I get new questions in the Ask Angry e-mail box pretty regularly. Even when I’ve got the column on some vague, inconsistent, hiatus thing, I get a couple of submissions a week. And lately, I’ve made it a point to read every one. Except for the walls of text; I just delete those.

Now, that’s a new thing for me. I used to only read those e-mails when I was preparing an Ask Angry column. But I found I missed important and useful shit doing it that way. So now, when they come in, I read them. And often, as I read an Ask Angry submission, a quick, obvious, clear, flippant, sweary answer will pop into my head. An answer like, “Just tell your players, ‘No,’ dumbass. How hard is that?” Or, “Yes, I totally can design a game mechanic for that encounter but I won’t because that’s a stupid encounter and you shouldn’t do it. Dumbass.”

But once in a while, some other part of my brain will pipe up in response to the quick, sarcastic answer in my head. “But, wait…” it’ll say. And that’s why I never just hit the Reply button and answer the questions. Because some questions are more complicated than they are.

And sometimes — rarely — a totally simple-seeming question will turn out to be so deep and complex that I can’t get it out of my frigging head. My brain bits just won’t stop arguing about it. And, by the end, my own deeply held beliefs about gaming get a little beat up and I’m left wondering what the hell I even think about anything anymore.

When that happens, there’s just one solution…

A Very Special Ask Angry Episode: Bullshitting about Symmetry

Today’s an Ask Angry with a twist. For reasons I alluded to in the Long, Rambling Introduction™ above, I’m blowing an entire column on one question. And man is it a loaded question, even if it doesn’t seem like one. I totally had a simple, obvious, five-paragraph answer chambered and ready to fire. But then, thinking happened.

And that’s why this column’s flagged both as an Ask Angry and as a pile of Random Bullshit. The next few thousand words are me thinking myself through the question and dragging y’all along with me. And I’m not sure I’ll get to an answer. But I am sure that I’m going to realize that both conventional wisdom and my wisdom are both wrong.

Before I do the brilliant thinking part, here’s the question…

Alex asks…

What do you think of the belief that ‘if the players can do it, so can the monsters?’ By which I mean the party…

Hol’ up, there, Alex. I’mma let you finish, but I gotta say some things first. And I’m afraid that, if I let you tell me what stupid, wrong thing you think you mean by what you said, you’re going to wreck my thought process. So, just, you know… shut up for a second. And don’t worry; I know what you mean. I also know all the stuff you don’t mean. And that’s more interesting.

If You Can Do It To the Monsters, They Can Do It To You

We Game Masters have this cautionary refrain that goes, “If you can use a tactic, so can the monsters,” right? And we often use it to counter shit we consider cheap shots or exploits or overly optimized, gamey tactics that serve as universal I Win buttons. Basically, we’re talking about shit we consider to be cheating. So, if our players figure out some bizarre combination of feats, actions, and corner-case rules that let them, say, consistently wreck the action economy and demolish baddies before they even get turn one, we say, “If they can do it, I can too.”

And, here’s the thing: that’s a really terrible, awful, shit response and it’s a piss-poor attitude. The players didn’t do anything wrong — usually; there’s a difference between optimizing and exploiting and most players aren’t exploiting — but you’re acting like they did. You’re threatening reciprocation against them for breaking the game. You’re using punishment to teach your players that if they find a too-good solution — if they master the system too well — you’re just gonna fucking kill their characters.

That’s really messed up.

The players are just using the tools you’ve given them. Or the game has. They’re getting good at the game. They’re mastering the system. And that’s just what you want. When the players win, you should be cheering them on. Don’t cheer too loudly and not too often because of that whole Illusion of Adversity thing that most Game Masters drastically undervalue, of course, but cheer. Because the players are winning and that’s what you want.

Are they breaking the game? Yeah. Sometimes. Games are breakable and roleplaying games are complex things so there are lots of ways to accidentally break them. But roleplaying games have a failsafe that most other games don’t. They’ve got an emergency backup game designer sharing the table. Someone who can say, “Honestly, guys, good job for finding that combo. It’s very clever. But you’re using it in every encounter and you’re winning without any risk. You’re just hitting the same button over and over without any thought. Is that really fun? Is that how you want to play? Because it ain’t satisfying to run. I’d like to rebalance things or take out the offending feat. I’ll let you choose something else, of course, and I’ll even work this cool magical item in the game for you. Call it a trophy for mastering the game so well that you broke it. Can we do that?”

That, Alex, is the simple, obvious answer to your question. If you’re saying, “If the players can do it, so can the monsters,” in response to something you think is broken or cheating or exploiting or playing dirty, you’ve got the wrong attitude in your head and you’re fixing the problem the wrong way. If there really even is a problem — and there often isn’t — the way to handle it is to put on your game designer hat, call a meeting, lay out the issue, and fix it. And if the players won’t let you do that, you either suck it up and keep running a game they can’t lose because it makes them happy, or you quit. That’s all you can do. And frankly, this seems like a dumb thing to quit over.

Trust me, the if you can do it, I can too arms race will break your game — and your friendships — way more than any stupid combat exploit or broken feat.

And that’s the obvious answer answered. But now, let’s think about this in a completely different way.

Can Players Do Things the Monsters Can’t?

I am gonna let you finish, Alex. I promise. There’s a whole other part to your question that’s worth thinking about. But I ain’t ready to move on to it yet.

Let’s put aside all the cheating and exploiting bullshit. Instead, let’s imagine our players have stumbled on a totally valid solution to an in-game problem that’s clever and creative and brilliant and totally unfair.

Imagine, for example, our players know the totally evil villain who’s after the Rod of Conquering the Whole World is staying at an inn in the same town their characters are visiting. And imagine they — our players — come up with this totally clever plan to distract the villain while they access his room and coat the inside of his bedroll with lethal contact poison they acquired at great risk and cost in some previous adventure. You run the scene — it plays awesome — and the plan goes off without a hitch. Everything works out, the players adapt as the situation changes, their dice are on fire, and the villain fails the appropriate off-camera saving throw two days later when he’s back on the road and camps for the night. Villain dead, problem solved, victory fanfare.

Now, we didn’t plan for any of this. We sure as hell didn’t set it up. The villain being in the same town? That was a tension-building thing. A bit of a throwaway. We just wanted the characters to spy the villain in the market and get spooked. We didn’t think they’d tail him and, when they did, what choice did we have? He was eventually going back to his hotel.

The contact poison? Not our fault either. We made up that poison nine sessions ago as a plot device for a mystery adventure. We didn’t think the players would remember it existed or ask for it by name. And the poisoner they tried to buy it from? We put that dude in town so they’d have someone to sell rare flowers and giant scorpion corpses to. And we overdid the description a bit when we made him mysterious and exotic and claimed he knew every poison there was to know. And when the players bought the lethal contact poison — we had no idea why they wanted it — we overcharged them for it and warned them how dangerous it was and how applying it could backfire and kill them. They paid for it and they accepted the risk.

The players just put all the damned pieces together.

Now, some Game Masters are reading this shit and screaming about how we should have totally sabotaged this plan as soon as we knew what was going down. “You can’t let the players poison the villain to death off camera,” they’re yelling at their screens. “That’s cheating! They’re ruining the challenge.” But the smart, clever, capable Game Masters reading this little hypothetical — spoiler alert, by the way: it ain’t that hypothetical; it’s based on a true story — are saying, “Mother of crap that’s awesome! I would kill or die for players that could pull off that shit.”

See, my question is not, “Are these players ruining the game?” That’s a dumbass question that no capable Game Master would ever ask. My question is, “Would you, as a Game Master, ever pull the same shit on the player characters? Would you roll the dice and resolve the situation such that, if the players didn’t tumble to what was going on, they’d climb into their bedrolls one night and have to make saving throws against just dropping fucking dead?”

And Alex, your question is really timely. Because I just got done with that whole, long-ass just design a good game speech. And that means sometimes not doing shit that would be totally reasonable and possible in the world and would be totally fair if you were writing a novel or running a simulation. Because you can’t do anything that’s just bad game design.

I actually brought up this exact non-hypothetical in that speech. Because it’s a totally obvious gameplay dick move. And the players don’t have to worry about that shit. They’re allowed to make dick moves. Because the NPCs aren’t here for a satisfying gameplay experience. However lively and realistic you play them — and you must play them lively and realistic — they’re still just props. Game constructs. Robots. They don’t need fair challenges. If the players can cleverly and creatively find totally unfair ways to beat them, the players are playing right. Good for them.

Game Masters always have to consider — and consider first and foremost — whether any move their monsters make is, in fact, good game design. So yes, the player-characters can do all sorts of things the monsters can’t.

End of story.

Or is it.

Alex… please continue…

Alex continues…

By which I mean the party using some tactics that illicit…

No! Stop. I covered that already and no one cares what you meant and I said what you meant better anyway. Skip down to the line that starts additionally.

Alex continues…

Additionally, do you think the monsters/NPCs need to follow the same rules as the players when it comes to…

Good enough. Stop there. You’re done. It doesn’t matter what it comes to. I’ve got it from here.

Playing by the Same Rules

It ain’t no secret that I’m a bit of a Dark Souls fan. And I’m, very specifically, a giant-ass fan of OG Dark Souls. Dark Souls the First. It managed a miracle. It made real-time, strategical, tactical, melee combat feel good. And note that I ain’t talking about hacky-slashy crazy-combo combat. Not that I don’t love me some Devil May Cry and God of War. And I ain’t talking neither about hack-and-slash-through-the-dungeon-mooks-and-fight-the-puzzle-boss combat. But I love Zelda too. I’m talking genuine know-thy-foe, know-thy-tools, consider-every-move dueling combat.

It also ain’t no secret that I think D&D was best 20 years ago when it had a three on the cover.

I bring this shit up because both introduced a concept to their respective genres called mechanical symmetry. The heroes and baddies in both games mostly — not totally and fully and one-hundred-percentily; don’t get stupid pedantic here — the heroes and the baddies followed the same rules. In Dark Souls, the bad guys had the same Stamina Bar you did and they moved at the same speeds and had the same reaches and ranges of motion as the main character. They had to use their shields the way the main character did. And if they wanted to cast a spell or drink a potion, they had to make themselves vulnerable with the same warmup animation as the main character.

In D&D v.3 — which encompasses the full edition life-cycle of the game, not just 3.0, not just 3.5, and not just Pathfinder — the PCs and monsters had the same kinds of stats which were calculated the same way. They had the same skills, the same feats, and the same proficiencies. If they had special abilities, if they cast spells, if they used equipment, they did so the same way PCs did. And they even advanced like PCs.

And both games made symmetry the rule for their respective franchises. Both said, “From now on, mechanical symmetry.”

Mostly. Again, I need you to not be dumbasses here. Obviously, some of the crazier creatures and non-humanoid monsters had their own special ways of doing things that weren’t perfectly symmetrical with the player characters — and there were always weird exceptions like who could attack through walls — but, when the rules weren’t the same, they were built on the same framework. They were, at least, analogous.

And that was done with good reason. If you’re building a game about strategical, tactical decision-making rather than one about reaction time or button-mashing or combo-building or spectacle, mechanical symmetry helps reduce the learning curve. If players understand how their own characters work, they also understand how their foes work. In Dark Souls I know what it means when a foe raises its shield because I know how my shield works and the animation’s the same. In Dungeons & Dragons, if a foe is wearing breastplate armor, I know roughly what to expect of its Armor Class. And if it’s got to jump a ravine to get to me, I know the Game Master’s gonna roll a Strength (Athletics) check. This means, that if I can cast a Strength debuff, I can keep the foe on his own side of the pit.

And even when I encounter something totally unknown or weird, I can still guess about its limits and restrictions based on the things I do know. As long as the game’s consistent.

There’s this myth that symmetry is about fairness. It’s really not. I’ll demonstrate that below. It’s not even really about consistency. Which I’ll also demonstrate below. Symmetry is really about making the game approachable by helping players understand, intuitively, the foes they’re facing. If the players learn the rules of what they can do, they also know the rules that constrain their enemies.

Yay symmetry, right? Symmetry is great!

Different Strokes for Different Folks

Let’s fast forward. Because both Elden Ring and Dungeons & Dragons 5E figured out something important about symmetry.

Now, don’t take this for my defending the combat design in Elden Ring. I personally think it’s a huge step backward in Soulsborne combat design. And don’t take this for my defending anything about Dungeons & Dragons 5E. I personally think it’s a huge step backward into a giant, steaming pile of shit. But I also think they improve on their forebears in some important ways. For example, they toned down the symmetry.

Back in D&D v.3, there were these level-progression tables for every kind of monster. If you wanted to make a new Fey monster — or power up an existing Fey — you had this table of stats. They looked just like the class-level progression tables. They defined the critter’s base saves, base attacks, skill points, feats, hit points, and all that shit. And every critter also had a full complement of six attributes with the equivalent of racial modifiers. So you built a monster’s mechanical, statistical base just like you’d build a player character.

But, over the years, it became clear this led to issues. There were, for example, some kinds of monsters that you just couldn’t build powerful enough to make a good fight. Fey were notoriously delicate. Even the designers couldn’t build Fey that wouldn’t break like a twig if you yelled at them too loud. And other creatures were too powerful at any level.

The problem wasn’t the numbers. The problem was that monsters and player characters are different things. They serve different purposes. What works for one doesn’t work for the other. A player-character needs a broad range of skills and lots of long-term resources to handle a string of open-ended problems every game day in a variety of ways. Meanwhile, a combat opponent just needs to provide three to five rounds of fun fighting challenge.

That’s why D&D 4E and D&D 5E drastically changed how monsters were built. In 5E, you don’t derive combat stats from Ability Scores and level progressions. Instead, you start with the combat stats and you backfill the Ability Scores. In the end, it’s way more important that monsters have the right combat stats than that they have appropriate Ability Scores. Monsters just don’t make that many Ability Checks.

I ain’t saying 5E does this perfectly. Obviously, making monster stats less complete and focusing on combat stats means you end up with a Monster Manual full of critters only useful in combat. You can’t build non-combat encounters from combat stats alone. And that was a major issue in D&D 4E. 5E’s improved on that, but I wouldn’t say it’s fixed. But that’s a whole, other, separate, complicated issue.

But symmetry can actually do more than just bog a game down with unnecessary rules and mechanics because monsters don’t need the same stats that player-characters do. Symmetry can actually make the game asymmetrical. And unfair. To talk about that, I need to talk about some things D&D hasn’t unsymmetried and really should. And…

Oh… shit… you actually bring up a couple, Alex. Why don’t you repeat that last question and, this time, I’mma let you finish.

Alex concludes…

Additionally, do you think the monsters/NPCs need to follow the same rules as the players when it comes to spell-casting and the action economy, etc.?

When Fairness Isn’t Fair

Player characters and combat baddies are different. They’ve got different needs. At best, by forcing them to follow all the same rules, you weigh your combat baddies down with a bunch of shit they don’t need. If a foe’s just there to provide a fight, for example, does it need social skills? Hell, since NPCs can’t roll social skills against PCs, do they need social skills at all?

Now please please please please PLEASE don’t take any of this crap as me saying, “Monsters can never interact; they exist to kill or be killed.” Nor take it as me saying, “You can’t build open-ended challenges that can be either an interaction or a combat depending on what the players choose.” You dumbasses love to draw dumbass conclusions I never concluded and then blame me for them. The question of handling open-ended challenges and monsters that can fill multiple roles is a totally separate issue. And no, symmetry is not the answer. Symmetry is the clumsy abdication because coming up with a real solution requires work.

Anyway…

Player-characters and combat baddies have different needs. They fill different roles. And sometimes, when you force them to follow the same rules, you end up making the game assymetrical. You make it unfair. You make a bad game.

Take Spell Slots. Player-characters have bunches of spell slots and bunches of prepared spells. Way more than they can cast in one fight. Why? Because they’ve got to get through a whole day of adventure on those spells and slots. And that day ain’t just gonna be a fighting day necessarily. Player characters have no idea what challenges they’ll face. So they need tools for combats, tools for interaction, tools for wilderness hazards, and so on. They can’t just load up on combat spells. And they’ve got to manage those slots. They can’t just blow their biggest Spell Slots in one fight because they don’t know what the next room holds.

Monsters don’t have those problems. They have the same Spell Slots as player characters and they can prepare the same numbers of spells, but they’ve only got to through one encounter with them. Probably one combat encounter. And they’re not even gonna survive it. So you — the Game Master or Scenario Designer — can load your monster up with just the spells they need for that one fight. And you can burn through all the best spells in the first three rounds. Hell, the D&D 5E DMG even discusses precisely this when it tells you how to make spellcasting monsters. That’s why there’s no direct formula to convert Challenge Rating to Effective Spellcasting Level. Instead, you have to look at the specific number of which specific spells the monster can cast and work out their Challenge Rating based on damage outputs, healing outputs, and which stats they can buff for how long.

Thus, when combat monsters have to follow the same spellcasting rules as player characters, there’s an effective asymmetry. The monsters obey the same rules, but they don’t use the resources the same way. They’ve got fewer constraints in this case. Monsters need different spellcasting rules to make spellcasting monsters behave more like PC spellcasters.

And then, of course, there’s Action Economy. Or as I — and everyone else — call it, That Broken-Ass Action Economy The Designers Refuse to Fix Properly.

In a fight, every creature gets the same number of actions and the same number of turns each round as everyone else. It’s kind of the equivalent of the Dark Souls stamina bar. Everyone’s got one turn and they all work the same. Except that player-characters come in groups of three to five and monsters sometimes show up alone and sometimes show up in groups of ten and the everyone gets one turn with precisely X-many actions approach cannot put all three group sizes on the same basic footing. This is why, for example, when the party faces a lone monster, they always go tank-and-spank and it always sucks.

Thus far, D&D’s designers keep inventing weird duct-tape-and-chewing-gum rules exceptions. Like Legendary Actions and Lair Actions in 5E. Because the symmetry in the Action Economy otherwise puts the game’s most terrifyingly powerful monsters at a huge disadvantage. And don’t get me started on giving every second monster the frigging Multiattack trait.

Is There a Conclusion Here?

Alex, your initial question — and pretty much every word of analysis I’ve provided — starts with a false assumption. And that’s that symmetry equals fairness. But symmetry and fairness are not the same thing. And that’s especially true because, when designing cooperative players-versus-bad-guys games, fairness has a very specific, unique meaning compared to, say, fairness in a competitive game or fairness in a court of law. Fair gameplay challenges are often asymmetrical, especially in open-ended games like roleplaying games. The players can do whatever the game allows — with the caveat that the game’s responsible agent is allowed to close exploits and loopholes — while the game’s agent is limited only to actions that lead to fair and reasonable gameplay challenges.

And, by the way, since we’re discussing false equivalences and complete asshats, let me remind you that there’s a difference between the concept of fairness and any actual, specific level of difficulty. A challenge can be utterly fair and also be very challenging. I bring this up because I just had some dumbass screaming the asshat off his head at me because he can’t tell the difference between “fair and satisfying gameplay experience” and “making the game too easy so the loser babby sparkletroll players won’t cry.”

But that aside…

Symmetry does not even guarantee fairness in mechanical system design. Often, if you force the player avatars and the game constructs to follow the same mechanical rules, you can create effective asymmetries in gameplay and even end up with unfair and unsatisfying gameplay experiences.

Symmetry ain’t your friend. It’s a sirine. Symmetry seems like an easy way to ensure fair, satisfying, approachable, balanced gameplay experiences. But, the truth is, you’ll always get a better result if you consider carefully the gameplay needs you’re trying to fill for each gameplay construct and imposing the proper rules on each. Player characters and monsters are playing different games. They fill different roles, they need different things, and they do different things. It’s kind of dumb to assume one set of rules can cover both equally well.

But symmetry ain’t without its benefits. Those benefits aren’t about fairness and game balance though. Instead, they’re about approachability and consistency. Perceived consistency.

If the rules work the same on either side of the screen, it’s easy for the players to know what any given monster might be capable of and to plan and react accordingly. If the rules are different, the players have to learn how they’re different and come to know what the monsters can do. It’s a sharper learning curve.

Meanwhile, if the rules work the same for everyone, the game imposes less cognitive load on the Game Master. The Game Master’s got to be able to keep the game’s rules in his head. If there are two different rulesets, that’s twice the brain space. And the Game Master does have to know how the game works on both sides of the screen. He’s got to adjudicate player actions and he’s got to be able to help the players play the game well. That’s part of providing a satisfying gameplay experience.

But symmetry ain’t the only way to do that. Symmetry can cause more harm than good. Yeah, it’s easier for the Game Master to run one set of rules than two, but if that means the Game Master has to track three times as many stats for every monster, that’s bogging the game down. In that case, two rulesets are easier than one. And it’s easier for players to guess what the monsters can do if they’re using the same rules, but if those rules lead the monsters to behave in fundamentally different ways, it’ll actually confuse the players more than if the monsters followed different rules that led to similar gameplay behavior patterns.

But monsters also do need to behave differently. And those different behaviors can improve the gameplay experience. Consider Telegraphing. In my AD&D 2E game last week, I had a perfect example of Telegraphing done right. My players guessed what the monster was going to do and reacted by going defensive for one round to counteract it. And it only worked because of this weird asymmetry in when and how players and monsters declare actions in the combat turn order in AD&D 2E.

Symmetry ain’t a goal or a criteria or a rule of thumb. It’s a nice little bit of gravy that can help make a game easier to learn, play, and run. The goal is always to get to a fair, satisfying gameplay experience and whatever rules get you there are the rules you want. Of course, you want to build all your rules on a common framework — that’s called design elegance — but you’ll need to let the rules diverge so that every construct can do what it needs to do and nothing else. They’ll be playing by similar rules — or at least analogous rules — but it’s not important that they play by the same rules.

What’s far more important is to trick the players into thinking everyone’s playing by the same rules even though they can’t possibly be.