Quote from: Peregrin;378038I don't see the type of "balance" in most RPGs as competitive, though.

I don't even see RPGs as automatically competitive, although they certainly can be played that way. They don't have to be, however, and often are not played as a competition. That was one of the things that drew me from boardgames and miniatures wargaming in the 1970s: the lack of winners and losers.

Quote from: RandallS;378051They both strike me as being fairly poorly balanced at the rules level, that is they depend on the GM to keep things balanced for his campaign by saying "no" to over-the-top (for a particular campaign) power-gaming. Note that this is the best type of "balance" IMHO.

What I mean is, that it's balanced in the sense that all of your options matter, and one class does not necessarily outshine the others by miles.

That, and casters are far more limited for far longer.  The chance of ending up with an uber-caster is far lower, and takes a fair bit of skill and luck on the players part.  It seems to me that in 3e, they boosted the casters' abilities without any significant drawbacks, but didn't really do much for the martial-focused classes (feats were a nice try, but didn't do much and were often just tedious to sift through).

In 3e, by the time a caster reaches the high single digits, you've got enough spell slots and enough powerful spells that you can abuse nearly any situation, regardless of whether you're optimized.  Playing the same level character in OD&D would involve much more deliberation over spell slots and whatnot.

Depends on how you run OD&D I guess, but I'm working with the assumption of the MU having to find or purchase his spells for significant sums of money (with the possibility that they may not even understand certain spells, ever).

Quote from: Peregrin;378053It seems to me that in 3e, they boosted the casters' abilities without any significant drawbacks, but didn't really do much for the martial-focused classes (feats were a nice try, but didn't do much and were often just tedious to sift through).

True, but it is relatively easy to fix. First and foremost: Get rid of feats and other abilities which allow casters to avoid losing spells when they take damage or are otherwise interrupted when casting a spell and make casting high level spells slow as in almost everyone else gets to move/attack first. Second, limit spell availability -- make finding those powerful spells hard, don't let them buy them or just have them. Third: limit magic item creation somewhat. This will not stop power-gamers (the GM still has to have the guts to say "no" and stick with it), but it will make casters less able to walk all over everyone else without trying. These changes will not solve all of the problems but they are easy and will solve many of the problems.

Rules balance isn't there to circumvent assholes, rules balance is to ensure each of the participant players can be of equal relevance to the game.

Leaving balance up to the GM is just as bad as leaving up interpretation of the rules solely to the GM since it leads to "Mother, may I?" scenarios since most GMs who practice this often reserve mutable say on any and every ongoing of the game. That kills the pace of the game and more likely than not creates inconsistencies which harms, not helps, any verisimilitude.

Peregrin, I think this part of the conversation is going off the rails a bit, possibly because of an over-polarized atmosphere, or simply the disjointed nature of forum threads. For example,

Quote from: Peregrin;378038I don't see the type of "balance" in most RPGs as competitive, though. As others have said, it's more or less a way to allow diversity while downplaying the uselessness or neglect that some options have throughout the life of the game as a franchise or whatever.

If you look upthread you'll see I raised this, it just fell by the wayside as the conversation moved on. But usefulness and uselessness are still only absolute in situations where there are certain, specific defined goals, ways of achieving them, and closed procedures. Otherwise, if the GM isn't operating in a cooperative fashion, balance is virtually impossible*; if the GM does cooperate, balance is relatively easy.

A simple example, if the GM only populates an AD&D campaign with undead as potential enemies, then clerics become essential while thieves are fairly crap. If instead there are almost no "monsters" in the campaign, but lots of intrigue and infiltration, then thieves and certain magic users will dominate. OTOH if the game offers a little of this and a little of that, then the game is balanced. This can be achieved by the GM observing the character types chosen and tailoring the campaign--or the GM & players can also agree more or less up front as to what the campaign will be like, and the players can create their characters accordingly.

The asterisk (*) above is to note that balance can be imposed on a game without having strict procedures, by making all the characters equivalent (or equally useful) in all situations. So for example if you make all characters equally important in all kinds of combat, and you leave out mechanical non-combat elements of character entirely, you'll have a "balanced" game, for sure.

QuoteI'm all for options, and breadth of a ruleset, but if it's one of those cases where I have to sacrifice playing a competent character (not even optimized), and the only reason to play a suboptimal character is some sort of high-brow "roleplaying a less-than-average character because I'm a method actor" BS that gets tossed around in White-Wolf circles a lot, then I'm not going to bother with those options.

Of course not, but again, the competence (or more broadly, relevance) of a character depends on the campaign context. A game that insists on balance at the design level, instead of relying somewhat on the social decisions of the group, is probably either based on a narrow concept of what the game will be "about", or else I believe it'll impose a sameness on all characters. That's my hypothesis; I'd be very interested in seeing it disproved.

Quote[About using rules to reign in power gamers, and how Forge games do it:] I just mean that most are built with the assumption that you're going into it together acknowledging that you want the same sorts of things from the game, not pulling out a Forge game one night because Billy keeps being a jerk.

I think this is true to an extent, but in discussions at the Forge and related places, there's a real sense of rules being designed to remove the temptation to powergame or engage in other undesired behaviors. E.g. you'll find criticisms of Amber on these grounds. And indeed if you distrust the role of the GM and social agreement, you won't have faith in the GM's ability to form a balanced campaign in conjunction with the players. The only solution then is engineering via rules.

Quote from: Elliot Wilen;378067A game that insists on balance at the design level, instead of relying somewhat on the social decisions of the group, is probably either based on a narrow concept of what the game will be "about", or else I believe it'll impose a sameness on all characters. That's my hypothesis; I'd be very interested in seeing it disproved.

It was my contention earlier than system flexibility and balance are fundamentally antithetical as well, so I'd agree.  Just a thought but it seems that there are alot of point-based systems out there (say GURPS,for the sake of argument) that are in theory very versatile and also theoretically very balanceable in that everyone gets the same number of points, but certain advantages/disadvantages will immediately be much more valuable in certain campaign play styles (e.g. social disadvantages may not matter as much in a combat heavy game, whereas in a combat heavy game combat skills are all-important). Good design might mitigate the effect (e.g. diminishing returns per point spent can prevent the focussed melee character from being invincible in hand-to-hand combat compared to the social character) but only by so much.

In other words, in theory the system is rules balanced by point costs, but if you can create any sort of character, there's no guarantee of 'game balance' for the individual campaign. A character might burn 90% of their points on combat skills and then be useless in the RP-based campaign, or get left behind when everyone else makes sneaky thieves because he makes too much noise. Alternatively, the super-social character might potentially end up enslaved and killed immediately in the GMs Arena of Death.

Quote from: DeadUematsu;378064Rules balance isn't there to circumvent assholes, rules balance is to ensure each of the participant players can be of equal relevance to the game.

It can't even do that. For example, I could create a campaign where the setting greatly favors one or two classes. Even if the rules perfectly balanced the game system for any of eight classes, my setting could easily marginalize any of them, making them very poor choices for players who want "equal relevance" to the game.  Or the GM could simply focus his attention on one or two "best friend" players and give less time and attention to the characters of other players, again reducing their "relevance" and there is nothing the rules can do to stop it.

Worse, what a player considers "equal relevance" varies. To some players it means always able to contribute equally no matter what the situation. To others it means they get about as much "face time" as the other PCs in every session. To others it means that each character has a couple of things that only they can do and that each character get the "be the hero" with some of those things every session. Etc.  Note that these definitions of "equal relevance" may not even be compatible with each other. The player who wants his character able to contribute equally in all situations is not going to be happy with a player who wants each character to be the only one good at a couple of things. Chances are good that any "equal relevance" written into the game rules will not be what all the players consider "equal relevance".

QuoteLeaving balance up to the GM is just as bad as leaving up interpretation of the rules solely to the GM since it leads to "Mother, may I?" scenarios since most GMs who practice this often reserve mutable say on any and every ongoing of the game. That kills the pace of the game and more likely than not creates inconsistencies which harms, not helps, any verisimilitude.

All my games leave balance and rules interpretation up to the GM and many, many players haven't had a bit of problem with them over 30+ years of playing.  I strongly suspect that your statement is not some type of rule for good design/good play so much as it is a personal preference. That is, whether leaving balance and/or rules interpretation up to the GM is good or bad (or indifferent) is simply subjective personal preference, not something that can be shown to be objectively true or false.

Quote from: DeadUematsu;378064Rules balance isn't there to circumvent assholes, rules balance is to ensure each of the participant players can be of equal relevance to the game.

Rules can't do that either. Oops. Burned by Randall. See his post.

I think the problem is lots of people are assuming campaign context, when most of the balance is usually within a smaller context.  

Something like 4e is only "balanced" within the encounter context, with certain classes having auxiliary powers that absolutely outshine the others in different situations.  A fighter will never be able to outdo a bard when it comes to getting the duke's help, since the bard can weave magic into their words and win him over almost instantly, assuming he's not super-strong-willed.  Likewise a city-slicker thief's powers won't do much for him in the middle of a jungle or forest, but a ranger will absolutely shine.

It doesn't work for me because I don't buy the notion that everyone has to be combat effective in a fantasy world (and it works against the type of worlds I like), but I don't see equal combat relevance cutting into a class' usual niche, just accentuating it enough so that they're able to contribute something during the most common activity in WotC D&D.

If you could provide some examples of games where all characters are all equal all the time (or nearly), then I'd appreciate it.

As for leaving balance up to the GM, the main argument is that it just creates more work for the GM, although the workload varies based on how badly balance was neglected (RIFTS being on the far end).

Here's a half-formed thought on this:

For me, Champions was the dividing line between Old School games and New School Games -- and GURPS consciously identified the line and codified it.

Here's what I'm thinking:

The original gaming paradigm (set out by D&D) provided a certain kind of structure for the game and the game-world, which included things like lists of spells, monsters, magic items, and defined the game world through structures like random tables, character classes, randomized statistics and so-on.

New School would be a different kind of gaming framework, where the play group provides a significantly different kind of input -- especially about what exists in the world, how it works, etc.

I think both models provide the same amount of freedom, but they provide significantly different *kinds* of freedom and freedom along different axis.

I'll admit that this may all be my own personal and idiosyncratic reaction to these games, rather than an objective dividing line that others would agree with, but -- for example -- the various hero games products for Fantasy Hero, with lists of spells and monsters always felt way out-of-place to me and far less categoric than the iconic lists in D&D.

I think GM-less games and incredibly highly focused games (a lot of the indie games which sort of automate a specific scenario) represent a different paradigm / branch, and would orthogonal to new-school / old-school.

Anyway, I doubt this makes a lot of sense to anyone, but that's where I'd draw the line.

Cheers,
-E.

Quote from: Elliot Wilen;378022And if I had wheels, I'd be a trolley car.

My point is not that RPGs are or are not like some hypothetical category known as boardgames, but that attempts at balance are derived
from actual cultural expectations derived from actual experience with competitive games. While you can make a game that fits those expectations of competitive balance, an insistence on "balance or it's broken" restricts design and play far more than necessary.

When I think about balance in RPG's, I find that I'm looking *specifically* at two kinds of RPG's -- super-hero games and D&D type games. Both explicitly suggest (but do not mandate)

1) A lot of combat where the whole party will be involved
2) A certain degree of fun in the game will come from tactical decisions made during character creation which relate to the character's effectiveness in combat

For these kinds of games I want the game to provide

a) Lots of different viable* strategies for character build approaches
b) A way for the GM to easily and accurately calibrate potential enemies to the PC's power-level
c) Rewards for clever character builds--but not such significant rewards that it limits viable builds

I find that "balance" is a good way to talk about those things. Games that I like for those kinds of games have lots of options (e.g. lists of powers and feats), but do not have a single or minimal set of builds which are all-around better than the others in just about every likely condition.

They also often define niches and provide some kind of niche protection (again, where niches in this sense refers to combat capability).

I find that this kind of balance is hard to achieve for a non-abstract or highly detailed system and I appreciate it when it comes up. I don't think aiming for this kind of combat necessarily restricts games, although demanding that it be *perfect* would basically exclude all games except the extremely abstract from play.

Cheers,
-E.

* viable, in this case means the character performs about as well in combat as his peers

Quote from: StormBringer;377583This is why I prefer to use 'vintage games'.  On the one hand, it is distinct from the OSR, so it's already about more than just D&D.  Secondly, I use it to delimit a specific time-frame:  80s and earlier.  Pretty much anything from 1989 or before is a 'vintage game'.  Right on the cusp of 2nd edition AD&D, in that regard, but before White Wolf demonstrated that TSR wasn't the only game in town.

I'm with you---I like vintage games as well.

Both should be just as open in definition, but I agree that it hasn't worked out that way.

Plus, "vintage" just sounds cooler.

Quote from: Peregrin;377798Not if your game is built around the notion that people are playing capable adventurers who mainly engage in combat.

It's a different game these days.  One that I don't entirely dislike for what it is.  

Despite my limited experience, from what I've seen and read, D&D as a game with a broad focus, from dungeoneering all the way to social-political engineering, was lost as soon as they cut the endgame out of it, with future designers just kind of going with the assumption that the party will always be a wandering band of adventurers encountering ever more powerful beasties, rather than settling down and ruling their own little fiefdoms.  

When you take out the game-play assumption that the PCs may one day be rulers, there's no need for fighters to grow their own entourages or armies rather than relying solely on their own exponentially increasing fighting prowess, and wizards being more powerful at endgame and doing world/nation-shattering things has no meaning, and so you build the game differently.

I just recently decided that with my group I am no longer going to be playing the my wizard.  I realized the intra-group conflict comes from me focused on the endgame, and trying to conquer and rule the world, and the rest of the group focused on a mission to mission basis and trying to save the world.  Figured I may as well save myself the aggravation and join them, and am rolling up a paladin today.

Quote from: Joethelawyer;378126I just recently decided that with my group I am no longer going to be playing the my wizard.  I realized the intra-group conflict comes from me focused on the endgame, and trying to conquer and rule the world, and the rest of the group focused on a mission to mission basis and trying to save the world.  Figured I may as well save myself the aggravation and join them, and am rolling up a paladin today.

Aww.  But it's so much fun when the next group of adventurers is storming your old character's tower!