Player Skill vs. Character skill

[tombowings]

In the last few months I have been analyzing trends in games I really enjoy vs. games I don't enjoy as much. The conclusion I have come to is that I enjoy games that have a greater emphasis on player skill rather than character skill. Resource and risk manage as well as creativity are much more fun for me than dice rolling. Character skills and abilities are less interesting to me. In my mind, failure or success should be the product of the player not lucky/unlucky dice rolls.

So, my question for you is. Is there a way can I weight combat, picking lock, and other character focused situation more towards the player skills side of things. I'm not suggesting that players should be attempting to pick locks at the game table, but attempting to find some way to involve resource management, risk management, or some other type of player involvement.

[Megoru]

I may be mistaken but I think that while a flexible system would be of great help, it is a GM responsibility to create situations in wich mere high die results aren't enough. And this can be done with nearly every system.

A very simplicistic example:
Put the character in a situation in wich it is clear they cannot win with mere skill/attack rolls and give them the choice to try or leave/surrender (with no critical consequences) and think of at least a couple of ways they could overcome the difficulties with invention and strategy (traps and mechanisms that requires coordinated actions are a good start).

[tombowings]

Yes, but how do you encode that into a game system? How do you present those situations as tools to a GM within a rollplaying game?

[chance.thirteen]

As soon as it becomes system it becomes subject to min-maxing, which can usually be learned by rote.

You probably really need to think about a situation you have experienced, and try to nail down exactly about it was what you want to see a great deal of in play. Then fiugre out how to encourage it, or at least not impede it.

For me, it is about risk and being appropriate. I like it when you have to leave yourself vulnerable in one way to boost your impact in another. Combine that with an action that is fitting to the given character or story and/or setting and I am fairly satisfied. For instance I like the way that you can choose add on to your  Exhaustion rating in Don't Rest Your Head. It increases your chances of conflict resolution success, but it also increases your risk of passing out eventually.

So what interests you?

[Seamus]

In the last few months I have been analyzing trends in games I really enjoy vs. games I don't enjoy as much. The conclusion I have come to is that I enjoy games that have a greater emphasis on player skill rather than character skill. Resource and risk manage as well as creativity are much more fun for me than dice rolling. Character skills and abilities are less interesting to me. In my mind, failure or success should be the product of the player not lucky/unlucky dice rolls.

So, my question for you is. Is there a way can I weight combat, picking lock, and other character focused situation more towards the player skills side of things. I'm not suggesting that players should be attempting to pick locks at the game table, but attempting to find some way to involve resource management, risk management, or some other type of player involvement.

For combat, it may be difficult to completely remove the random element, but not impossible. You could just try to make strategy and tactics more important than die results. I suppose if you made winning more about who has stacked up the most advantages (buffered by base abilities), you could do it without dice. I would just make a point of trying to factor the characters physical attributes into the mix somehow, so you don't have the 80 pound professor mopping the floor with the Rock in a fist fight.

For lock picking and stuff like that, I am thinking problem solving. You may have to get abstract. I don't know what mental abilities it takes to pick a lock, but perhaps if you identified what those are, then created a mental game that replicates it. It could end up being some kind of numbers game, or puzzle the player must solve to pick a lock. This may get you too far away from the lock picking itself though.

I think there is a white wolf game, can't remember for sure--may be another company, that devised an interesting card game to simulate gunslinger duels. It is pretty abstract, but when I experienced it as a player, I feltit did a a good job of replicating what I thought a standoff might feel like.

[dindenver]

Tom,
  There are two systems that come to mind when I read what you wanted:
1) Shadow of Yesterday - This game has a lot of random elements, but players are able to mitigate the randomness, if they are willing to risk their characters to get what they want. So, for every roll, they have a basic task resolution system, but if the player doesn't like the result, they can escalate and this is a system that is much more tactical and much more risky to the characters, but the ebb and flow of an extended conflict does not fall on a single die.
2) Resource Management games - I am thinking of the new Marvel Universe game, but I know there are several others like Weapons of the Gods where there is little to no rolling and your success/failure is determined by spending resource, not a random die roll.

  It is possible to design the game to encourage player skill. Ideally this comes from a game that rewards player knowledge of the system. This is how D&D works, the more the player understands the system, the more successful the payer will be. But, I have seen other games achieve this, without complexity (although complexity is a hallmark of this type of game).
  The thing to remember is that the only skill a game can test/leverage is skill in the game mechanics. No matter how realistic/whatever a game is, the players learn the the game's "physics" and play it, not the other way around.

  Well, at least that is what I have seen, I hope this helps.

[chance.thirteen]

While reading these responses, I was reminded that some RTS games like Warcraft have no randomness. They just have damage and damage mitigation, perception and attack range for fighting.

I think you could do similar with combat at least. It might feel odd, chess like even, but innate skill and talent, special traits, and even changeable things like a tactic or an aggressive vs defensive stance can all have set values. Players would choose what they had to do to get the level of effect (be it damage or engagement, or in non-combat other effects), and the actions needed to reach it.

I am assuming that by player skill vs character skill you mean player decisions vs character ratings. When contrasting the two, some people include very descriptive and clever use of rules, physics (or ways that physics aren't covered by the rules) to set traps, and drop summoned whales on opponents. Like judging evocative yet very subjective storytelling, that is more of a player style, and something the group has to work on together, and less something you can design a system to create.

[tombowings]

After reading these responses I have come up with a system of mechanics that suits me. This is only the first draft of an outline and still needs to e playtested.

Melee Combat
Characters each have three Combat dice. At the beginning of each combat round, characters may distribute their three dice to between Offense and Defense. Some pieces of equipment or specific situations may add to or subtract dice from a character's Attack or Defense.

The character with the weapon of the highest initiative acts first. That character rolls all of the dice she allocated to Defense, while the opposing character rolls off the dice he allocated to Attack. The defender takes one wounds for every Attack die that rolls higher than the defender's highest Defense die.

For each wound a character takes, he looses one Combat die. A character with no dice is dead.

Counter Attack – The character that acts last in a round may choose to use his highest Defense for an Attack instead of Defense. His second highest Defense die takes its play.

Multiple Opponents – When fighting multiple opponents, a character must specify which Attack dice are aimed at which particular opponents when allocating their dice.

Casting Spells
Mages have three Magic dice. Each Spell has a Complexity rating. To cast a Spell, at least one of the Mage's Magic dice must exceed the Complexity rating of the Spell. Failure to cast a Spell results in the loss all of the magic dice used in the casting.

[chance.thirteen]

Your defense will become very awesome very quickly, depending on the dice used. If you used D6s, you'll start seeing a 6 as a result fairly fast.

Since you want each die to be its own result, you could pair off attack and defense dice, ties to defender (or offense depending on your desires).

[tombowings]

Wow, thanks for the quick replay. That was something I was toying with in my mind. I'm going to try out a couple mock battles with my wife and see how it goes.

[chance.thirteen]

I highly recommend learning to use the dice calculator at http://catlikecoding.com/anydice/

The creator posts here, and the documentation is getting better al the time.

For off the top of your head results, the chance of any number of dice rolling the top value is 100% minus (the chance of NOT getting that top value^numbe of dice)

So the chance of not getting at least a 10 on 3d10 is 9/10 X 9/10 X 9/10, or about 72%. So 28% of the time you'll see at least one 10 if not more.

[xenopulse]

The conclusion I have come to is that I enjoy games that have a greater emphasis on player skill rather than character skill. Resource and risk manage as well as creativity are much more fun for me than dice rolling.

This is me tooting my own horn (which I don't like to do), but maybe you should check out Beast Hunters.  Here's a link to the free SRD.

The basic idea there is this: you propose your action, using your creativity as much as possible.  The GM (aka Challenger) offers you a certain level of success based on how cool she thinks your maneuver is.  The trick here is: if you think the offer is too low, you can still roll dice based on your character's traits.  Or you can accept the offer, get your advantage points, and conclude your maneuver.  This way, you get to try creative and cool solutions every time, but you can also fall back on dice if needed.

There's a bunch of resource and risk management things throughout the whole design concept as well.  For example, you set the GM's budget for your adventure, but your rewards are based on the budget.

Anyway, hope that helps, if only to give you one unique example of how this can be done.

[David Berg]

The character with the weapon of the highest initiative acts first.

This strikes me as another opportunity for strategic choice, if players have to choose whether to equip their characters with high-initiative weapons vs weapons with other advantages (e.g. +1 to rolls on attack dice).  This decision could be made long-term (purchasing) or round-by-round (switching off).

Here's one example of a combat choice I enjoyed:
My character has a +4 strength damage bonus to each attack.  He can choose between a short sword that attacks twice per round for 1d6 or a long sword that attacks once per round for 2d6.  He picks the short sword, so he'll deal 2d6+8 per round instead of 2d6+4 per round.  However, he winds up fighting an opponent with 2d6 armor!  With the short sword, on any given attack the odds are about even that 0 damage will get through his enemy's armor!  With the long sword, his odds would be much better.  Well, now I've learned, and I have a new strategy for my next fight (have two swords, or scout the enemy first, or let the character with the longsword go in front, etc.).

An ideal enemy for a strategy-heavy game is one with a lot of working parts, where you can fight, lose, learn, and try again.  A demonic tree that can only be damaged once you destroy the beehives surrounding it, but which attacks differently when the beehives are close to destroyed, and re-creates the beehives unless the biggest root is held down...

As a GM, I also like making riddles and puzzles for players. 

Experimentation at a cost is great.  Got a theory on how to activate the magic orb?  You can test it, but you have to use one of your last vials of dragon blood to do so!

[Megoru]

There's a way you could include a resource to manage during combat with the aim to force the palyers to think carefully on what to do on therir turn.

I use this mechanic in my card game to simulate stamina but you can also see it as a representation of time distribution to manouvres during the turn.

Every pc and npc has a maximum hand size based on level (or everything you want). Combat starts with everyone having the full hand of cards unless someone was unaware/distracted/whatever.
During your turn you play one or more card to attack.
If attacked you play one or more card to defend yourself.
When each round starts everyone can draw a certain number of cards up to maximum hand size.
The numbers are put so that if in a round you play all your cards, you will not have your maximum hand the for the next round.

Example:
Maximum hand size = 4
Max number of card drawn per round = 2
My fighter starts with 4 cards in hand, during his turn he attacks with 3 cards. He got only one card left to defend. Before the round ends he got attacked twice, he defend the first and is forced to take a wound by the second (no cards left). For the second round the fighter starts with 2 cards, he is fatigued!

Be aware this system doesn't let you fight a lot of enemies at once cause for every enemy that attacks you eihter play a card or take a wound (I didn't model armor yet). But I consider this a feature.

I think you can easily do something like this with dices.

[Callan S.]

Something I've done is when rolling the dice, you also have to hit a little cardboard cut out of the opponent, a certain distance away, with the die. It was the fun of trying to hit something with the fun of rolling dice...ah...

But don't make it that the die result can make you miss. It's stupid when you hit the figure in real life and 'miss'. I did this. I wuz stopid. Remove miss results from the die - make it all damage or something.


In terms of marrying boardgame skill to fiction, something I've considered is this: You have points and these give you a bonus to hit or something sweet. BUT the GM secretly determines a cap, based on the fiction he and the group are working on. The player can bid points, but any over the cap do nothing and are wasted. That way the player has to read the situation and not spend too many of these points, but not too few either or he might miss. And these points were earned by boardgame skill somehow or are given slowly over RL time (not just gained from talking the talk).