Is it becoming a feature of modern (or should that be Indie) game design to forego thigns like difficulty ratings/levels.

The only indoe games I know well enought to comment are 3:16 and octaNe. 3:16 is level based in that characters get promoted. OctaNe has Hazard ratings which map to difficulty.

There i a diference though with Hazard ratings. They are meant to represent not so much "how difficult" but "how important" the challenge is.  I guess that sort of captures teh cinematic flavour in which for instance the action hero can mow down armed, and hightly trained goons without a second thought but then struggles to beat the boss. The boss is not strictly speaking stronger or fitter or better armed than his goons, but he more dramatically important.

Quote from: Ghost Whistler;370490Is it becoming a feature of modern (or should that be Indie) game design to forego thigns like difficulty ratings/levels.

Are you thinking of any game in particular? I know some of the indie games handle difficulty differently(and sometimes, like Soylent Green already said, base difficulties on things like dramatic importance rather than actual task difficulty). But I can't recall any off the top of my head that do away with it entirely.

Something like Don't Rest Your Head sets difficulty by "pain" ratings. It does represent the actual difficulty of the task, but the GM is expected to use pain rating as a guide to help him control the pacing of the story(keep characters from exhausting or going insane too quickly or slowly).

I don't recall any set difficulty ratings in Capes, but I think that's because all of the conflicts are between two or more players. It focuses more on dramatics, and the difficulty(your odds of winning your stakes in a conflict) depend largely on how lucky your opponent is and how many of his metagamey resources he's willing to spend to win his stakes.

Just . . . you need to be more specific. It's a very broad question.

Not for me. I give examples in High Valor and Derelict Delvers. H&S is a bit more fluid but even it makes suggestions.

Quote from: GeekEclectic;370611Are you thinking of any game in particular? I know some of the indie games handle difficulty differently(and sometimes, like Soylent Green already said, base difficulties on things like dramatic importance rather than actual task difficulty). But I can't recall any off the top of my head that do away with it entirely.

Something like Don't Rest Your Head sets difficulty by "pain" ratings. It does represent the actual difficulty of the task, but the GM is expected to use pain rating as a guide to help him control the pacing of the story(keep characters from exhausting or going insane too quickly or slowly).

I don't recall any set difficulty ratings in Capes, but I think that's because all of the conflicts are between two or more players. It focuses more on dramatics, and the difficulty(your odds of winning your stakes in a conflict) depend largely on how lucky your opponent is and how many of his metagamey resources he's willing to spend to win his stakes.

Just . . . you need to be more specific. It's a very broad question.

Houses of the Blooded, I think.

QuoteIs it becoming a feature of modern (or should that be Indie) game design to forego thigns like difficulty ratings/levels.

It's definitely a common part of forgy games, and correlates with not having a GM.