I hope that
this is the last time I try to start this series.
You see, many
weeks ago I started out writing a post about wandering monsters and why they
were important. But then I realized that
because there were different modes of play, random encounters would be shaped
and timed around the mode of play that was engaged. So, I started writing about dungeons and
wilderness and social encounters and down-time.
And then in so doing, realized that what I really wanted to write about was risk and reward and making player
decisions meaningful.
But even
that isn’t what I really wanted to write about.
At least not completely. It
finally occurred to me this past week that what I want to write about today
(and probably for the next few weeks) is about tension in Pathfinder. How to use it to make your game better, and why it makes your game better.
What’s so great about tension anyway? Well, Pathfinder is a game, and like most
games, there is a conflict that forms the core premise of the game. The mechanics of the game determine win and
loss conditions. The possibility of
losing creates tension. If there’s no
tension, things tend to get boring rather quickly. Sure, you could play a game where everyone
gets along, success is always the outcome and it never was in doubt. Wake me up when that game is over.
Pathfinder has tons of opportunities to create tension. Combat, skill checks, social encounters and
character interactions all are great examples.
A lot of the time, tension does indeed result from some or all of these
elements. But in my campaigns, it
doesn’t always happen. Particularly at
higher levels, the tension level seems to drop to nearly catatonic levels. I’ve ended years-long campaigns because of
the lack of tension in the game.
I’ve recently been examining the elements of my campaigns to
determine what are the causes of decreased tension. One of my recent posts, Why
My Campaigns Suck, talks about optimized gear and settlement rules and
such, but there are other points where I have unknowingly made my game more
boring by making them less tense. Most
of these instances involve hand-waving rules that make character decisions
meaningless. Let’s dig deeper.
Player decisions
One of the worst ways to damage a player’s engagement with a
role-playing game is to make their decisions meaningless. “Railroading” is what the kids call it these
days. The characters are trying to
prevent an orc raid on their village, so they search for, locate and infiltrate
the orc lair, killing many of them before returning to town. The raid happens anyway. The main bad guy of an adventure is defeated
by the characters earlier than expected, so the GM has the villain escape
through some deus ex machina because the adventure says the bad guy has
to live until the end of the adventure.
This is the kind of disempowerment that most people refer to when
discussing railroading. But there is
also a more subtle variety, one that doesn’t necessarily make player decisions
meaningless, but rather turns decisions into non-decisions.
Let’s say your adventuring group just killed some ogres in a
cave, and wants to loot the bodies and search their lair for treasure. The GM calls for a Perception check, which is
followed by every single character’s result, at least one of which is bound to
meet or exceed the DC (I lovingly refer to this as a Skill Gangbang). The GM reveals the hidden treasure, the group
distributes it, and they move on to the next encounter. Sounds familiar? It does in my games.
After completing a dungeon, your group is ready to travel to
the next destination and continue the adventure path. The GM briefly narrates the journey,
describing some of the terrain and identifying how long the journey takes. Rolling for random encounters is skipped,
because both the GM and the players agree that they are a waste of time and add
nothing to the story. The characters
arrive at their next destination, clean, refreshed and ready to take on their
next challenge. Sounds familiar? It does in my games.
Before they set out on their next adventure, the group
gathers up all the unwanted loot they accumulated, sell it and buy the gear
that best optimizes their character. The
unwanted gear is always purchased and the desired gear is always
available. Sounds familiar? You get the point.
In these examples, the GM asks the players for a decision,
and they respond with their intended actions.
Acceptable results are normally obtained, and the game moves on as
expected. Where’s the problem in these
examples?
Meaningful decisions
Above, I talked about how making player actions meaningless
is bad, and how you end up with disengaged players and uninteresting stories as
a result. But in none of the examples
provided do the players lose any agency.
They are free to skip the search for treasure if they want. They are free to travel anywhere they like. They
sell the loot they want, and buy the gear they want. They have decisions, and
their decisions matter. Right?
Well, no, not really.
For a player’s decisions to really matter, the decision must
balance risk and reward.
If either of these elements is missing from a decision point, it isn’t
really a meaningful decision. Any
decision made by the characters should involve a weighing of the potential
gains against the potential losses. If
there’s no risk, it’s not a decision that matters. Nor is it if there is no reward.
We make decisions constantly through the course of our day
as adults. Each decision we make in real
life involves comparing the potential benefits of a choice with the potential
drawbacks of that decision. Should I pay
the electric bill today or buy that new entertainment system? Should I get all my work done for the day, or
write a blog about role-playing games?
Our decisions matter, because what we choose involves potential
loss. The lights get shut off. Our boss puts us on probation. Et cetera. Keeping this in mind, let’s go back to our
examples so I can explore this idea in the context of RPG’s.
Our adventuring group has killed the ogres, and now make the
decision to loot the bodies and search the room for hidden treasure. There is obviously a reward involved; if they
are successful, they will find treasure and improve their character in the form
of currency or items. But is there
risk? Well, you could argue that the
risk is by not searching the room, or by missing your Perception roll, you
don’t get the treasure. The risk is
missing out on the gold and magic, which means your character doesn’t
improve. Now, go back and read two
paragraphs above this. A risk must involve
a potential loss to be meaningful.
Missing out on treasure isn’t really a risk. The net result of not getting the treasure is
that your character remains the same.
They don’t lose anything if they don’t find the treasure, they just miss
out on the opportunity to improve. This
isn’t a real risk, and therefore the decision to search the room isn’t truly
important.
How about travel? Are
there any decisions that matter in the second example? Let’s get the obvious one out of the way so
we can talk more about the opaquer one.
I’ve said this a lot, but I play adventure paths. In my Giantslayer campaign, the group must
travel south from the frost giant village of Skirgaard, through the Mindspin
Mountains to get to the fire giant lair and the next chapter in the AP. Obviously, even though the characters could potentially
decide to go somewhere else, the players know that they must go south if
they want to continue the campaign. Going
anywhere else means that the campaign is over, and we start playing some other
campaign. The decision of which
direction to travel is just an illusion.
The players willingly choose to travel to the next location in order to
continue the campaign.
Okay, having dispensed with that, there is another problem in this example that
I want to call out which is more germane to our discussion today. It involves the unwritten contract
between myself and my players which mutually agrees that random encounters
during travel are boring and a waste of time.
Out of curiosity, I looked at both the Dungeons & Dragons Player’s
Handbook, 5th edition and the Pathfinder Roleplaying Game Core
Rulebook, 2nd edition to see what they had to say about travel and
exploration:
D&D PHB: THE THREE PILLARS
OF ADVENTURE - Exploration includes both the
adventurers' movement through the world and their interaction with objects and
situations that require their attention. Exploration is the give-and-take of
the players describing what they want their characters to do, and the Dungeon
Master telling the players what happens as a result. On a large scale, that
might involve the characters spending a day crossing a rolling plain or an hour
making their way through caverns underground. On the smallest scale, it could
mean one character pulling a lever in a dungeon room to see what happens.
Pathfinder RPG CRB: Exploration - Most of the time, your character will explore the world, interact
with characters, travel from place to place, and overcome challenges. This is
called exploration. Game play is relatively free-form during exploration, with
players responding to the narrative whenever they have an idea of what to do
next. Leaving town via horseback, following the trail of a marauding orc tribe,
avoiding the tribe’s scouts, and convincing a local hunter to help in an
upcoming fight are all examples of things that might occur during exploration.
Throughout this mode of play, the GM asks the
players what their characters are doing as they explore. This is important in
case a conflict arises. If combat breaks out, the tasks the PCs undertook while
exploring might give them an edge or otherwise inform how the combat begins.
Well slap my ass and call me Judy! The #1 and #2 roleplaying games in the hobby
agree that exploration is one of the principal ways that players engage with
the game. Huh! If that is true, then why does exploration
get hand-waved so often? Does it have anything
to do with player agency and meaningful decisions?
How about social interactions with NPCs? Reducing a social encounter to a single skill
check is unrewarding, and usually only includes the character with the best
applicable social skill. Whether you use
the verbal duels system from Ultimate Intrigue or Everyman Gaming’s excellent
Skill Challenge Handbook, you’re broadening the roleplaying experience of a
social encounter, giving depth to NPCs, and (in the case of the Skill Challenge
Handbook) opening up opportunities for multiple characters to engage in a
social conflict.
Lastly, there’s downtime.
You may be thinking “What?
Downtime is when the characters get to rest and relax, and take a break
from all of the tension of combat and exploration and talking and stuff!” Yes, I do agree with that reaction but only
up to a certain point. If we remove any
element of uncertainty from downtime activities, it becomes dull, unimportant
and meaningless to the characters. For
example, the group of characters returns from the dungeon bearing treasure and
magical items. The liquid assets are
divided among the characters, the non-magical solid assets are sold for their
value and the unwanted magical loot is sold, with the proceeds of the sale
being used to buy more desirable magic gear.
If this transaction is satisfactory to your group, that’s fine. But I do believe that you are missing out on
some great worldbuilding and roleplaying potential, as well as the chance to
inject tension into this mode of play.
Firstly, the group needs to find someone to buy their
unwanted magic gear. Since the price tag
on these items is pretty large, the pool of potential buyers is quite
small. If we use the modern concept of
The Two Percent, we could say that only 2% of the population of the city would
have the funds necessary to buy the item.
How do the PCs find their potential buyer?
The same premise holds true when the PCs want to buy a magic
item. Using the magic treasure
generation rules from Ultimate Equipment, the GM determines that a rod of
withering is available for purchase in the city, the PCs learn of its
availability and want to buy it. They
can’t just wander into the local WizMart; they need to determine who has it, if
they want to sell it, and if so, how much do they want for it.
Introducing these elements of uncertainty accomplishes three
main goals: First, it gives the players an opportunity to engage in a process,
rather than just accepting a foregone conclusion. Why is this good? Because it creates an opportunity for the
character to use their skills and/or abilities to improve their chances of
success. A character with skill ranks
invested in Diplomacy gets the opportunity to Gather Information to locate a
potential buyer or seller. A character
with ranks in Appraise may get a chance to determine if the price offered by a
buyer or seller is fair. A character
with a social skill such as Bluff, Diplomacy or Intimidate may use those skills
to influence the outcome of a financial transaction.
Second, it creates roleplaying opportunities. Looking for a seller may lead the PCs to meet
an important local noble, or a crime lord, or a wealthy merchant. Any roleplaying encounter gives the GM a
chance to introduce an interesting NPC and maybe a potential plot hook. Perhaps the NPC will never be seen
again. But maybe they come back again at
a later time in the campaign and becomes important to the characters. The NPC may be nefarious and want to rob the
characters of their new shiny bauble at the earliest opportunity. Or they may be in need of a favor, creating
an adventure hook for future sessions.
Last, it improves the player’s immersion in the campaign
setting. Instead of a faceless,
impersonal transaction, the characters meet someone in the setting. Maybe it’s Marcus Thalassinus Endrin, leader
of House Endrin or Toff Ornelos, Headmaster of the Acadamae. Regardless of who, the important thing is
that they have a name, they have a role in the setting, and the players may
just remember their contact, and seek them out for future transactions. This creates persistence in your world, and
persistent NPCs make your setting more vibrant and believable.
Happy holidays to everyone!
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