Old School Pain and Friction Points

Two thoughts, one post.

Old School Pain

Recently I've been reading a lot about the very different approach to game balance which arose quite by accident from the early editions of D&D. Essentially, because the old rules allowed for a great deal of variability in combat power of a given group of adventurers, and gave the DM extremely poor tools for gauging whether a given scenario would be easy or difficult, it became a common event that the players would find themselves facing something that, by the numbers, would be quite likely to just flat out kill one or more of them. To the extent that this was intended, it is the reason why the 10 foot pole, the iron spike, and the 50 foot length of rope gained their esteemed status as adventuring kit: when being incautious is likely to be lethal, it pays to prod every suspicious object from a considerable distance, pin every door open to allow for an expeditious retreat, and tie the party together when groping down a dark corridor - just in case. And a lot of people have a lot of love for that kind of "fair unfairness". Particularly since it exists in a context where character death is fairly cheap: you're meant to go through a lot of low-level characters before you get smart and lucky enough to have one survive, and so generating those characters is easy and losing them unsentimental.

On the other hand, dying sucks. Not just because it means you lose the game - after all, you do get to keep playing with a new character - but because it means you lose that guy, and their accumulated history, and their ability to engage with higher level threats, and sometimes in a way that just isn't very cool at all.

In looking for a compromise position that allows for fair but difficult situations and the continuity of character, I have been considering Dark Souls.

Dark Souls is hard. It is, in particular, full of the kind of fair but difficult situations that seems to come up a lot in discussions of why old school D&D is great. You are free to go wherever you please and engage enemies in whatever way you can come up with, and if you do so in an incautious fashion, you will die. You will die a lot. And the game does nothing to prevent you from getting into situations that are far beyond you - a wrong turn will bring you in contact with some spectacularly dangerous things, and the game does not put a fence around them.

But! Death is not the end. When you die, you return to the last place where you saved your progress. You keep your levels. You keep your equipment. You keep your various potions, arrows, and crafting materials. What you lose is souls, which are used like XP to earn levels and like GP to buy items and upgrades. And you can even get them back, if - if! - you can manage to make it as far as you were when you died.

What does this mean for death consequences?

1. There is continuity to your character. You are the same person from beginning to end, and this is never taken away, although you always have the option to start again with someone else.
2. There's only so far you can be set back. Once you have turned souls into levels and equipment, those are yours forever. Once you have accomplished things, such as reaching checkpoints or slaying major enemies, they stay accomplished. There is no being bumped down to a lower level of play.
3. It still sucks to die, because you lose progress toward major goals. And the further you progress before you die, in terms of moving toward a physical location and in terms of progress toward a new level or item, the more paranoid you become about each successive challenge. Despite the fact that you keep firebombs when you die, and you spent souls to get them, you will gladly sacrifice consumable items to keep that progress and not to be put into a situation that feels worse, because now you have to make every step of that journey again, with something to lose if you don't manage to do at least as well this time around.

So, what are the upshots?

1. Don't kill characters when they fail.
2. Don't take away their progress.
3. Do take away their toys, and then put them in a tough situation where they have to work hard to get them back - or get new toys.

And how does this translate to D&D? Well, I will be trying my best not to place my player's characters in a situation where defeat means certain death, except in rare circumstances where those sort of high stakes seem appropriate. Instead, I will be placing them in situations where defeat means waking up in a worse situation, with their treasure and cool toys disappearing over the horizon, and a series of obstacles between them and restoration or renewal of fortunes. And of course, as their treasures and toys accumulate, they get to take their turn as the targets of the same kind of penniless desperadoes that they have been for others...

Which reminds me. One of the pieces of advice for game design that has somehow lodged itself in my head is: show the players something they want, but can't get yet. Since I don't plan on beating my players with the stick of death, I must pull them forward with the carrot of some interesting goals. Fortunately, the Age of Sail is an amazingly good period for this. The twin forces of globalization and mercantilization meant that, in contrast to the provincial feudalism that came before it, anyone could get money, and money could buy anything - status, power, and amazing things from all around the world. I plan to dangle all sorts of wonderful items with huge price tags in front of the player characters, and let what they salivate at be the carrot that pulls them toward adventure. Then, once they get a taste of those nice things, I can begin wielding the cudgel of forces who want to take it all away...

Friction Points

Friction points are, in short, a rules mechanic for getting into and out of trouble with people. In the sort of situation for which they were first created - agents infiltrating an enemy area - the single friction point scale works quite well. But what about an area with multiple interconnected factions and rivalries? This bears pondering...