A note on Balance

[Sean]

I just posted this in response to something SteveD wrote on rpg.net and thought it might be of interest here too.

----------

At least two different things get called balance:

1. Rough equality of ability to effect a type of conflict relative to chargen and experience systems.

2. Having a meaningful niche to contribute to play which other players can not usurp.

Here's a third thing which isn't normally called balance but which I think is connected to it and maybe more important:

3. Rough equality in principle and, if acted on, in practice of ability to introduce interesting imaginative material into the game.


Most traditional RPGs effect some sort of balance between 1 and 2. Arguments about balance typically devolve into wars between those who support 1 and those who support 2. But actually I think 3 is what's really important. In a traditional RPG you get to 3 by way of some kind of 'balancing act' between 1 and 2 spread out over the different central conflict types of the game, which is why you find supporters of both sides in these interminable arguments (see the pages of Dragon and Pegasus in the '70's with exactly the same points on both sides we see on enworld and rpg.net today). But in other RPGs you might get to 3 in completely different ways.

---------

Oh yeah. My thesis is that the reason people get so bitterly upset about balance is that they've played a system which did not allow them enough of 3, in case it wasn't clear. They look at the central type of conflict in the game that frustrated them (usually combat) and declare that all characters should be balanced relative to that in sense 1 so that nobody has to sit through getting robbed on 3 like they did. But of course that's generalizing in what's likely the wrong way from one's particular experience.

[Vaxalon]

Balance between the PC's power levels is a gamist concept, as I see it.  A "game" should be "fair".

PC niche is something that applies to both gamism and narrativism, but each one has its own take.  Gamists want to be able to do different things, whereas narrativists want their characters to have a different "push" on the story.

The ability to introduce imaginative material into a story is based on two things; the player's ability to produce it and the group's willingness to accept it.  I don't see how that concept is related to the other two types you mention.

[Ron Edwards]

Hello,

I was under the impression that I'd listed out pretty much all the possible meanings of "balance" in my GNS and Other Matters of Role-playing Theory essay, in order to show that the term has no functional (i.e. shared) definition. Is there some point here that I'm missing?

Best,
Ron

[Sean]

Fair enough.

If you get too far behind in Civilization or Settlers of Catan, you know that you won't win, and the end of the game becomes far less interesting. Is that a balance issue? Not really (maybe a little in Civilization), because everyone starts out with the same opportunity. But boy I hate playing those games when I no longer have a chance for meaningful input later on. Ditto with Risk.

If you have a game with clear victory conditions, then it would be unfair to give players different chances at those victory conditions - though in truth virtually all wargames of the classic variety are at least slightly unbalanced.

Let's consider the classic gamist RPG setup. All of you are working together usually towards some goal - beating the dungeon level and getting treasure and experience, say. If all of you can make a meaningful contribution to this, then all of you can be happy. This is why high-level thieves are bad characters in 1e and 2e D&D - all their powers are dupilcable by magic, so they lose their niche over time. But at low levels they are very cool characters, being able to do important things for the party that other character types can't do. This is an example of fulfilling type 2 balance early and it breaking down late.

Different power levels between PCs don't kill this setup, as long as everyone has something to do - has meaningful moves to make in the game. In point of fact there are always one or two characters in a D&D game who are tougher than the rest. Games can still be enjoyable, even to gamists, as long as everyone can make a meaningful contribution to 'winning'.

But as contributions in the RPG environment, these are exploratory contributions - involving meaningful actions in the shared imagined space. That's why I would say that even gamist 'balance' qua fairness ultimately is a case of 3 in the RPG environment. Your imaginative interventions have to be meaningful towards winning and/or stepping on up, and 1 and 2 are the standard ways of making this happen. Where I think people make a mistake is that assuming that fulfilling 1 or 2 is somehow an end in itself - I don't believe that it is. What matters is 3, relativized to the game's CA as you note.

[Sean]

Ron -

Your analysis of 'Balance' in the Gamism essay is perspicuous and I don't take myself to have disagreed with your substantive claims about the different menaings of balance here. (I do object mildly to combining such a perspicuous discussion with a shrug of 'we can't discuss this meaningfully because everyone uses the term differently': in fact, your discussion and others like it introduce precisely the sort of grounds on which we can discuss it meaningfully.)

On the contrary, if anything, I'm offering a theory of frustration with balance which relates to people being thwarted in different kinds of exploration. What kinds of exploration those are depends on the CA. What I do is isolate two kinds of Gamist balance (the same two as in your gamism essay more or less, AFAICT) and posit that the real reason that these are frustrating to people is that people, in the course of playing games, find that they've been saddled with a character who can't act effectively in the conflicts they find themselves in. Which actually seems to fit your cases of Simulationist and Narrativist imbalance well too, albeit perhaps only by way of being couched in suitably vague generality.

Or put it this way. 'Balance', in any and all of the forms you mention, is not an unqualified good for RPGs. But the reason that people think that a given form of balance is an unqualified good is that they have been stuck in a game where they were denied meaningful exploratory contribution because of a feature of that game which could have been fixed if a given form of balance, relative to the CA and system of that particular game, had been present which was not.

(I of course exclude cases of simple whining and incompetence. I'm talking here of cases of legitimate 'imbalance' frustration, which I think, again, is really a frustration with a lack of opportunity for meaningful input into the SiS in disguise.)

I'll shut up for a while now and see if this goes anywhere.

[Ron Edwards]

No, no, don't shut up! Let's go with this, and yeah, I agree with you that we can move forward.

But the reason that people think that a given form of balance is an unqualified good is that they have been stuck in a game where they were denied meaningful exploratory contribution because of a feature of that game which could have been fixed if a given form of balance, relative to the CA and system of that particular game, had been present which was not.

(... cases of legitimate 'imbalance' frustration, which I think, again, is really a frustration with a lack of opportunity for meaningful input into the SiS in disguise.)

Since "meaningful input into the SIS" is, in my model, what Creative Agenda is, let's stick with this. Sean, can you help with ...

a) a specific game and its rules-set
b) a Creative Agenda which might have a fine opportunity to be satisfied using this rules-set
c) a required sub-set of "balance" which would be necessary to do (b) successfully
d) an instance of play or perhaps some lapse in the rules-set which fails to provide (c)

That would be uber-helpful.

Best,
Ron

[Sean]

a) AD&D
b) Gamism
c) Every character has to be able to contribute in some way to victory in the scenario
d) At higher levels, all thief abilities are easily duplicated by other classes (specifically clerics and magic users, by way of spells, but also by commonly available magic items). So your formerly cool thief becomes more or less useless: an inferior fighter with some scrolls at best.

a) Tekumel: any published rule set for the world (EPT, Swords and Glory, or Gardasiyal will all do).
b) Simulationism: let's say you're playing with Phil or another Tekumel-inspired fabulist who knows his stuff and all you're really interested in is the various weird things he's imagined. You want to get him to describe them to you by going to the right places, solving mysteries of access, etc.
c) Everyone should be able to provide some input into which things you're going to explore: otherwise the GM might as well just hand you an essay he wrote about Onchash Chairon or the like.
d) None of the rules-sets in question provide any helpful information about social contract or about distributing input into adventure-direction by players. In the absence of something to guide this, you will either get one or two of the players deciding for everyone else what will be explored in detail, or the GM leading you by the nose. Whereas if you had some way of negotiating input into what might be explored, the players would be getting their own exploratory desires satisfied instead. There is no system provided at all for managing exploration, so this form of balance is entirely left to individual play groups.


It's harder to find a clear Narrativist example. This is because what makes a Narrativist-facilitating design, almost by definition, is some sort of explicit system for distributing premise-addressing and coping with emotionally/morally loaded content. I just don't have enough actual play experience with such systems yet to comment intelligently on which ones distribute meaningful player input of these types better than others and why. On the other hand the many years of narrativist play with non-Nar-facilitating systems provide numerous examples, but they all have this same quality of simply failing to adjudicate this at all and thus pushing things back to the social contract level, where breakdowns similar to the one I describe for Simulationist play on Tekumel happen.

(Simulationist-leaning Ars Magica does provide support for 'the dream' of being a medieval magus by way of the complicated lab rules, especially as supplemented by the Wizard's Grimoire.)

I can imagine a game like My Life with Master where the 'balance' between Self-Loathing and Weariness relative to likelihood of being able to deal interestingly with thematic content was skewed one way or the other without some other kind of other meaningful compensation on the other end. My guy has higher weariness so he needs more love for his standing up to the master to count for anything. On the other hand there seem to be compensations for this in other kinds of interaction - I'll have a better sense for this after I actually play MLwM for the first time next Sunday.

---------------

Anyway, I think that what an RPG really needs is to give competent players in a group with a functional social contract the tools for everyone to provide meaningful input into the SiS and its exploration as appropriate to the CA. When people complain about balance, I think they're usually stuck on a particular way they got hosed out of providing such input.

The high-level D&D thief is the clearest case I can think of because so few games deal with the kinds of issues that come up for Sim and Nar balance at all, and those that do provide explicit mechanisms have either done so so well that no-one notices the problems, or limited experience prevents me from a judicious assessment of which ones distribute narrative and theme influencing input better and why. Since this is the World Headquarters of Narrativism, maybe some of you with more actual play experience might talk about how the different Nar games have supported and frustrated you particularly with respect to addressing theme/premise and/or story input and what rules-factors helped and hurt. It's beyond my competence.

[Sean]

So maybe what I really want to say is this. The kind of 'balance' that's important to RPGs is some kind of balanced distribution of meaningful input into the game's SiS relative to the chosen CA. Balance of power in either of the two common gamist senses (equal ability to effect conflcits, having a unique niche of ability relative to others) is one way to satisfy this given a Gamist CA, but they may not even be the only ones for Gamism, let alone for other CAs.

When people stridently defend a particular type of balance (usually equality of conflict-effectiveness) meaningful relative to a particular CA that's good for all games, therefore, they are potentially mistaken in two ways. The first is that the key thing is giving everyone meaningful input, which isn't necessarily satisfied only by giving everyone equal conflict-effectiveness (or whichever other particular fix might seem appropriate); the niche solution also works, and it may be that metagame vs. in-game effectiveness (as with Hawkeye v. Thor in Ron's example) is another effective form of tradeoff as well. There are many options.

The second is that what sort of balance in distribution of meaningful input is required is radically contingent on what kind of game you're playing and your CA. If you're playing one of those master-and-slave porno games on rpol.net it may be vitally important to you that you choose a disempowered role: maybe what you mostly want is to have things done to you. And so on.

[Marco]

I think balance often has a useful meaning when employed in RPG-character-generation contexts. Broadly, that choices in character generation have an equivalent cost to benefit ratio where Cost is measured in currency (class selection in AD&D)  and Benefit is measured in effectivness with regard to a character niche (as per niche-protection).

Usually, IME, ensuring that niches are equal is the job of the GM in traditional games.

I think most of what people talk about when they talk about systemic balance boils down to this and while niches are often poorly defined (does GURPS acknowledge a Barbarian Niche vs. the Knight Niche?) the concept of balance usually steers the conversation in that direction ("how realistic is it, in the GURPS-combat-system's measure of realism, for a loin-cloth wearing muscled guy with an axe to beat an armored knight with a sword?" If the answer is "not very" and "the barbarian will never win" then if GURPS is to be used for a fantasy game that has both loin-cloth wearing barbarians and armored knights along side and they cost the same one can say that something is out of whack (perhaps its ST and HT costs!) ).

I've seen it used that way numerous times and far from being useless the concept led to a very valuable discussion. As with almost all RPG-terms, though, I agree: it needs context and definition.

-Marco

[ADGBoss]

<sniP>
The high-level D&D thief is the clearest case I can think of because so few games deal with the kinds of issues that come up for Sim and Nar balance at all, and those that do provide explicit mechanisms have either done so so well that no-one notices the problems, or limited experience prevents me from a judicious assessment of which ones distribute narrative and theme influencing input better and why. Since this is the World Headquarters of Narrativism, maybe some of you with more actual play experience might talk about how the different Nar games have supported and frustrated you particularly with respect to addressing theme/premise and/or story input and what rules-factors helped and hurt. It's beyond my competence.

Ok my problem with this and my personal belief that Power Gaming is not a purely Gamist phenomena, is that you are talking about two different things here.

1) D&D Thief: Your example supposes that said Thief, is an Interested and Capable Player who is up to the challenge of playing but his or her character is getting Shafted by the Rules. It also assumes that non-Optomized character is useless at high level.

2)Un-Interested or Incapable or Marginalized Player, who is getting shafted by the GM, other player(s), or by his or her own lack of ability. No matter how 'good' a character he or she has, the Player cannot seem to contribute meaningfully.

Do we blame System for #1? Well yes and no. Yes because it allows a class to be marginalized although this is not as bad as it might seem (IMHO). However, if you feel like a thief at high levels is going to be shafted, what the hell are you doing playing a thief? A) You like to complain or you like emotional pain. B) You like the challenge of playing a non-optimal character.  A dedicated (I will not say good because thats to subjective) and interested player can overcome System issues.  If you feel that a system is not giving you what you want, then why are you playing? There is NO EXCUSE to play a game that does not support what you want. Period. I do it, we all do it, but there is no excuse for it.
In any case, a dedicated Player can easily counter and enjoy an "unbalanced" system.

As far as #2, no matter how good a system you have, no matter how "balanced" it is, someone who is uninterested or someone who is not stimulated intellectually by the amount of "Imagined" stuff in an RPG is not going to be able to contribute meaningfully. Period. System won't save em, (probably).  

Regardless of Creative Agenda or the System used, some Players just know how to work the system to their advantage better then others. This is not a case of Balance, just a difference in priorities.

So I ask, what IS it really that we are trying to Balance? Even in a non-classed based system, that gives everyone Chargen choices, Balance will not necessarily be maintained. Someone will pick up all the skills relevant for the Plot of the Game/Campaign and someone will choose, Knowledge: Bee Pollen just because it is neat.

In fact "balance" would almost seem counter-realistic, because the world itself is not fair and equal.  I would think that it would be very difficult to mandate an equal share of SIS from every player, regardless of system.

<shrug>.  For what it is worth, I feel D&D IS balanced with regard to the basic game.  It's only in the augemented supplements that unbalance begins to creep in.


Sean

[Mike Holmes]

Here's a thread with some links in it that are pertinent as well: http://www.indie-rpgs.com/viewtopic.php?t=1244

But I can't seem to find the one that went over all the different types of balance. I could be thinking of the GB Steve one (662) but I don't think so.

Anyhow, we had this all hashed out ages ago, and I'm surprised that more history on it hasn't shown up (maybe everyone's having the same problem as I am). We all agree with Ron that Balance can mean a lot of things, but you can break them down into sub-types that are discussable.

At this point, however, I would like to take another stab at coming up with a good definition. How about:

Balance is a quality of play where each player has an equivalent amount of power to make the sort of decision that the CA takes. That is, a game in which no player feels that others have more ability than they do to make these sorts of decisions could be said to be balanced.

I'm sure someone more eloquent can tidy that up. But the essence is there. In general, the sub-types sometimes miss the mark. Spotlight time has to be qualified to be not just time on "camera" (to extend the analogy), but such time where they have the opportunity to make the right sort of decisions. That is, if the game isn't participationism, and the GM puts the spotlight on the PC just to do all the talking himself, that doesn't balance the game.

This works with power balance as well. If your character is weaker in a gamism environment, to the point where they're contributions do not significantly matter, the player choices are disempowered, and have no meaning.

Make sense?

Mike

P.S. in regards to the recent thread on Hero Quest, in that case I indicated that the number of abilities and types in terms of breadth is important to maintain. This is because every ability is something to potentially "play around" in Hero Quest. Unlike a game that supports gamism, the level doesn't really matter much at all. It's simply the number of mechanical elements that you can call on in play that makes a character interesting to play in HQ.

[Sean]

Hi Mike -

You wrote

"power to make the sort of decision that the CA takes"

and that's more or less what I've been getting at. I think there is a reasonable general definition of 'balance' across roleplaying, but it's not the one that most people think it is. It's the ability to have one's input register in the game according to the game's CA (and not just CA-in-general: the particular way that particular game fulfills the desires which we theorists would associate with the CA in question). Games that distribute this 'fairly' are 'balanced', with the understanding that 'fair' distribution sometimes means that people take on asymmetrical roles (GM, as well as 'Caller' - anyone else play back then? We had callers in our first games.)

But anyway the idea is that if you're a player in a game and you haven't been assigned an asymmetrical role for the good of the group, then you expect the value of your input into the game's SiS to be dependent on (a) the wisdom of your past choices and (b) the skill of your play. If the system consistently hoses certain choices which it presents as just as good as any others then that's a balance problem in the system.

The manifestation of this in Gamism is contribution to winning and success in conflicts, which get your Step on Up on. The traditional forms of gamist-relevant balance - equal optimum efficacy for dealing with particular conflict-types, niche protection so everyone has something to do, etc. - hence are in some sense legitimate 'balance' concerns in the broader sense. It's just that there's a synechdoche in a lot of the arguments about this that go on - either mistaking one kind of Gamist balance for the whole thing, or making the general considerations that go into making a Balanced gamist game as ones which apply generally to all RPGs regardless of CA.

[NN]

However, if you feel like a thief at high levels is going to be shafted, what the hell are you doing playing a thief?

Hey! I raised that guy all the way from first level! He used to rock!

[PlotDevice]

Hi Mike -

You wrote

"power to make the sort of decision that the CA takes"

and that's more or less what I've been getting at. I think there is a reasonable general definition of 'balance' across roleplaying, but it's not the one that most people think it is. It's the ability to have one's input register in the game according to the game's CA (and not just CA-in-general: the particular way that particular game fulfills the desires which we theorists would associate with the CA in question). Games that distribute this 'fairly' are 'balanced', with the understanding that 'fair' distribution sometimes means that people take on asymmetrical roles (GM, as well as 'Caller' - anyone else play back then? We had callers in our first games.)

.

In my mind balance has associations to opportunity to be involved in different aspects of the game.

It is not limited to the power to actualize decisions according to your creative agenda. It is the oportunity to do so that is relevant. Players will often compromise their CA for the benefit of the game and take the "asymmetrical roles" if such are needed, but they have the oportunity to not do so, and this is what is valued.

"all players begin the game equal" is the paraphrase of "all people are created equal" ... but the question becomes almost metaphysical when it comes to determining "equal with respect to what?". Cirtainly in the contact of a game, the playground instinct is toward equal oportunity to play in the game, even if the roles of the game are different.

To go over a brief an not exhaustive set of opportunities; in some contexts the equality desired will be with respect to:
-"On" time: that is, how much of the time are you playing, and how much are you waiting for your turn. (Turn Balance)
-Starting block: which is that all players are on the same starting block at the begining and have the same oportunities to actualize a play strategy. (Chargen Balance)
-Fulfilling agenda: which is the opportunity to play out your creative objectives within the game. (CA Balance)
-Player role: which is the external needs of the game (providing food, playspace, transport, being the GM or Player (or caller!)) (Game Support Balance)

In my experience, people are willing to sacrifice one element of these to favour another, and this is the fundamental point I am aiming for: Balance is about making the oportunity for such a sacrifice available in an equitable way to players, so they can choose to place themselves in the context of the game as they desire.

Game mechanics can support this: you can include rules for bonuses to people that perform support roles, or have an unwritten rule about GM-player interaction time, these can each contribute to the equity of oportunities and sense of fairness to interact with the game.

That's my take on it, anyhow.

Warm regards,
Evan

[Bill Cook]

I love this thread.

If you get too far behind in Civilization or Settlers of Catan, you know that you won't win, and the end of the game becomes far less interesting. Is that a balance issue? Not really (maybe a little in Civilization), because everyone starts out with the same opportunity. But boy I hate playing those games when I no longer have a chance for meaningful input later on.

Amen. This reminds me of a Monopoly anecdote I shared in Response to the Supporting Essays:

I'm reminded of a monopoly game my friends played. Two of them employed a strategy of holding onto the vital land that another player needed to be a contender. Two others actually got a monopoly. Another two were the ones shut out by the otherwise impotent play-busters. A player of the third category landed on a monopoly and didn't have enough money to pay. So, the monopoly holder said the renter had to mortgage his properties. To which he responded by gifting his holdings to the other contender. A huge argument erupted.

A second point of interest: one of the players shut out brokered a deal to help an impotent player form a meager monopoly, even though the shut out player took a considerable loss. This aroused cries of disgust.

My point: spitefulness or altruism aside, relevance in play trumped the drive to win.

Since this is the World Headquarters of Narrativism, . . .

(Laughs.)

Sean:

In your 5th post, are your two things the mistakes people are making or the truthes people are missing?

If you're playing one of those master-and-slave porno games on rpol.net  . . .

(Blushes.)

Usually, IME, ensuring that niches are equal is the job of the GM in traditional games.

I wish. I've suffered both types of inequality on both sides of the screen. You can take it on yourself all you want in either role: if the system cuts you off at the knee, it's mod city or don't play thieves.

ADGBoss:

I don't know. Different paths to victory appeal to different types of players. I tend to elect sub-optimal players as an interrogation of system. (I used to kick all the Ken's and Ryu's asses with Dhalisim.)

A dedicated . . . and interested player can overcome System issues.

My counter: if a dedicated player can overcome a perceived limitation of system, that certifies its support to a breadth of approach.

If you feel that a system is not giving you what you want, then why are you playing? There is NO EXCUSE to play a game that does not support what you want.

Well, you could be ignorant. Or skeptical. I was.

Regardless of Creative Agenda or the System used, some Players just know how to work the system to their advantage better then others. This is not a case of Balance, just a difference in priorities.

Principle informs priority. You've got your finger on a training issue. Assuming a match between player interest and system purpose, the task remains that it be presented and its methods are internalized. I think you may have some bias against incompetence. To be fair, my assumption, above, may be sweeping.

** ** **

I've privately been a poster for balance, primarily due to type I and type II inequality, but I'm realizing that I could live with it as long I remained enfranchised. Glory be! Yes, that's what I've been on about.