Out of Bounds

Posted by Sage LaTorra on Nov 16, 2011 in Games, Indies & More | 0 comments

Each week I do an Indies & More post where I take a look at Monte Cook’s Legends and Lore column for the week and share some thoughts on how other games and designers tackle the same issues. I’m not arguing with Monte or speaking for some larger design movement, these are just my thoughts on the same topic coming from a different gaming background. Since Monte’s writing for Wizards of the Coast he can’t talk about how other games deal with these issues, that’s why I write this column. This week Monte’s topic was challenges and solutions.

This is a tough post to comment on. There aren’t very many other games the focus so whole-heartedly on presenting challenges to players. That’s actually kind of what Monte gets at: in some editions/modes of play for D&D you present the players with a world and challenge arrises from the fact that the world has problems, in some editions you make challenges for the players to face that are tuned to them.

I think that’s a clearer way to think about what Monte’s discussing. Let’s not get too caught up in what the rules do or don’t allow, that’s tangential to how challenge is created and what it means to the players.

The very idea of “encounter design” is one that doesn’t exist in many other games. You don’t make a balanced fight for your In a Wicked Age character, challenge just occurs because what you want isn’t what’s going to happen unless you fight for it. The resulting conflict isn’t a finely tuned encounter, it’s a back and forth between two people who want different things.

There are quite a few games out there that have player character skills and rules similar to D&D that don’t worry about encounter design and entirely sidestep the problem of “challenging the players.” Burning Wheel for example has skills and monsters much like D&D but instead of giving the GM guidelines to how many monsters make a good fight and how hard a door that can challenge a fourth level thief is, the GM is told to present the world to the players and the rules will take care of the rest. Burning Wheel is a game that completely rewards player skill and overcoming challenges, but those challenges occur organically instead of being planned.

Taking Monte’s example of a room with a pile of treasure and an impenetrable force field a different way: maybe the solution, or lack thereof, should come from the logical consistency of the world: who put the field there? How did they expect to get in next time? What if they wanted someone else to have access? I feel like this is the OD&D way, and it’s mirrored in a lot of other games. Instead of making challenges, you make a world, the challenges come from that world.

Maybe the bigger question isn’t “Does the game present players with challenges that have pre-made solutions?” but “Does the game present players with challenges?”