Sunday, December 30, 2007
Shrapnel Games & Scorpia On FRPG Economies
Scott Krol and Scorpia have both weighed in on the fantasy-RPG-economy topic this week. I just wanted to share, if you haven't seen these articles yourself yet:
Scott talks about his extremely sophisticated and detailed economic system he developed during the 1E days. The result? "It didn’t take long for me to grow extremely sick of my own system... From that experience I decided that you know what, sometimes simple—while not entirely realistic—is best... There’s a little more to the current system, but you get the basic idea of what I’m doing. Instead of totally reworking the suggested economic system, I’m just enhancing it. The campaign gets flavor but it never becomes a burden."
To which I heartily agree. I did much the same thing in the mid-80's. I still have tons of notes from my old campaign world, including currency systems from every major country in the world, and
Scorpia adds to the magic-item debate, but brings her own old-school sensibilities into a more general topic of the approach to character advancement in Wizard of the Coast's current incarnation of the mother-of-all RPGs, Dungeons & Dragons. While computer RPGs were originally attempts to mimic "Pen and Paper" (PnP) D&D games, the modern generation of rules appears more of a reversal of that trend, attempting to mimic the play-style of its computer (and MMO) cousins. She states, "It was obvious that WOTC was aiming to broaden the audience, and make the game appealing to those whose only experience with RPG was the computer versions. One factor of CRPGs was the fast leveling. No surprise, as these games were meant to be played and finished in a much shorter period than the typical pencil & paper scenario. So there was much time compression there."
She explains further, "D&D is no longer aimed at the patient player, willing to put in the time to advance. I felt, after my first look at the 3rd ed. rules, that it was designed for munchkins. For people who wanted power and wanted it fast."
By my understanding, the compression thing was actually approached very deliberately. They did a poll of players, and found out the average length of a campaign, the average number of players, and the average session length, and the average number of sessions per month. Then they decided to fit those averages into a 20-level-range band. That's how they arrived at an average of 13.333 encounters to level.
I think the goal was that the "average" gaming group would play through an entire campaign in one year, and would hit level 20 at the end of the campaign. That kinda-sorta works, except that the legacy game was designed to pretty much cap out between level 9-12. The higher-level spells (6th - 9th level) were really intended (originally) to be NPC spells only.
Anyway - check out the articles:
On PnP FRPG Economies, at Shrapnel Games' Blog
Magic, Magic, Everywhere at Scorpia's Gaming Lair
(Vaguely) related straw NPCs:
* RPG Design: Magic Items and Economy
* RPG Design: Magic Entitlements and Pricetags
* The Evolution of Computer Roleplaying Games
* When Magic Becomes Mundane in RPGs
Wanna Talk About It? Here's the Forum Thread
Labels: Game Design, Roleplaying Games
- posted by The Rampant Coyote @ 4:36 PM (Permalink)
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I can't speak for anyone else, but when I'm DM'ing D&D 3e I tend to give roughly half the recommended experiene per encounter, with potential bonuses depending upon how things are resolved.
ie. pure mindless combat with no strategy will yeild minimal experience. Finding away around combat, tricking/talking your way out of things, or any strategy that can resolve the encounter with minimal damage will yeild the greatest experience reward.
If you wish it's not difficult to fashion a campaign in which you forego handing out experience for combat situations entirely, and instead offer it for more role-playing oriented situations.
The DMG offers plenty of suggestions for how to tailor the types of experience gives and the rate at which it's given.
You don't have to directly follow the challenge rating/experience tables.
Obviously the norm isn't necessarily ideally suited to everyone's preferences.
You don't have to look at the experience tables as a hard and fast rule that can't be altered to your own tastes, the DMG itself recommends against it.
ie. pure mindless combat with no strategy will yeild minimal experience. Finding away around combat, tricking/talking your way out of things, or any strategy that can resolve the encounter with minimal damage will yeild the greatest experience reward.
If you wish it's not difficult to fashion a campaign in which you forego handing out experience for combat situations entirely, and instead offer it for more role-playing oriented situations.
The DMG offers plenty of suggestions for how to tailor the types of experience gives and the rate at which it's given.
You don't have to directly follow the challenge rating/experience tables.
Obviously the norm isn't necessarily ideally suited to everyone's preferences.
You don't have to look at the experience tables as a hard and fast rule that can't be altered to your own tastes, the DMG itself recommends against it.
I've been giving out about 1/4th normal XP for combat encounters, but I've also been giving heavy story-based awards with my current campaign.
I have never followed the suggestion that any item is available in a community of a given size. Sometimes I have certain common items available (potions, etc.) in local shops, or through a word-of-mouth network. But for anything special, there are either a handful of very specific items available that the players can try to acquire through their own means (paying for them, stealing them, running errands for them, etc).
I think it works better, honestly, though the players in my group would not win any munchkin competitions for combat optimization.
I have never followed the suggestion that any item is available in a community of a given size. Sometimes I have certain common items available (potions, etc.) in local shops, or through a word-of-mouth network. But for anything special, there are either a handful of very specific items available that the players can try to acquire through their own means (paying for them, stealing them, running errands for them, etc).
I think it works better, honestly, though the players in my group would not win any munchkin competitions for combat optimization.
Hmm. My last gaming group did have a munchkin -- of the first order, too. Fortunately, he put pretty much all of his energy into combat-related munchkin practices, so that he didn't dominate non-combat portions of the game nearly as much. I have to wonder if he'd have been as distracted by combat without the XP bonuses.
I like how depths of peril handles XP. You get a little for killing monsters, but completing quests is the best way. Which means i sometimes sprint around a zone looking for the quest targets instead of just killing. It's pretty fun.
# posted by 
: December 31, 2007 8:18 PM
: December 31, 2007 8:18 PM
I think that's probably the best way to handle that kind of reward - where the combat-based XP takes a back seat to quest-based XP. A lot of games are taking that route (including some MMO's, like City of Heroes).
While the combat-munchkins still enjoy improved survivability when combat does happen, the de-emphasizing of rewards for efficient whack-a-mole-ing helps make sure that the rest of the players don't feel it necessary to try and play "keep up" with that play style.
While the combat-munchkins still enjoy improved survivability when combat does happen, the de-emphasizing of rewards for efficient whack-a-mole-ing helps make sure that the rest of the players don't feel it necessary to try and play "keep up" with that play style.
It's funny, though -- except for the time when our GM decided that he wanted our characters to compete against each other in a tournament, we never really felt pressure to keep up with the combat-munchkin. Quite the opposite: we knew we'd be safe in combat, and so we were more willing to invest in non-combat skills. Of course, we were also more willing to pick fights...
I guess what I'm trying to say is that having a combat-munchkin in the group did not break the game, but perhaps only because combat offered enough reward for him to focus on it and leave the rest of the game to the rest of the players.
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I guess what I'm trying to say is that having a combat-munchkin in the group did not break the game, but perhaps only because combat offered enough reward for him to focus on it and leave the rest of the game to the rest of the players.
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