One of the things you don't explicitly mention occurred to me when thinking about this very issue, so I will add to your list.
• Variety in resistance: One of the chief reasons that protagonists (i.e. PCs) fall into the trap of "I hit him again" is that the opposing force in their contests provides no functional variety in its resistance ("I use my AC to avoid getting hit again"). Even 3.x, with all its tactical richness, provides little in the way of rich resistance variety. Whey the heck should PCs "work to make things interesting" when the antagonists' resistance is so bland? There's no economic reciprocity there! The PCs, in fact, are giving only what they are getting!
It seems to me that well-balanced, nicely flowing games (role, or board) deal with the inequity of actor-richness in two different ways:
- If your resistance is largely homogenous and abstract, then raise your protagonists' action choice up to the same level! If your protagonists deal with conflict narratively, with no tactical concerns, then it matches the variety of opposition, and more smooth flow is achieved.
- Provide more variety in resistance, based on the tactical choices of your protagonists and your antagonists. HERO does this by having each action taken by an actor have consequences for their own actions and for their resistance to the actions of others. On a simple level, this has a fairly noticeable effect, but it's not all that rich. DnD4e's "powerz" menu does a striking job of affecting not only actors ability to act, but also to resist! Suddenly you have powerz that cause shifts, movement, healing surges! Wow!
I've seen a lot of referee advice that says, essentially, "be flowery when you describe your results; this adds excitement to the game". I'm not sure that I agree with this. Maybe what you need to be, actually, is flowery when you describe resistance, because that's what's in direct opposition to the protagonist's activity. I will try to put this into practice. Rather than embellishing the results of my players attack ("Ohhh! Your sword took a huge chunk out of his left shoulder! He is bleeding and staggering and shrieking in terror!"), I will try to interpose during the die roll more ("Ooohhh! He sees you attempting to get close and clock him with your sword! He bobs! He weaves! He desperately attempts to raise his shield to meet your blow.... ahhh! not fast enough! horror! he loses how many hit points?")
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Date: 2008-07-08 08:38 pm (UTC)• Variety in resistance: One of the chief reasons that protagonists (i.e. PCs) fall into the trap of "I hit him again" is that the opposing force in their contests provides no functional variety in its resistance ("I use my AC to avoid getting hit again"). Even 3.x, with all its tactical richness, provides little in the way of rich resistance variety. Whey the heck should PCs "work to make things interesting" when the antagonists' resistance is so bland? There's no economic reciprocity there! The PCs, in fact, are giving only what they are getting!
It seems to me that well-balanced, nicely flowing games (role, or board) deal with the inequity of actor-richness in two different ways:
- If your resistance is largely homogenous and abstract, then raise your protagonists' action choice up to the same level! If your protagonists deal with conflict narratively, with no tactical concerns, then it matches the variety of opposition, and more smooth flow is achieved.
- Provide more variety in resistance, based on the tactical choices of your protagonists and your antagonists. HERO does this by having each action taken by an actor have consequences for their own actions and for their resistance to the actions of others. On a simple level, this has a fairly noticeable effect, but it's not all that rich. DnD4e's "powerz" menu does a striking job of affecting not only actors ability to act, but also to resist! Suddenly you have powerz that cause shifts, movement, healing surges! Wow!
I've seen a lot of referee advice that says, essentially, "be flowery when you describe your results; this adds excitement to the game". I'm not sure that I agree with this. Maybe what you need to be, actually, is flowery when you describe resistance, because that's what's in direct opposition to the protagonist's activity. I will try to put this into practice. Rather than embellishing the results of my players attack ("Ohhh! Your sword took a huge chunk out of his left shoulder! He is bleeding and staggering and shrieking in terror!"), I will try to interpose during the die roll more ("Ooohhh! He sees you attempting to get close and clock him with your sword! He bobs! He weaves! He desperately attempts to raise his shield to meet your blow.... ahhh! not fast enough! horror! he loses how many hit points?")