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I do not want to do this…

This little miniseries seemed like such a good idea at the time, but it’s become a nightmare because of this last part. I can’t tell you how many times I have outlined, drafted, rewritten, scrapped, and restarted this stupid, simple essay. It’s because I have to explain something that’s either going to click or it’s not. It’s one of those things that’s easy to intuit, hard to know, and impossible to really explain. That’s the psychology of gameplay for you.

This article has been as much a part of this month’s clusterfuck of delays and disasters as my car’s ignition system and my brain’s prefrontal cortex.

Just know some of you are going to dismiss a lot of this shit as vague, nitpicky, technical nonsense. You just ain’t going to see how a bonus can make something gameplay if it comes from a thing you find, but not if it comes off your character sheet, and how that can make all the difference in how gamers experience what still looks like a naked die roll.

That’s a shame because the explanation doesn’t matter anyway. It’s what I’m asking you to do about it that matters, and that is both shockingly easy and totally noncontroversial.

But then, this started with me thinking, “If you want the players to open a door, give them a way to open it,” was noncontroversial.

So, here we go…

The Third Heat Revealed

Let me tell you about 30 Rock.

30 Rock was an absurd workplace situation comedy. It was created by Saturday Night Live and Second City alum Tina Fey. It ran on NBC from 2006 to 2013 and was actually really good for most of that time. In fact, it was brilliant. The middle seasons displayed some of the greatest, most clever comedy craft of anything ever. If I were writing a website about how to be funny instead of how to pretend elf, 30 Rock would be my Hollow Knight.

The show is about the managers, writers, and cast of a Saturday Night Live-style variety show airing on NBC, which was, at the time, a subsidiary of General Electric. It was one of those meta shows. A lot of making fun of the business of business, a lot of inside-baseball gags about television production, and a lot of jokes about the craft of writing and comedy.

In the pilot episode, a new executive is transferred to NBC as part of his promotion to Vice President of East Coast Television and Microwave Oven Programming. You see, GE primarily makes home appliances. He insists that the show-within-a-show that the show is about is “missing something” and forces the hiring of a new, disruptive, insane cast member. He calls that cast member “The Third Heat.”

You see, the executive had catapulted himself into the promotion by developing an innovative new oven that “cooks with three kinds of heat.” The fictional and ridiculous GE Trivection Oven used conventional heat, convection heat, and microwave technology.

Now, how can you use that to build better gameplay challenges?

You can’t.

This has nothing to do with anything.

The name is just an obscure reference that gave me the giggles, and I know, for a fact, I said at least twice that it was a stupid name that had nothing to do with anything and that I would not be explaining it.

But y’all kept asking me.

Your challenge design is missing something. I’m going to tell you what it is. Some of you aren’t going to like it, but it’s going to turn out to work. That’s the beginning and the end of my thought process for the title. It mirrors the plot of the first episode of 30 Rock.

But if you absolutely must turn this into more than it is, you can say that the three heats are “open-ended creative challenges,” “naked die rolls,” and “actual gameplay.”

I think I may still be stalling…

The Imperceptibly Narrow Line Between Gameplay and Shit

So, there’s a locked door in the dungeon, right? The party wants to get through it, right? They stare at the door and try to create a brilliant, clever, creative solution basically from whole cloth, but no one’s having a eureka moment. The rogue tries to pick the lock, but she can’t roll for shit today. The barbarian tries to break it down, but only breaks his shoulder.

The problem here isn’t the dice and it isn’t the players. It’s not that the players aren’t smart enough to come up with a creative solution. We discussed that with references to actual cognitive science. Open-ended problem solving isn’t really a test of skill or intellect.

It’s not that the players rolled badly. That’s not their fault. Plastic math rocks are harsh, impartial bitches that just spit out random numbers.

The problem is that, if the players have to walk away from this door—and it doesn’t matter whether it’s an optional door with a minor treasure or an important door beyond which the whole rest of the adventure lies—they aren’t walking away because of anything they did or didn’t do, succeeded at, or failed to do.

They didn’t get any say in the challenge. When I say that there isn’t any gameplay here, that’s what I mean. The players didn’t have any agency over any part of the challenge. The game designer, the person who wrote the adventure, failed to provide a way for the players to earn their way through the door. Or at least earn a better chance at getting through the door.

That last point is going to be a very fine, finicky point, so let’s get to it.

You May Not Think It Makes a Difference, But It Does

This is going to be so ugly…

There’s a door, right? Players want through it. No creativity, failed die rolls, blah, blah, blah. The players, grumbling, move on to a side room. A gallery. Old stone display stands that used to hold valuables, now looted. At the back of this room, there is a stone door, right? But it’s been broken in. Smashed open. Lying there between the forced doors are the broken remains of one of those old display stands.

The party gets excited. They put the, admittedly somewhat obvious, clues together. Some group used one of the display stands as a battering ram. They do a team lift, heft one of the stands, carry it into the neighboring room, and the Game Master says, “Whoever is on Team Battering Ram with the best Strength score, roll a Strength check with advantage.”

That’s all it takes.

Seriously. That’s it. That’s all I’m asking you to do.

Actually, by the end of this article, I’m going to articulate very clearly precisely what I’m telling you to do. But before that, I’m going to have to pre-deal with a bunch of objections. Not because I want to have an imaginary fight, but because I understand the objections and I want to try to clear up as much confusion as I can.

I get it. I swear I do.

How is that not just another creativity challenge? The players still have to make the leap. All you did was make it easier for them. Why aren’t the pedestals there enough? Why also give the clue about a pedestal being used as a battering ram? Aren’t you spoonfeeding spoons at that point? Why not just solve the puzzle for the players? Why not have a glass case with a battering ram in it that says, “In case of door, break glass,” with maybe a footnote that the architect is totally aware of the amusing partial irony here? Smart players should bring battering rams with them anyway. That’s not an unreasonable thing for parties to bring.

And what’s with the die roll? Why not make it an automatic success? Now the outcome is still random. Sure, the party has advantage and can work together, but they could still fail, and then they’re back in the same place they were before. All you did was give them a second chance with better odds. And how is that different from the barbarian using his rage to get advantage on the Strength check, or someone casting guidance or enlarge or enhance ability, or using Inspiration, or whatever? In the end, it’s not even a different approach. It’s still just breaking down a door.

If you look at this in a technical, definitional, objective way, yeah, you can argue it’s not any different, and I know I am not going to win some of you over. That’s fine. That’s a problem for you and your players. I’m just offering information and advice to those who want it.

The key differences are twofold: the first is about fairness, which I’ve already beaten to death, and the second is about psychology.

It’s about how the players experience the game, often on an unconscious level. It’s about what feels better and what feels worse. Especially over repeated experiences. Especially as patterns emerge in how you, the Game Master or adventure designer, construct your gameplay. It’s about what invites deeper engagement and what leads to more superficial engagement.

I also know that some will argue that they have been doing it this way for their whole Game Mastering life and they’ve never had any complaints. It’s always been perfectly fine. I find that argument tiresome for a couple of reasons.

First, I can’t think of any sadder standard than, “I’ve never had a complaint.” Wow, way to aim high. “I’m not making anyone sad enough to complain.” My standard is about always looking for a better way. Some of you have been infuriated by the fact that my advice has evolved over the fifteen years I’ve been writing it, but that’s just proof that I am still, to this day, always looking for a better way and always willing to try something new.

So, yeah. No apologies there.

The second reason I find that argument tiresome is because “I do this and it works fine” isn’t really comparative. It doesn’t argue that another way isn’t better, just that your way isn’t bad enough to be bad.

Again, if that’s good enough for you, great.

All of that said, I’m going to repeat that I’m just offering advice to those who want it. You can offer contrary opinions and views. I might even respond to some in an attempt to help you and others. But I am not going to bend over backwards fighting. At some point, your disagreement is your problem.

Anyway, moving on…

Giving Nothing and Asking Nothing

One of the most important elements of gameplay psychology, one that’s actually so fundamental that it often goes unstated, is that gameplay arises from the players interacting with the game and its systems. There’s a give-and-take to it. The game gives you stuff, you do something with that stuff in your brain, then you make a decision, and then there’s an outcome that follows from that decision. The actual gameplay part isn’t the outcome. The gameplay part is you taking something from the game, doing brain stuff with it, and then putting something back into the game.

That’s why it doesn’t matter if the end result of something is determined by a die roll. As long as you took something in from the game, did some brain stuff to it, and then put a choice into the game, you played a game. If the result of that is, “Roll a die with a bonus to see how it works,” so be it. Your brain still feels like it was part of the feedback loop. At least unconsciously. The outcome feels better.

Now, brains can be tricked.

Lots of players do feel that simply saying, “I roll for Persuasion,” is taking something in from the game, doing brain stuff, and putting something back into the game. But, as I talked about in the naked die rolling essay, it really isn’t because, in roleplaying games, rolling Persuasion against a non-player character is the equivalent of recognizing that the square peg goes into the square hole.

Player brains do figure this out over time, but they can’t always see what’s happening or why. It manifests as a general disengagement or dissatisfaction.

If just matching skill names to skill-shaped tasks and generating random outcomes is all you ever do, then play feels shallow, but you may not understand why. So maybe you check out. Maybe you go murderhobo or let the world burn because the game isn’t deep enough to invite you to care about it. Maybe you fixate on just portraying your character. Maybe you go online and complain about how you need better die-rolling engines because binary rolls don’t produce enough depth.

Maybe you fall in with a bad crowd and join a BroSR gang.

Open-ended creativity challenges are similarly tricky because, again, they seem to most players and Game Masters like they are all about taking stuff in from the game, doing brain stuff to it, and then putting something back into the game. The reason I spent all that time on the psychology of open-ended challenges and lateral-thinking puzzles is so that you can see that it’s an illusion.

Open-ended creativity challenges aren’t like deductive reasoning or abductive reasoning or inference. The game is giving you very little and calling that a feature. It’s a blank-page problem. “You can do anything. You have everything to work with. Imagine a solution.” The infinite space becomes the equivalent of giving you nothing.

Meanwhile, what the brain is doing is actually rolling dice to save against its own heuristics. Remember that? Recognizing that a pillar can be a battering ram is not a matter of clever thinking. It’s actually overcoming functional fixedness, which is more about a lucky eureka moment in your head than it is about you being smart.

In the door scenario above, the game has given you something. There is a broken display stand lying next to a busted-open door. It’s now asking you to perform some abductive reasoning. That’s the reasoning your brain uses to come up with the best explanation it can for something it sees. That’s actual reasoning. It’s an active process. Moreover, it’s a process a group can engage in together. They can put forth theories. They can accept or reject hypotheses. They can test ideas.

It’s great actual gameplay.

By the way, for all his talk about deduction, Sherlock Holmes was actually mostly about abduction.

So, that’s why open-ended creativity challenges are different from actual challenges of reasoning. The game has to give you something, and giving you anything and everything is too much to be something. And that’s why it can still be gameplay if there’s a die roll at the end. The die roll isn’t the gameplay. The interaction that feeds the die roll is the gameplay, and the die roll is just a system for determining the final outcome.

Players’ brains are much more likely to happily accept the answer the dice give if they interacted with the game and can see how that interaction changed the odds. The gameplay is earning the die roll at better odds, not the roll itself. But why don’t the tools the players bring with them count the same as the display-stand-as-battering-ram? Why doesn’t the wizard’s enhance ability spell count the same as advantage from the battering ram?

Well, it’s because they don’t come from the game.

Or rather, they come from the wrong game.

Again, this is a fine point, but that doesn’t make it wrong. The things you always have, the things you carry with you, the things on your character sheet, they aren’t products of the challenge you currently find yourself in. A wizard can always cast enhance ability. There is nothing about this particular piece of gameplay that gives that to the players. It’s coming from the game engine.

Alternatively, if you want to consider character buildery as a kind of gameplay, it’s coming from a game that’s already been played, and now the bonus is just always available.

Think about it like this: if you invite someone over for game night and you ask them to play Settlers of Canard, and they agree, but then they take out their Nintendo Switch, beat a level of Super Zelda Brothers, and then say they won game night, you’d think they were insane.

Maybe that’s not the right way to look at it.

Try this…

Would you rather the players engage with the game system or with the specific piece of gameplay you built for them? Casting a spell they can always cast is engaging with the system. Solving the gameplay challenge by taking stuff from the challenge is engaging with the challenge.

Don’t Take What I’m Saying Too Seriously

Now, let me hit the brakes a bit before I lose some of you, because my arguments, to this point, have been very heavy. Nothing I’ve said isn’t true, but I don’t want you to take the wrong conclusions from it, and I don’t want you to lose the nuance.

There is no firm line between open-ended creativity challenges and abductive reasoning challenges. It just doesn’t work that way. The question isn’t, “Is the game giving you nothing?” but, “How much is the game giving you, and is that enough?”

Then, too, there are matters of skill and difficulty to consider.

Some players only need to have a display stand described to make the leap to battering ram. Others need to see that a display stand was used as a battering ram. Still others still won’t make the leap. They’ll just find the problem impossible.

Others, by the way, will see the doors and immediately start looking around for a battering ram.

The problem is that it’s really hard to design reasoning challenges and to know how much is enough, how difficult is too difficult, and even what affects the difficulty. And because a challenge always looks easier to solve if you’re the designer, it’s very easy to assume you’re making things easy when you’re not. Then, too, Game Masters are inexplicably demanding. They think that if a challenge isn’t hard enough, then it won’t feel like a real win. Run that door-and-stand thing for your players. Very few players will walk away from that saying, “Well, that was piss easy. You practically gave us the answer.” Most will say, “Aren’t we so clever for figuring out how to get through that door? As soon as we saw that one clue, we had it.”

That, by the way, is the ideal outcome for a puzzle.

By the same token, the difference between engaging with the system and engaging with the game isn’t always clear. While spending limited resources to juice a die roll may not be engaging with the specific challenge in the room, it’s fair to say it’s engaging with one of the adventure’s macrochallenges because that resource won’t be available for the next microchallenge later. You can’t really say that using a spell slot or Inspiration isn’t engaging with the adventure of the day.

It’s fuzzy.

Then, too, comes the issue of patterns over time. One bad challenge here and there is not going to ruin your game. What players respond to more is the pattern of challenge design over time. You will not break your game with some naked die rolls here and there. You will not ruin everything if you ask your players, one time, to be clever from whole cloth.

That’s also why failing after getting the right solution ain’t a problem. Yeah, the players had every advantage and still flubbed that door-breaking die roll, or maybe they never even found a solution to that one door, but they still trust the game because they’ve learned it’s always giving them stuff and granting them agency over the probability.

The difference between, “This game is so obtuse,” and, “I must be missing something,” is entirely down to how much trust the game has built up.

Remember, my goal here isn’t to argue what is and is not gameplay and classify everything. I don’t want to split hairs over whether a challenge is giving the players enough to count as reasoning instead of open-ended eureka creativity.

But really, the most important part of this whole essay is this…

The Third Heat Is the Only Heat You Have to Care About

The players come to a door. It’s locked. They come up with a brilliant, creative solution to use their gloves of fire resistance to bring a crucible of lava from the foundry room and melt the lock to slag.

Hooray for them!

The players come to a door. It’s locked. The barbarian says, “I can force that open.” The wizard says, “I cast enhance ability.” The cleric says, “And Illuvia gives you guidance!” The barbarian rolls a Strength check with advantage +1d4 and bursts the door open.

Hooray for them too!

I am not in any way suggesting that those shouldn’t happen at your table. They should. They’re totally valid ways to play the game. They should be resolved fairly and properly, the way you resolve everything. But those things are going to happen, or they’re not, regardless of your adventure design. Those are system-level possibilities that always exist. They’re part of the nature of roleplaying games. They’re also part of the fun.

It’s just that they’re mostly handled already.

At best, when you put a locked door in your dungeon, you have to set a DC for lockpicking and doorbreaking. That’s the beginning and the end of what you have to do so the Game Master can resolve the naked die roll.

What I’m saying is that you, as an adventure designer, if you want to actually design good gameplay, can’t make either of those your design. They’re already there. They might get the players through the challenge. They might get the players through every challenge. What you have to handle is the thing that’s missing.

The third heat.

You have to forget that the party might invent solutions from whole cloth or just roll a die through the challenge, and instead provide a way to get through the challenge that involves actually playing the game somehow.

That is the ridiculous, controversial, terrible thing I said: “If you want to design a game, you actually have to design a fucking game.”

I know; I’m a monster.

If All Else Fails, What Can They Do?

You’re putting a door in a dungeon. It’s locked. You want the party to have a chance to open it up.  How much of a chance? Well, that’s up to you. That’s game design. Is it on the critical path? Better make it easy. Is it optional? You can make it harder. Is it optional, but what it hides is basically a game changer that’ll make the rest of the adventure piss easy? Make it very hard.

You gotta describe the door. What’s it made of, how’s it locked, standard shit. The Game Master will need to know that in case the players try some open-ended creativity bullshit that needs resolving. Fine.

You gotta set DCs. The door is this difficult to force open. It’s this difficult to pick the lock. The Game Master will need to know that in case the players start throwing dice at the door. How difficult should it be? That’s a game design decision. Is it on the critical path? Optional? Optional and game-changing? Set the DC. Then, if you really want to do it right, bump it up. Add a “naked die roll” tax.

Now, ask yourself, when the party doesn’t creatively work their way through and can’t dice their way through, what can they do instead? Can they find a key? What’s the challenge? Is it just exploring until they trip over the key? Fine. That’s exploration gameplay and that’s fairly low-challenge. Good for a vital door. Is the key guarded by a monster? Great, now the gameplay is winning a fight. A key guarded by a monster is just a monster remotely guarding a door, after all. Or it’s a door guardian with an extra exploration challenge. Of course, it doesn’t have to be a key. Why are so many doors in video games controlled by levers? Why do doors have puzzle locks? Now you know the answer. Because gameplay. Because someone had to find a way to turn opening the door into a game.

The same works for everything. The river is swollen. Maybe they make a raft. Maybe they roll to swim. Maybe they roll to swim once and then make an impromptu rope bridge with the party’s three coils of rope. Great. Neat. But what can they do if creativity and naked dice rolling fail?

There’s a belligerent guard. Maybe the party uses a clever distraction to draw him away. Maybe the party rolls to Persuasion the guard. Fine. But what if neither works? What’s the gameplay solution? Is there some information they can discover that juices the Persuasion check if they use it? Is there a way you can turn the distraction thing from open-ended creativity into deduction? Maybe they can find an alarm gong in one room and a note about how the guards were disciplined last week for ignoring the door gong, but now, after some drilling and corporal punishment, they’re all compliant. I don’t know. I’m just spitballing. Is that too obvious for your tastes? Come up with something else.

That’s adventure design.

What Is the Game Asking of the Players? What Is It Giving Them?

Ultimately, whenever you create any challenge at all, you have to answer two questions: what specific thing is the game asking of the players, and what is it giving them to do that?

That’s how you keep yourself out of relying solely on naked die rolls and open-ended creativity challenges.

What is the door asking of the players? Roll a die. Maybe use character abilities to juice the roll. Not good enough. Rolling dice is something an app can do, and character abilities aren’t coming from your gameplay.

What is the door asking of the players? Create a solution. Maybe construct a battering ram from objects in the environment. Not good enough. That’s not problem solving. There’s no reasoning involved. I have to give them something to turn it into reasoning. How much do I have to give? What clues can I offer? How easy should it be? That’s game design.

What can the players do about the swollen river? Head upriver or downriver to find a ford. Fine. How did they know that? They should have known? Every idiot knows about fording rivers? No. Not good enough. Sorry. What did you ask them? You asked them to already know how premodern travelers got across rivers that were too wide to swim across without ensuring first that your players were all former Boy Scout Army Ranger hunting buddies.

What is your game asking of your players; what is it giving them to do that?

If you can’t answer those two questions, you don’t have interaction.

If you don’t have interaction, you don’t have gameplay.

If you don’t have gameplay, you’re not running a game.