a part of a future desperate, eleventh-hour columns o’ crap, e-mail your question to ask.angry@angry.games. Remember to keep it brief, get to the fucking point, and give me explicit permission to use whatever name or handle you supply. Unlike our first dumbass.
Our first dumbass asks…
… a question that’s too damned long and so got deleted. Half of it was just the dumbass reminding me of shit I’d said in previous articles. I didn’t even get to the actual question because I got so bored reading about things I’d written. I don’t know why people assume I don’t know what I said. I’m the one who said it. Just cut to your fucking question.
So that’s one question down and four to go. This is gonna be easy.
Some other dumbass asks…
… another question that is really close to being too damned long, but which I’m gonna allow because it’s, at least, succinct. Remember, brevity ain’t always about word count. Too bad I can’t call them anything other than dumbass. It’s no wonder all y’all need so much help running games. Roleplaying games are all about reading comprehension and y’all suck at it.
Anyway…
Some other dumbass asks…
I often have trouble predicting what little details players will ask for. E.g.: the height of a tower or the depth of a lake. I try to look things up in advance, but certain things don’t occur to me until they come up. How do you keep track of what details are important? Do you have a checklist?
Full disclosure: I did a little editing here for length and clarity.
No, I don’t have a checklist. That’d be impossible. I’m armed only with a keen understanding of my role as Game Master and years of experience at this. I can help you with one of those and I can help you fake the other until you get there. But first, I’ve got to point out that you don’t actually have to answer every question.
That, “How deep is the lake,” question caught my eye. I’ve never found myself able to discern by sight anything about the depth of a body of water beyond my ability to see the bottom. So, if the water’s gonna be over my head, the lake might as well be infinitely deep for all I know. Unless I’m swimming for the bottom. But even then, humans suck at estimating normal distances, let alone vertical distances while swimming. Yes, there are mechanical reasons to work this shit out, but if the players ask me how deep the lake is, I’m just gonna say, “Your character has no way to know or discern that. It’s deep enough to drown in; that’s all you know.”
Remember that your job is to describe what the characters see, hear, perceive, and know. It’s not to spout facts from the Faerunian World Almanac and Book of Facts. And that’s good because raw numbers are the suckiest way to describe anything. Most people can’t translate numbers to visualization. It’s much more useful to describe a building by the number of floors it’s got — which is discernable by the placement of windows and timbers and shit — than to point out its roofline is 35 feet above the ground. Comparisons are your best friend here. Even if they’re anachronistic. I’ve got no problem describing things in terms of the lengths of football fields — the American equivalent to quidditch pitches for you Europeans — or the width of suburban streets or the heights of modern two-story buildings or whatever. Anything to help the players see the world.
That’s what I mean when I say, “I understand my role as a Game Master.” I don’t have to tell the players anything their characters can’t see and I’ve only got to help the players imagine what their characters see.
Of course, there are game mechanical issues here. Falling damage is based on feet to the ground and swimming speed is swimming distance over swimming time. Thus, when it comes to resolving actions, you sometimes need such details. But you don’t need precise numbers, you need reasonable estimates. Unfortunately, most Game Masters suck at estimating things like size, scale, and distance. And your question seems particularly fixated on size, scale, and distance.
Game Masters often need to know shit like, how big a thing is and how far away it is and whether you can see it from where you are and so on. Or rather, they’ve got to be able to pull useful estimates from their asses. Building that skill involves two different homework assignments.
Without freaking out about realism or medieval architecture or any other horseshit like that, let’s do a little activity here. Imagine there’s a two-story inn in the village. How tall is it? How might you guess the answer?
I’d start by noting that I am a normal human and, as such, I stand about six feet tall. I also note that my head doesn’t bonk off the ceilings when I’m inside buildings. There’s some clearance there, but there’s not enough clearance that I could climb up my own back and stand on my head. So there’s probably ten feet between the floor and the ceiling. Roughly. If there was another room above this room, that’d be ten more feet. I might add a foot or two for the thickness of the floors and ceilings, but, honestly, ten feet per story is a pretty good estimate. So a two-story inn is probably 20 to 25 feet tall. Easy.
That doesn’t just let me estimate the height of two-story inns though. What I’ve done is calibrate my sense of height. If there’s a simple round tower in my world I can just picture it next to the inn and ask myself how much taller is the tower than the inn? Twice as tall seems kinda short. Ten times as tall is way too big. Maybe it’s three times as tall. Or five times as tall. Either is a good answer. That means the tower is 60 to 100 feet tall.
Is that accurate? Who gives a shit. It’s reasonable. It’s useful. And it took me a few seconds to get there.
So your first homework assignment is to practice estimating things based on things you know.
Your second assignment is to calibrate your spatial senses. If you’re like most people — and statistically you are — you’ve got a sucky sense of size, scale, and distance. And Game Masters can’t have sucky senses of size, scale, and distance. They work with too many sizes and distances.
For example, do you have any idea how big the room you’re in right now is? Can you just blurt out the correct answer? I can. This room is 12 feet by 10 feet. Most residential room dimensions are on the order of eight to 12 feet. That’s a useful thing to know. It’s also funny to note how small that makes normal rooms in terms of D&D combat squares. A medieval village hovel would barely have a square and a half on a combat map. Try not to think too hard about that.
How wide is the street outside your residence? Find out. Look it up. You’ve got the Internet. Type, “How wide are residential streets” into Duck Duck Goose or whatever.
Here’s another question: how far is a quarter mile? I’m not asking you for a conversion to feet or centipedes or whatever. What does a quarter mile of distance look like? How much can you see of something that’s a quarter mile away? Do you know? Can you find out? Sure you can. Whenever you’re out and about, pay attention to any distance markers you see. If there’s a highway sign that reads, “Exit Right, ¼ Mile,” look ahead. Can you see the exit ramp? The sign? Whatever.
Most people drive around with navigational dealies constantly telling Skynet their every move. Pay attention to Skynet. When Skynet says, “In 500 feet, turn right at the stop sign,” look ahead and see how far that is. That’s what 500 feet looks like. Is there a person standing there? How big do they seem? How much detail can you spot? What can you tell about that person?
If you ever find yourself wandering around and you look across a field to a building or whatever, whip out your phone and check your map and see how far away it is. “Huh! So, that’s a mile. Good to know.”
The more you do this shit, the better your sense of scale and size and spacial awareness will be. And when you have to estimate distances and sizes in your games, they’ll come easier and easier. I know that means leaving your house and paying actual attention to the world beyond your phone when you do and I know that ain’t something gamers are into, but as a Game Master, your job’s to conjure an imaginary world from nothing. You kinda have to know what a world is like.
But my advice doesn’t end there, so it’s a good thing that first dumbass got his question disqualified. You get the extra word count.
My second piece of advice is to make it a habit to look up anything you drop in your world. Is that village on the shore of a lake? Do you know anything about lakes? Do you even know what there is to know about lakes? Even if you think you do, assume you don’t, because most people think they know shit they don’t. Read an online encyclopedia article about lakes. And don’t just skim it; read it like you’re actually curious. Game Masters must have an attitude of curiosity. When you read the deepest lake in the world is Lake Baikal in Russia — with a maximum depth of 1 mile — you should wonder, “Huh, I wonder how deep a normal lake is. I wonder how deep that big lake in my state is.”
Hell, if you really want to do this right, open up an online map and scan around until you find a lake that’s the right size for the lake you just dropped in your world, then put its name in a search field and learn about that lake.
Game Masters don’t just lack a sense of spatial awareness, they also exhibit a distressing-to-the-point-of-heartbreaking lack of curiosity about completely normal, mundane things. And they’re all egomaniacs who think they don’t have to look shit up because they’re already so smart and they already know so much. Don’t be that asshole. Assume your brain is empty and instill in yourself a desire to fill it up. Gaming is the vehicle by which you teach yourself everything there is to know about everything.
My third — and last — piece of advice is: whenever your players blindside you with a question you can’t answer, write the question down. Even if you pull an estimate from your ass or tell the players that’s not information they could ever know, write it down anyway. After the game, find out the answer. You don’t have to tell the players the answer — you shouldn’t, actually — but you must never leave a question you couldn’t answer forgotten and unanswered. Why? First, it’ll help you calibrate your ability to come up with estimates. Every piece of actual, factual information improves your ability to guess things you don’t know. Second, it’ll help you learn what sorts of questions you should prepare answers for. When you pay careful attention to the questions you’re asked, it trains you to anticipate the questions you’re gonna be asked next time.
And that’s what I meant when I said, “I’ve got years of experience.” I paid attention to the questions people have asked me and, as a result, I know what questions to anticipate and I’ve got a lot of calibrating facts that let me come up with reasonable estimates.
Forehead asks…
Why do players get bored with their characters? If I kill a 3rd-level PC, they reminisce about their fallen idol for years, but by the time they reach 8th level, they’re like, “Hey, can you kill off Clarence so I can make a new character?” What gives?
Full disclosure: I cleaned this question up a tiny bit for readability. Otherwise, thanks, Forehead for following my basic-ass instructions. And may I say it’s good to see you on your feet and doing well after the incident at Chairface Chippendale’s birthday party.
Let me reassure you, Forehead, that this ain’t just a you thing. This lament is actually growing increasingly common in the roleplaying gaming space. There have always been a few players floating around the space with what we used to call Alt-itis — the endless need to start new characters — but that’s a personality thing. Some people are just like that. But, lately? Yeah, there’s been a drastic increase in Game Masters reporting players requesting assisted character suicides so they can play something new.
Incidentally, why the motherloving crap do players think their characters have to die before they can have a new one. Back in my day, we just retired the characters we were done with. They’d just settle down or wander off into the sunset or go live with the martial arts master in his cave or whatever.
This problem’s especially prevalent in modern Dungeons & Dragons. I assume there’s a similar problem in the Pathfinder 2 community, but it’s for different reasons and I’m only saying that because the original Pathfinder already had that problem. I don’t actually follow PF2 and I don’t care to.
I think — personally — there are two forces at play here and I’m not sure there’s much you can do to fight either one that won’t result in a lot of players kicking and screaming and biting. So I’m not gonna spend too much time on this. Especially because I’ve written about all this shit before in various places for different reasons.
First, the modern understanding of D&D is that it’s about creating a character and then taking that character on adventures. You build an in-game avatar all your own, dress it up, customize it to your liking, then slip it on like a skin and go play. That approach emphasizes the creativity inherent in character creation over any other aspect of play. That’s not only trained a lot of players to see the game that way but it’s also attracted a lot of players to D&D who might otherwise never have tried it but who are drawn to that sort of creative expression.
I ain’t saying that’s a good thing or a bad thing — though I know the comment section’s gonna have a lot to say about that and I know someone’s going to scream about Mike Mercer and the Critical Rollers — I’m just acknowledging it’s a thing.
The issue is that you only make your character one time and then you play it forever. So if you’re really into the creative character creation thing as a primary intrinsic motivation for play, you’re gonna start chomping at the bit to make a new one after a while. In fact, I’m willing to bet that if you got a grant and did the science, you’d find that the players who get bored the quickest are the ones who either make the weirdest-ass furry half-tortle feylock raised by awakened wolves characters or the ones draw their own anime character portraits or the ones who write the longest backstories and keep in-character journals by way of recaps.
As a side note, if you’re a Pathfinder goblin rather than a D&D goon, replace everything I said about creative expression with something that rhymes with mechanical build optimization. If you’re a build-optimizer, you make your build once, wait for it to level up to its signature powers, and then you’re done. You won the game. Because Pathfinder emphasizes that kind of thing, you see a lot of PFers — it’s pronounced Piffer — with Alt-itis too.
At least you did back in PF1. I assume that’s only gotten worse with PF2.
Second, there’s a serious lack of any kind of dynamical character growth in modern roleplaying games. There’s this joke that character creation is about building the character you intend to play at 10th level and then leveling them down to 1st. And whether you’re in this shit for mechanical growth or narrative growth or both, that’s definitely how it be. Characters don’t grow, change, or evolve through play. They just become more of what they already are. Their personal journeys are done before the game even starts. And I’ve written at length about how character dynamics are vital to build a sense of emotional investment. If someone’s traveling a straight-line path — mechanically or narratively or both — it’s hard to stay invested for long.
The real culprit is that modern roleplaying games are way more focused on the characters and their builds and their antics than they are on the characters’ quests and the worlds they quest in while, at the same time, lacking any real opportunities for growth or evolution. Paradoxically, that shit leads to players being less invested in their own characters. You can mitigate the problem by restricting character choices, forcing random character generation systems, and inhibiting players from writing backstories by forcing them to generate their characters and start playing in the same session. That’ll actually increase the players’ attachments to their characters, even though it seems like it should have the opposite effect. The problem is, you’ll have to endure a lot of pissing and moaning and grumbling and fighting to get there. If you can even get there at all.
So, you’re probably just stuck letting your players constantly swap out their dumb anime furry fanfic avatars every five levels. Or you can kill them off every three levels. Which does have its charms I must admit.
James and Martin ask…
Action economy… initiative systems… etc.
Yes, I’m cheating again. I’m doing a twofer because James and Martin asked kinda similar questions and, by answering them, I can also stop one or two other people from nagging me about this shit in the comments and in my supporter Discord community.
I remarked a few weeks ago that the Action Economies of modern roleplaying games are borked to hell and back and then refused to explain any further. Partly because I’ve explained it before and partly because, every time I bring up action economies, a dozen assholes message me to remind me that Pathfinder has fixed this and every other problem in roleplaying games ever.
It hasn’t. Shut up.
What’s Action Economy? It’s one of those annoying, broad, badly defined terms gamers love to throw around. And everyone’s got their own definition which makes conversing about it an absolute freaking delight. Really, it’s just down to, “How much can a given in-game creature — player or non — do in a given interval of game time” and how that affects the play experience.
In D&D, the Action Economy is basically down to this: every creature gets one turn per combat round during which they may move and take one action. Additionally, creatures with available bonus actions may take one on each turn. Additionally additionally, between turns, each character can make a reaction if any are available, including opportunity attacks. I’m generalizing here. Don’t nitpick me.
In Pathfinder it’s similar, but everyone gets what amounts to three Action Points to take actions with and movement is a kind of action. But I’m not getting into the nuances here and I don’t care to hear about them and I don’t want to join your PF2 game so I can see how it fixes everything. Sorry. I prefer games people actually want to play.
I know I’m being a bit mean about this, but, seriously, PF2ers are like vegans and cross-fitters these days. Do you know how you can tell whether someone plays Pathfinder? You don’t have to; they’ll tell you. Are y’all bitter because WotC took their market share back and Pathfinder 2 wasn’t the turnaround y’all hoped it would be?
Seriously, stop @-ing me.
Anyway…
I said that modern, tactical roleplaying games universally have shit Action Economies. They’re balanced based purely on damage output. And that seems okay. Hypothetically, if everyone gets one attack per round, all it takes to balance a fight between five heroes and one monster is to give the monster five times as many hit points and a five-times greater damage per round and everything’s mathemagically fine.
From a purely math standpoint, that works. But the minute you take it to the table, you discover there are some issues. What happens is the five heroes pin down the monster and then everyone just swings back and forth. That’s called a Tank-n-Spank: you pin down the monster and trade hits until the monster’s dead.
There’s more to combat than just damage-per-round. Positioning is a big part of tactical roleplaying game combat. If you’re a melee bruiser, you’ve got to position yourself to attack, but you’re automatically vulnerable to attack. If you’re a ranged combatant, you need to get a clear line of fire, but you’ve got to stay the hell away from attackers. If a monster comes at you, you need to flee or else count on one of your melee bruiser buddies to intercept. And, if you’re a spellcaster, you just fuck up the balance because you can do anything. Seriously, nerf plz.
In a five-on-five fight — or anything close to it — the fact that you’ve got heroes operating at different ranges and people joining and withdrawing from engagements and dropping foes and intercepting to close holes means the fights are pretty dynamic. But in a five-on-one fight — or even a five-on-two or five-on-three fight — the outnumbered force can’t react dynamically to the actions taken against it. It can’t help but get pinned down. An extra action at the end of its turn or a Lair Action once per round doesn’t mitigate the problem nearly enough. Neither does Multiattack.
But positional dynamism ain’t the only kind of dynamism at play. In fact, it’s just a symptom of a bigger dynamical problem. A good fight needs some dynamics in the turn order. It needs a sense of going back and forth, not round and round.
When the fight’s five-on-one, the one baddie gets a turn and then every hero gets a turn. And even in a five-on-five fight, because most Game Masters combine the actions of identical creatures into one turn and don’t often use mixed forces, even group-on-group battles devolve into situations wherein all the monsters go and then all the heroes go. There’s no sense of dynamic interplay between the forces’ actions. It’d be far better if one of the heroes goes, then a monster goes, then another hero, then two monsters, then the three remaining heroes, then the last monster. Or something like that.
Have you ever heard people complain about static battles in tabletop roleplaying games? They’re usually complaining that, after a round or two of jockeying for position, everyone ends up standing still and trading blows. But that’s actually totally normal and not static at all. In fact, it’s part of a good three-phase fight. First, the fighters establish their battlelines and engagements, then they trade blows, then they do either firefighting or cleanup depending on how shit’s going. The middle third of a good fight is usually pretty static, but it doesn’t have to feel static.
The shit I’m describing about the flow of turns? That’s what really makes fights feel static. It leads to a feeling like no one’s reacting or responding; everyone’s just acting. Especially the players. A good Action Economy should create a more dynamic turn order than letting all the heroes go and then all the monsters go. It’s about more than just balancing the outputs or the number of actions.
Lots of tabletop wargames use a mechanic called Activations. In those games — and these are games wherein each of the two players controls a small army fighting the other — in those games, each player gets to activate just one or two of their creatures before they’ve got to let their opponent’s creatures go. After I take a turn with one of my creatures, I have to let you take a turn with one of yours before I can take a turn with my second creature. Thus there’s always a back-and-forth in the turn order.
That helps keep five-on-five fights dynamic, but it doesn’t fix the five-on-one problem. What does fix five-on-one fights is letting creatures that are meant to fight on their own have more turns. Dragons should get four complete, separate turns every round with four reactions between them. But those turns should be interspersed with the player-characters’ turns.
I’m not saying this is a perfect solution. I’m not saying it’s a complete solution either. You can definitely layer other mechanics over top of it. And I am certainly not saying it’s the only solution. I’m just offering it as an example of what a better approach might look like. And I’m definitely not previewing any mechanics from anything I might or might not have in the kiln.
I will say this, though: it’s unforgivable that tabletop roleplaying games haven’t addressed this. I actually wrote this same, exact spiel sixteen years ago. I even offered up the same solution. I don’t understand why major roleplaying game publishers are still refusing to recognize my genius and send me a standard boilerplate Rich and Famous contract. Worse yet, Monte and crew recognized this issue back in 1999 or whatever when they were building D&D v.3. They were struggling to find a balance system that worked for both five-on-five fights and five-on-one fights. Because D&D’s got to support both the heroes fighting gangs of orc savages and lone dragons.
On the plus side, as long as tabletop roleplaying games keep making the same mistakes, I can just keep publishing the same crap over and over again. That’s way easier than writing anything new. But man, it really is hard watching the stupids run the world when you’re as smart as I am. You have no idea how tough it is being me.
Conservation of Ninjitsu.
The last Ninja out of the 5 Ninja team is taking 5 turns.
Seriously, having more Bad Guy turns also helps with the whole ‘tuning out between turns’ things too.
ninjitsu? now that’s a name I haven’t heard in a long time
Doctor Ninja!!!!!!! Man i miss that web comic.
Is that the tracks of a bifurcated snake I see?
It is not. That’s a different thing.
I do love a good bifurcated snake. But the dragon is much worse. You see, both the bifurcated snake and the hydra eventually slacken if you can deal the damage necessary? But the dragon never does until her dying breath. That’s assuming she doesn’t grow ever more vicious. Only the foolhardy would challenge such a beast.
The way you spoke of using reference things reminds me of how I’ve used myself as a reference for things in the past. I’m 5’6″ tall, so I’ve literally just laid down on the floor in my house to get an idea of how much space a 5 foot square takes up. Obviously it’s not perfect – I’m off by 6 inches – but as you say, it gives me a good estimate.
I really can’t recommend enough that you measure your own body, like your arms or your head or your feet. It unlocks a lot of cool size comparisons where you can say things like “a one handed knights sword is a few inches longer than my forearm” for example.
And for other measurements, like of weight, or volume, or distances significantly larger than your own body, the Internet is, obviously, your friend. There are a bunch of really cool sites where you can compare height differences between people (for when you want to know how the 6 foot fighter compares to your 20 foot giant, for example). Definitely look around, there’s a lot of cool resources on the internet.
I completely forgot to mention it, but if you go to the website “The Measure of Things” you can give it a measurement (like, say, 20 feet) and it will give you a bunch of things that are around that size, or a convenient fraction or multiple thereof. It’s a great way to get a lot of reference points, and it works with anything – distance, weight, volume, speed, and even time. https://www.themeasureofthings.com/default.php
Awesome share. Thanks, Great Cait!
Yay, new toy!
One thing I like doing is searching up “what does a crowd of X people look like”. It’s one thing to say this village has a 100 people living in it, or the army is a 100,000 strong, it’s another to see what that would look like.
No one tell my players this. Sometimes I roll initiative behind the screen just so I can fudge the monster initiative to manufacture a nice back and forth. Not like a perfect 1, 2, 1, 2, because I don’t want to be obvious, but just to nudge things that direction. The fight is nearly always better with that back and forth. Now if you’ll excuse me, I have a dragon whose stat block needs more turns.
Speaking of sixteen years ago, I adopted Popcorn Initiative into my 3.5e table at the time, and never looked back. The players loved it, and it forced them to stay engaged, think tactically, and adopt Teamwork during combats. Angry Advice NEVER goes out of style!
I like the thought that Game Master’s should be curious about the mundane. A player of mine and I have an inside joke that reminds me of it. I’ll try to run a session where he googles the answer to something (eg: how thick was the average medieval shield?)
During the session I’ll make up an answer that seems right, and after the scene I’ll count it as a win if either one of us can’t restrain our curiosity and end up getting our phones out to satisfy our curiosity
As a player that has suffered sometimes from Alt-itis without really understanding what was happening to my, this has been enlightening. I will strive to include more opportunities for growth & evolution in my games
Making characters is one of a few things a player can do away from the table. So it can become a game in itself. GMs have a lot more to keep them occupied if they want to “do RPGing” alone. And the more complex the character creation, the more fun that solo game is. It’s just not that fun to roll 3d6 six times…
“You can mitigate the problem by restricting character choices, forcing random character generation systems, and inhibiting players from writing backstories by forcing them to generate their characters and start playing in the same session. That’ll actually increase the players’ attachments to their characters, even though it seems like it should have the opposite effect. The problem is, you’ll have to endure a lot of pissing and moaning and grumbling and fighting to get there. If you can even get there at all.”
I agree with the thrust of your point, and I’ve tried this before — but the response I got from players was that it made them not care about their PCs and therefore the game. Is there a way around that? Come to think of it, the chief complaint was from the kind of player who loves to make a new character every 5 seconds.
The bit where they tell you it makes them care less about the characters? That’s the moaning and grumbling mentioned in the quote. You just have to push past it. Genuinely though I have started doing this and it does make a difference. I’m one of those players that loves writing backstories and I’ve deliberately stopped and it makes a difference. I had some eyebrows raised when I started enforcing it but I assured the players that if they just go with it, there’s a reason. Fortunately my players trust me enough to give me the benefit of the doubt. People never like change.
The most important thing is to get them playing the character a few times. If you can get them to buy in for 3-4 games they’ll start getting attached but they need to play a few times. If you give in after one game it won’t change. But by 3-4 games they’ve invested time so they’ll start being invested in the character because of that time… it’s where Sunk Cost Fallacy is in your favour. Of course they’ll tell themselves it’s because they have a great character that they care about… and they might…. but by then they’ll be playing anyway so win, win.
You could suggest they create a character in Baldurs Gate every time they get the urge to do so, rather than taking up everyone else’s time?
By way of an example, I feel more attachment to that dude from Planescape: Torment than I do to any of the many Elder Scrolls characters I’ve spit out over the years, and he doesn’t even have a name…
Oh, that’s easy. You ignore them. Players don’t know what builds investment
I though Exalted 2E/Scion 1E “fixed” the action economy by having actions take variable time instead of variable actions in fixed time. The only problem being that to get the benefit one must play Exalted or Scion…
Also, didn’t some flavor of D&D have a speed mechanic where multiple actions were interspersed instead of happening all at once?
AD&D2 had casting times and weapon speeds that modified initiative after declarations.
We played “declare actions in reverse order of initiative, apply weapon speed and spell casting time, then resolve actions in order of initiative”.
One tip I pulled many years ago from an article written by someone in the insurance business about estimating and being good with numbers was this: if you’re not sure about a quantity of something (distance, height, volume, time, etc.) take a guess FIRST and THEN look it up. Over time, your guesses tend to improve, and you create your own personal “web” of information which, in turn, helps refine future guesses even more. It’s a bit of a game you can play at any time and it helps make you a more active observer of the world around you. It’s also, perhaps, the law of specificity in action: if you want to get better at estimating things, you have to practice doing estimations (comparing those estimations to actual data, of course).
I think the suicidal PC issue is just another reason to plan for shorter campaigns, and I guess for flatter progression too. If most players get bored after five levels, maybe there shouldn’t be twenty levels. That’d give TTRPG designers more page space for class/race/feat options, which is what everyone wants and uses more than endgame content anyway.
A lot of independent RPGs seem to agree with you. Knave, Shadowdark, and a whole bunch of other D&D-esque systems I can’t remember at the moment seem to cap levels around Level 10, rather than 20. Heck, Brancalonia (which uses 5e as a base) caps out even earlier, at Level 6.
This gives me the confidence to always roll my own PC’s, and to never let my players not roll theirs. Thanks!
Many monsters in the Alien rpg get multiple turns per round, and the initiative order can be changed during a fight. I guess someone’s been listening to you at least.
FWIW, toward the end of its run 4e did in fact give some solo monsters multiple turns. I’m not sure how many people were still playing it by that point, though. I’m also not sure why they didn’t use that solution in 5e.
I once tried to solve the action economy by treating the head, wings, body and tail of a dragon as separate pieces of the same creature. So each of the parts had its own token, with its own initiative. No extremity could be more than 2 squares from the body, so if one part was subjected to forced movement, the whole monster would be. The head had a bite or breath weapon, wings each had a buffet attack, tail had a lashing attack and body had a claw attack. Wings had an interrupt that let them take damage that was aimed at the head or body. If the PCs “killed” a dragon part, it didn’t kill the whole dragon, but it would lose that attack. Also, if a wing was “killed” the dragon couldn’t fly, and if the body was “killed” it couldn’t walk.
It lead to a very interesting combat, but it was a lot of work to build, so since then I have just designed them with multiple turns.
If I might posit a partial solution to the character whose build is set in stone, perhaps if you tempted your players with alternative options when their PC levels up – something that isn’t part of their optimization plan but is cool or powerful in its own right, enough that it might be worth changing the plan – your players may stay interested in their characters longer. I suspect this would work better if you already had restrictions on what options you allowed, because then you could offer, as a reward, options that are part of the game but not on your pre-approved list.
Different tokens? That sounds comical, like the lindwurm from Battle Brothers.
I definitely agree with the homework to calibrate spatial senses, and think this is stuff a GM should be familiar with. If you do get blindsided because a player is asking for a specific number, the next thing is to make them tell you why they are asking. They’ve got something in mind they want to do and it’s better for everyone if they tell it to you, rather than trying to pull a “gotcha” on the GM like players think is funny. “Oh, you said it’s 14 yards? Guess how long my Elongated Rod is?”
Shut that down. “What do you want to do? You want to use your Elongated Rod? No, the lake is much farther across than that.” Not that I’m saying you should adjust the world based on whether you want your players to be able to pull something–if they come up with something that solves the problem as you described it, good for them. But you probably have an idea in your head about how far across the lake is and whether it’s a lot farther than an elongated rod or not. So just because you blurted out 14 yards doesn’t mean the players get to do something that doesn’t fit the situation in your head. Ask them what they are thinking and you probably have a decent idea about whether the situation in your head fits it.
That is absolutely terrible advice. Why would you change reality to invalidate a player’s clever idea? Why don’t you want your players coming up with clever ideas? Why do you treat clever ideas like a “gotcha”? That’s a terrible attitude.
If a player asks a question, answer the question if it’s information they’d have. Don’t ever ask, “Why, how are you planning to ruin my game with the answer.”
My intention was not that you change the world. Which is why I said, “don’t change the world.” And especially not because you are intending to keep them from doing the clever thing they want to do, if it’s actually a clever thing.
I’m just saying you might not know if it’s exactly 14.5 meters across but since you’ve visualized the situation you’ve probably visualized whether the thing they want to do is possible. You’re more likely to have an idea in your head of “a climbable surface” than you are “a surface with a grade of x degrees and exactly this many handholds.” If you can give the exact numbers that’s always ideal. But if you can’t, or don’t need to, then getting an idea of what they want to do is better.
You visualize the situation, you answer direct questions about that visualization, and when a player declares an action, you adjudicate the action. That’s it. Stop this nonsense.
I think there’s a disconnect because that’s what I’m saying to do. I’m just saying that you can give a better answer if you know what the player wants to do, and them being coy and trying to bait you into something you didn’t intend. Yeah, a good GM isn’t going to get baited because they have a solid idea of the situation. But time is wasted while the player tries to obscure their intent. That’s all I mean by asking them what they want to do.
For me it’s the whole attitude of trying to prevent stepping into a trap or not falling for “bait” that I’d say is the issue. If a player uses the information you provide with the tools at their disposal in a reasonable way to solve a problem, that’s a thing of gold that you should treasure. That player is listening to you, using your description to form their own picture and thinking from within the game. They are “roleplaying”.
If you describe something as being 14ft, but a 14ft pole somehow didn’t line up with what you had in your head, that means you didn’t properly convey what you had in your head and should practice more the exercises that Angry has provided here.
In the interim, just let the player do their thing? They did a smart thing with the information you provided and should be rewarded. Next time you’ll know better how to judge distances, if apparently 14ft poles should be too short, despite being absolutely massive. Characters can acquire gear, abilities, knowledge, etc. so their players can use them, not so they sit around in their pack because it just doesn’t line up with the DM’s expectations right now.
If that means that the flow of the session works out differently, then you can always patch any holes after the reward is received in proper. It’s the DM’s job to facilitate the open-endness that makes TTRPG’s so unique, so do that job.
With that in mind, I have also had situations where a player asked me 5 questions in a row trying to achieve a certain goal which turned out impossible because they were operating on faulty logic. You gotta keep pacing in mind, so sometimes it’s easier to to confirm what you think the plan will be, or to ask it outright once you start to get an idea of what the player is trying to achieve.
In the end, you’re both on the same team. Well, you’re on the same team throughout I’d say, actually.
I think it has a use as long as you’re not changing reality based on whether you want it to work or not.
The players only see the world when you shine the metaphorical torch on it for them. They’ll often ask questions to get you to focus the torch on specific parts. If they have an intention like “I wanna see if this wall can be climbed”, they might start asking questions like “what angle is the wall?”, “are there any rocks sticking out of it?” instead of just “can this wall be climbed?”.
It’s usually fine, but sometimes you’d save a lot of time if they’d just be clear with their intention and you could shine the torch on everything they’re looking for.
I expect most players that do it do it to either get that cool moment of “I cast levitate” while they smirk and everyone realises how good the idea is *or* because they don’t trust the GM to be consistent if they let their intention be known (same sort of thing if the players make a “private player planning group chat”; probably means they don’t trust you and that’s a big issue).
So if your players are doing this often, make sure it’s only because they’re trying to get that cool moment of solving the problem and not because they think you’ll screw them out of their solution once you find out what it is. And then just keep trying to use your GM instincts to work out what they’re actually trying to do when they ask “about how bright is the candle?”. Can always just ask them why they want to know after you answer with your well-trained estimate.
I stand by what I said.
Interesting. Lots of 5e dragons already have a three part multiattack, and many also get a legendary action. If that were distributed over multiple turns instead of one (and the legendary reaction, of course), it might have an interesting impact on the feel of the fight without changing the math too much, and it gets it a bit closer to the “four turns” thing you were suggesting.
There’s another type of player that likes having low level alts. Sometimes I want things with a plethora of options, sometimes I don’t. Almond Joy, Mounds, Jefe, El Guapo. I love Star Fleet Battles, but I don’t want to have to finish a campaign in order to play Silent Death.
As far as action economy goes… I figured out why you give me so much trouble. Why do you think that is? I haven’t fought just one person in a long time. Why does that matter? You use different moves when you’re fighting half a dozen people. With games like Horrified, the monsters get a turn after each player. I wonder if a mechanic similar to that could work, but not bog down the combat.
So are they always reactive or is that in addition to their normal actions? How would an ambush work in that system, if they’re always reactive? I think the whole system would need to be built around it for it to work. Or you reduce damage from their normal active attacks and put it in their reactive turn, but that’s not ideal either, seeing as that damage is lost if they’re downed before they get to that reactive turn.
All good questions, I hadn’t really thought about it much until I read this mail bag post. I think I like the reactionary idea. The reactions could be available regardless of initiative unless surprised. The reaction effects shouldn’t be as powerful as the main actions. I liked some stuff from 4e, though I can’t say I played it enough to make good judgements about the mechanics. The Bourne goblin might be relegated to certain types of reactions commiserate to their CR.
One might also just have one goblin less than recommended, and take the damage that removed goblin might theorhetically have dished out over the course of 3-4 turns and distribute that damage as reactive damage for the remaining goblins, maybe like a damage pool.
Or calculate the average damage done by X group of goblins over 3-4 turns, and then subtract from that total pool every time a goblin attacks, any surplus can be used as reactive damage. So if the other goblins go down early, that last goblin gets to dish out all the more reactive damage if there’s any left. It could be further simplified into say 10s and represented by tokens or tally marks.
If you want effects though, that’s a whole different cookie. Difficult to quantify in any meaningful way. The purpose of an encounter is after all to deplete resources and offer potential risks. Drawing combat out until it gets annoying isn’t ideal though, so survivabillity isn’t really a factor unless you want an important Npc to at least have a chance at escaping. So any such non-damaging reactions probably ought to not offer much in the way of defense unless actively fleeing, cause either way, combat is over at that point.
In fact the whole goblin example is kinda flawed, as that last goblin shouldn’t be fighting, he ought to have given up at that point, unless he just saw some surrendering brethren get chopped down. But for a solo monster, I think this also helps dish out the intended damage at the very least, but usually the problem is not getting to utilize all the cool powers.
Maybe some bosses should just be invunerable until they’ve gotten at least two attacks off or something, video game bosses gets invunerabillity phases after all. One thing that I’ve always wanted is two-turn attacks, something that charges up one turn and then just devastates if they don’t move by turn two. But that just isn’t feasible to pull off currently.
Sometimes the anticlimactic boss fight is fun. I had converted the Dragonlance Chronicles to 5e, and as the modules include a vorpal blade, wouldn’t you know my younger daughter gets initiative against the white dragon highlord and she also gets the nat 20. That was a long time coming, but dang that big damn hero moment felt so cinematic like Indiana Jones and the swordsman.
While I can understand how that would be a memorable event, I don’t really agree with that sentiment. It seems very hollow, you always have a 5% chance to roll a 20 with a d20. Compare that to if she had come up with a plan in the heat of battle, collaborated and executed it against all odds, or managed to sneak up on them unaware through careful preparation, rather than just walk up and random chance says she instantly wins.
And was this a solo campaign or were there other players who didn’t get to do anything then that fight?
I suppose if the vorpal blade was at least difficult to attain that would make it a little better, but what if it happened again the next boss, and the next? Every attack with that sword there’s that 5% chance of it happening. That doesn’t seem very fun to me.
If we over-simplify things for the sake of spit-balling, what if the available turns are equal to either the largest group, or equal to the number of players, with each side alternating.
Now we have a “fair”, static initiative system. Except, the players still just get one turn each (unless outnumbered in which case they need to roshambo for the extra turns or something), the GM gets many turns, but potentially more or less than what they would otherwise have had. Of course it doesn’t take into consideration that some entities hit harder than others and/or have more utility, and so can never truly be equal in that regard.
Downsides? Well, for one thing there’s less chance of being overwhelmed by a superior force maybe, if they still only get as many turns as there are PCs. It empowers singular goblins to Jason Bourne levels. And it’s likely rather “predictable”, in a chess-like way.
Can we make it “better”? Maybe flip a coin or something to see if either side gets two turns in a row instead of one? To make it less predictable. Doesn’t seem very appealing.
It seems to me that the lack of options for disengaing from combat, may contribute to the problem? What would a lone entity do, in the face of fighting many? Why, if they’re experienced, they’d find a position in which numbers becomes less relevant, such as a 1 square wide corridor, if they can fit inside it. And fight from there. Maybe make retreating entities and moving targets harder to hit, so they might re-position for a fairer fight? Of course that limits the options for most of the players, but might also encourage creative solutions.
The problem isn’t really overwhelming the last surviving goblin though, it’s overwhelming the “dragons”, right? Because in any other situation, it makes sense that the numerically superior force are overwhelming unless outmanuvered through positioning or traps. So should any potential solution, focus mostly on the bosses and mid-bosses then?
If I were using pen and paper, I definitely wouldn’t split up samey monsters, cause that’s a right pain, but if the computer does it for me, no reason not to.
To return to 4E yet again, a lot of their attack powers came with various forced movement, so in that regard, they might have been trying to solve the whole static tank and spank. Maybe more attacks should come with movement, turn every attack into a mini-charge or hit-n-run, and have bonuses to attack the side or the back.
Oh, also, the goblin thing reminded me of the Goblin Boss ability where it can redirect an incoming attack to an ally. Not that it’s relevant for a many on one scenario, but maybe open it up to any adjacent creature, large object or both. I’m just thinking of stuff as I get ready for work.
On the vorpal sword thing, they’ve fought many bosses and it hadn’t happened otherwise. Also, there are often other monsters in the way. They also soak up those nat 20s. I understand that some folks may feel cheated, but the party was quite happy. And although I am making subjective choices on how to modify the 1e monsters into 5e, I try to stay true to the modules… Unless they’re horribly boring. I’ll admit the action economy makes it tricky. As for providing a vorpal sword early-ish on, that’s Weiss & Hickman, and more importantly, everybody quite content. Personally, I wouldn’t care either, but I agree that if one character dominated every fight, it would be quite boring.
I don’t know what kind of dragons we are talking about here, but if a dragon moves, attacks, and then in the same round full attacks one or more times, that’s a very dead player.
I would very much like to see the Popcorn Initiative revisited, alongside any fenagling with the action economy. I feel like it could use an update, or at least some sort of clarification, after all these years.
My initiative / phase system: DRAMA.
Declare actions: Bigger group declares first, letting smaller group try to outmaneuver.
Roll actions: skip the initiative roll. Everyone roll attack, athletics, w/v.
Actions taken: Actions that don’t require movement resolve first, from highest score to lowest.
Movement: Actions that require you to move before you take them resolve second, from highest score to lowest.
Actions prepared: Actions set up as triggers (when that guy runs across that gap) resolve as their triggers occur. If two are set off by the same trigger, then- you guessed it- highest resolves first.
The smaller faction declaring second lets them try to react meaningfully.
The removal of initiative rolls just speeds everything up.
And since your action can be shunted ahead or behind by what you’re trying to do, thinking is a must.
Sounds complicated. Maybe it is. But it’s been a blast so far.
Not bad at all. Maybe slap an ambush phase in there somewhere.
What do you do if both groups are the same size?
And what about enemies who gets more than one action?
Solo-boss monsters would always go second, unless they ambush, but maybe that’s a feature.
Idk if you’re still taking questions but I’m currently working on my own RPG and I want to get some thoughts on a few systems, so I thought I’d ask here in case anyone has any comments or thoughts –
What are the advantages/disadvantages of roll to hit then roll for damage? I’m working on a card based system, not dice, but I’m trying to decide how to make my damage work and I’m considering cutting out the roll for damage, having damage be based on how high you drew instead of separate. Are there any major and obvious drawbacks to this?
I should mention, this system I’m creating is also meant to combine TTRPGs with Hidden Role games (i.e. Mafia, Werewolf, Town of Salem, Among Us, etc) so part of my thought process is based on wanting to make there be less points of obfuscation. You draw three cards, choose one to play, and this gives the ‘bad guy’ an opportunity to intentionally fail checks in order to sabotage. Right now I don’t really want someone to be able to succeed at their check to hit and then intentionally deal low damage, I want to force them to either hit and deal important amounts of damage or else not hit. However, that was only my first instinct so if you’re in favor of the potential of being able to draw high to hit and low for damage, let me know.
I’ve also considered doing damage in stages, like Savage Worlds but I’m just not sure if that provides enough points for a werewolf/evil person to sabotage.
I know I didn’t provide a ton of information on my system but any thoughts anyone has or questions for clarity, please let me know!