Game Design: Playability or Realism?

[Stofsk]

I prefer playability. That includes silly things like hitpoints, armour conferring AC as well as damage reduction, and other D20 features. I'm not saying there's no place for realism, but the simpler the combat system the easier it is for me, as the Ref, to decide what kind of damage the characters have dealt or suffered.

[Arthur_Tuxedo]

I do think it is possible to strike a balance so that a game is highly realistic and also highly playable. You just have to know where to stick to realism and where to compromise, and more importantly how to be realistic. Aim for modelling effects rather than cause. For instance, you don't try and model all the factors that differentiate a good shot in real life from a lousy one, you just have an abstract roll and tweak the numbers so that accuracy comes close to matching real life. Not to toot my own horn, but I believe Tensided is an example of a system that strikes that balance.

[Stark]

Good point: 'simple' systems can be abstracted to resolve many issues. Things like Palladium's 'one roll for everything, describe exactly what happens in every turn' is quite counterproductive.

[Dooey Jo]

If you have an unplayable game, well, you know what happens then. If you have an unrealistic game, not many are going to give a shit, as long as it's fun. If you can make it both highly playable and realistic, that might be fine, but you should always go for playability first.

[NecronLord]

I do think it is possible to strike a balance so that a game is highly realistic and also highly playable. [...] I believe Tensided is an example of a system that strikes that balance.

Having played his game, I have to agree.

That said, it's insanely lethal (IE, realistic). If you get hit, you are going to die, without medical aid. With magical healing that's pretty neat, adds urgency. Without... hoo boy, you're going to be a cripple pretty fast if you actually go near the enemy.

[Vendetta]

Of course, that was largely a symptom of Deadlands having everything under the sun, requiring all of the twiddly dice, a deck of cards and a pot of poker chips.

Are you serious? That's awesome.

[/quote]

Oh yes. Deadlands has everything. Stats are represented as a number of dice, anything from 1D4 to 4D12, those are the dice you roll when checking against that stat, counting up the number of successes. D20 is used for to hit and damage rolls. Spellcasting is resolved by drawing a poker hand, the better the hand, the more powerful the spell, and you can collect and spend fate chips.

The big bag of everything design extends to the setting as well. It's basically Wild West, but with zombies, indian magic, wibbly things from the beyond, and mad science verging on steampunk.

I disagree - I think this is more to the tone of the game. Frankly, most D&D players don't WANT realistic melee combat. They want 'slay orcs by the dozen' combat, 'take lightning bolts to the chest' combat. That's fine and dandy, and you don't need anything too obtuse to run combat at that level.

Well yes. That's what D&D is for. Yes, you can use the rules for all sorts of fiddly politics and roleplaying, but the system is written with the assumption that you're going dungeon crawling. And that's quite handy, you can play D&D as a great boardgame, it's got shitloads of stuff for you to kill, and piles and piles of loot to grab.

However, I think that if you're going to make a high lethality combat system, then you need to severely limit the amount of combat. If you make a realistic combat system where all wounds are a serious impediment to the person that suffers them, then you'd want maybe one combat a session, otherwise most of the time you spend on a character development mechanism is wasted, as most PCs won't live past the first few adventures, because all it takes is a couple of bad rolls and they're gone.

If you're making a game where you want a high PC turnover, that's OK. If you can get an investigator to the end of a Cthulhu game without him ending up eaten or gibbering quietly in a corner it's time to frame the character sheet. If you're making a game where you want people to really get attached to their character and start playing the character not the character sheet, you want them to have a reasonable chance of surviving combat, either by giving them many ways to not fight it in the first place, or give them ways to weight it in their advantage.


Personally, If I'd written a high lethality combat system, I'd build a tabletop strategy game around it. I think they're far more apt to that kind of environment. Another game I've played recently is a good demonstration. It's called Infinity, and is a future squad based tabletop game. Guns in Infinity are unbelievably lethal. Me and my mate played five test games, 3 on 3 using basic grunts, and I think only once, ever, did someone survive getting shot. (mathematically we had about a 30% chance, it just didn't happen that way). It's very lethal, but I think Infinity has the best shooting system I've seen in a game. You attempt to roll under a difficulty number on a D20, modified by range, cover, and camo. But rather than the normal case of lower being better, the closer you get to your target difficulty the better, because pretty much every time you shoot, the enemy is shooting back with a reaction shot. (you have the advantage shooting, as all weapons are at least semi-automatic, you're firing three times they're firing a snap shot), and the higher figure wins if both score a success. Hitting your target value exactly is a critical hit, which allows no armour save, so a standard one wound troop is just dead straight away. (Alternatively you can dodge when shot at as a reaction, which is another test under a target figure, the result, if it's a success, becomes the minimum target for the shooter's attacks. If they needed 10 or less and your dodge is a 5, they now need 6-10.)

The practical upshot of that, though, is that any model not in cover in Infinity is tired of life. It's a highly lethal combat model, but it really encourages you to use realistic squad tactics, fire lines, cover, partnering troops up so you can get additional reaction shots or cover an advance is essential.

[Stark]

I find any game with a realistic setting lends itself toward high-lethality. Things like original D&D don't, because options are deliberately limited by the engine, but in anything flexible it can be done. It'd be absurd to take (say) a D&D module, replace the combat system with a much deadlier one and try to run it as-is. High-lethality just means you'll get cautious players who prefer to avoid combat unless they have an advantage, rather than wading in secure in their relative invulnerability.

Things like Phoenix Command and ME are modern-day settings, which leads to very brief, very deadly combat and players that are very cautious. There's almost always alternatives in a contemporary setting, however: the enemy is other people or organisations, and there are many resources beyond a character's gun. Not that most Shadowrun players put that much thought into anything.

Your point about character creation is a good one - ME is very deadly, and has a cumbersome, complex character creation process. Players avoid combat all the more because they're only a unlucky roll away from another two hours of rolling. However, realistic settings don't have the Diablo-effect: there are no MP5 +4s, and most settings don't have the 'get better items' motivation. Hence, contemporary or realistic games tend to be more tournament or standalone than D&D-esque ongoing for decades stuff.

[dworkin]

I've always had a soft spot for GURPS where the various armours have both a 'deflect' portion (PD) and 'absorb' portion (AR). And the combat is fairly lethal with a modern handgun doing on average enough damage to put down a person. And if they aren't put down they are still in serious trouble.

The downside is that GURPS is too bloody complex all over. I want my fun to be fun dammit!

[Arthur_Tuxedo]

I do think it is possible to strike a balance so that a game is highly realistic and also highly playable. [...] I believe Tensided is an example of a system that strikes that balance.

Having played his game, I have to agree.

That said, it's insanely lethal (IE, realistic). If you get hit, you are going to die, without medical aid. With magical healing that's pretty neat, adds urgency. Without... hoo boy, you're going to be a cripple pretty fast if you actually go near the enemy.

Well, let's not get carried away. Your character took quite a few hits in at least one battle and was still standing, but that's because he was tough and wore heavy armor, and none of the hits landed to areas like the carotid artery or central nervous system. Dahak's character shunned armor, and consequently had his arm severed in one fight (one of the first fights of the campaign, if I recall). Lucky Alyrium's character was there to magically glue it back on.

The thing about Tensided is that there are no 'general' hits. Every hit lands somewhere, and that somewhere could be the middle of your abdomen or it could be your brainstem. And if the random chance wasn't bad enough, you can call a shot to these locations as well.

In any case, we'd love to have you back for another game. We're wrapping up one game soon and have an open time slot, with the other game wrapping up in a couple of months.

[Lusankya]

The system for Mutants and Masteminds (and I think T20 and Blue Rose) might work well.

Rather than taking damage, you make a "damage save" vs the power of the weapon. If you pass, you're not damaged; if you fail by 5 or less, you get a stun hit; and if you fail by 5 or more, you take a lethal hit (assuming they were dealing lethal damage). Fail by 10 or more, and you become disabled. Stun hits turn into a penalty for all saves vs non-lethal damage, and lethal hits give a penalty for all saves vs lethal and non-lethal damage, as well as providing a penalty to attack rolls.

Someone can correct me if I remember it wrong. I haven't played the game in about a year now.

One thing I liked about it is the way that as you take damage, it becomes harder to actually do stuff, and you don't have to keep track of HP or anything like that. I know that a superhero setting may not necessarily sound that lethal, but you can always up the DC of saves by 5 or so if you're worried about that.


ROAR!!!!! says GOJIRA!!!!!

[Stofsk]

You play T20?

[Coalition]

Warhammer Fantasy is pretty decent. You roll D100 for if you hit, then reverse the digits to see where it landed. Armor gives damage resistance at the locations, and your own toughness gives some more.

It is lethal too. "Death by Shock and Blood loss" is a common chant in our game.

[Lusankya]

You play T20?

My housemate does. He used to be big into D&D, but now that he's seen True 20, he swears by it.

I'm basing my opinion of it off of M&M, which uses pretty much the same system and is a good game: easy to pick up, and quite flexible.


ROAR!!!!! says GOJIRA!!!!!

[NecronLord]

Well, let's not get carried away. Your character took quite a few hits in at least one battle and was still standing, but that's because he was tough and wore heavy armor, and none of the hits landed to areas like the carotid artery or central nervous system. Dahak's character shunned armor, and consequently had his arm severed in one fight (one of the first fights of the campaign, if I recall). Lucky Alyrium's character was there to magically glue it back on.

That's the effect of action points saving characters from being instantly killed. This would be the playability... On the other hand, NPCs... well, I recall a certain abount of heads exploding from called mace shots...

I'll head on over soon-ish then and take a look.

[Gunhead]

I can do high action/fantasy/etc. or realistic. I do favor realism quite a bit though. I always select and tweak the system to suit the game being played.
Last one that's been under my knife is silhouette CORE, which I've adapted for Star Wars.
I use pretty detailed hit location charts when running realistic games, as I'm not at all fond of hitpoint systems. Btw. Solving that bouncy hit location roll is easy. It really comes down to how aiming and hitting is resolved. In one of my games a player found out to his dismay that light brick walls don't protect against rifle fire. When I told him his character had taken a hit to the thigh, he said "But my characters left leg is comepletely behind cover, how can he be hit there?". So I replied "The round went through the wall you're standing behind. I suggest next time you find cover that's a bit more solid."
My own cooked up system uses cover in a few ways. The shooter has the option to go for an exposed part of the target, which gives a penalty to the roll. Or he can take the shot with a lesser penalty and hope his shot doesn't hit a body part that's behind cover.

I favor skill over stats almost always. I generally don't like games (which of there are plenty) that make a novice character more competent than an experienced one, just because the novice has better stats.
This goes double for systems that use dice to determine stats.
This btw. has been a pet peewee of mine about CORE, and I've spent "oh not so little" amount of time and energy to come up with acceptable alternatives, without having to redesign the entire system, at which point it would be easier to build one from scratch.

-Gunhead

[Hotfoot]

I favor skill over stats almost always. I generally don't like games (which of there are plenty) that make a novice character more competent than an experienced one, just because the novice has better stats.
This goes double for systems that use dice to determine stats.
This btw. has been a pet peewee of mine about CORE, and I've spent "oh not so little" amount of time and energy to come up with acceptable alternatives, without having to redesign the entire system, at which point it would be easier to build one from scratch.

-Gunhead

This has me confused. Silhouette CORE has always been point-buy, not random dice, and the only extent a novice can be better than an experienced character is that their range is higher (they'll still be prone to failure much more often) and besides which, assuming equal points for both characters, a character that's seen actual play will generally (not always) beat a newer character.

[Gunhead]

I really meant that high stats in CORE can unbalance things too quickly. For example high agility makes you good at almost any form of combat, even if you're limited to starting skill points. 2d+2 or +3 has a huge advantage over plain 3d and I just think the difference is too great.
The other major problem (for me at least) was that since stats are always added to the dice result, it becomes hard to do alien races, for example in SW, that can have super human stats. This is specially true when talking about stats that affect combat directly.
Higher dice count really pays off when doing prolonged actions, requiring steady successes. Combat however in most games I've played using CORE is over in few turns, and usually the deciding factor was that one high roll the other side had no hope of beating.

Basic CORE works well, when you're using that average +0/+1 maybe one stat +2 range. But I feel it starts to break down a bit if you go higher from that. I have no problem with my players, as they know me and also know I'll drop a 10t anvil on them if they try to munchkin out with the points I give them. I ran a short HG/Gear pilot campaign at one time, and as the players knew the system, I said they can make up their characters and just send them to me for approval. Guess what. I got five character sheets
with identical stat scores. At that point I decided it was time to do something different.

-Gunhead

[Hotfoot]

That's true, really high stats can unbalance things, but unfortunately there are very few games that give a higher power to skills than stats. Just about every RPG I've seen gives stats a very high precedence. The fact that SilCore is more unbalanced by it is shown by the way it does things. The only systems I'm aware of that don't give straight bonuses for stats are Savage Worlds and West End Games d6. D20 gets around this by having so many levels for skills that stat bonuses become almost insignificant, but early on those stat bonuses make a huge difference. Plus depending on the class you're playing, your primary stat could end up being massively important.