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

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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.

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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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.)

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.

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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.

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.

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

Sean wrote:
<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.

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.

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.

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

Sean wrote: 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.)

.

I love this thread.

Sean wrote: 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.

Bill Cook wrote: 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.

Sean wrote: Since this is the World Headquarters of Narrativism, . . .

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

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

ADGBoss wrote: A dedicated . . . and interested player can overcome System issues.

ADGBoss wrote: 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.

ADGBoss wrote: 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.

On the playing of niche-poor characters:

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.

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.

Hello Mike.

OK, I'll accept power.

Regarding on-time, I'll accept your point about it being intrinsic and superseeded by the power to actualize your CA.

But I don't think you have addressed my point that limiting the concept of balance to only CA relevant game issues is too restrictive.

Anecdote: In game I ran (gurps) all the characters were written with 150 points, then got given super powers, that the players wrote up. All the players had different amounts of points to spend on powers: One had 100, another had 350, and one had 25,000. The game play was balanced, because the game operated on different levels, with the mega super dealing with the big problems, and the minor supers dealing with the microcosm problems and the details. The mega super was limited in what they could manage on a social level. BUT the game fell apart after 3 months because one player was not pulling their weight in writing up the session logs, which they had agreed to do at the start. So the inequity crept in but it had nothing to do with the CA of the players...

Warm regards
Evan

You were right to question my use of the term power. Given that it usually refers to character power, I was bing confusing, potentially (in fact, use of power in that way is far from accepted). So thanks for making me straighten that out.

Anyhow, I'm not seeing what you're saying in your example. If you're saying that power balance isn't required for all types of play, then I'm right with you. If you're saying that character power balance was a problem in this game, then I'm right with you again. Character power balance is required for some CAs, and not for others. Character power in these CAs is the ability to make decsions that affect the strategy of the game. In fact, this sort of analysis is one of the strongest in terms of determining CA. That is, if, for instance, the problem was that you were trying to play with narrativism primarily, then the power balance problem would be moot. But if one player found that he didn't like the lack of gamism support, then that could explain why the game fell apart. I'm not saying that's what happened in this circumstance, but it's the sort of analysis that's possible.

To look at your examples of other possibilities in detail.

-"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)

-Player role: which is the external needs of the game (providing food, playspace, transport, being the GM or Player (or caller!)) (Game Support Balance)

I think Evan's example demonstrates a fundamental problem for designers who want to prevent balance issues from arising in their games. Balance problems (as in ability to influence the SIS in a CA-appropriate fashion) can be papered over by the social contract of a given group. Worse yet, they can appear to be present (with an inattentive/inexpert player) when they really aren't.

It's a lot like whitewater rafting or canoeing. The balance problems are rocks, but when you are rafting you can only see rocks that stick up out of the water. The rocks just under the water make waves that you can see, but not every wave hides a rock and face it, not all rocks make waves you'll notice either. Basically, you could be in for a bumpy ride at any time.

Think of it as disenfranchisement uncertainty. You can't tell whether or not a given limitation on a character will disenfranchise that character's player unless you know the creative agenda AND the social contract. The only way to work around it that I can think of is to state up front what you're doing (lots of designer's notes). If the wizards (or whatever) in your game will be weak in a certain situation step up and say so. That way people know what they're getting into and can plan their choices around it.

Take the thieves in AD&D. With a gamist creative agenda and a social contract that calls for each player to have roughly equal impact on the things that matter (combat, traps and so forth), it's pretty obvious that anyone playing a thief is in for a rough time at high level. But nowhere in the AD&D rules or dungeonmaster's guide does anybody come out and SAY that. I don't think that's because AD&D was primitive, or that Gygax or Cook were lousy designers. I think it's because it's only a problem in CERTAIN GROUPs. It doesn't matter to everyone that the Thief can be sidestepped at high levels, so it's not really a system problem. It's a user problem.

I think that Precious Villian really hits it on the head. So far, we've sub-divided game balance issues into various categories. The only problem is that, in practice, game balance is just as dependent on the group as it is on the system. You can embellish theory to the point of absurdity; in the end, some groups will be able to unbalance even the most 'balanced' systems. IME, the reverse is equally true.

So, I would pose a supplemental question: in addition to explaining how to balance a system, what are your objectives for balancing it? Consider the spectrum between groups that can unbalance any system and the groups that can balance almost any system; where do you intend for your balance efforts to have the greatest impact?

It might seem like a silly question, but I bet that there is more diversity than one might think. IMO this is one of those important issues that pops up in individual responses but is never formally discussed. I could be wrong.

I try to structure my games to minimize abuse to a certain degree, but I'm usually more interested in using balance to supplement the enjoyment of more mature gamers. Whether gamist or narrativist, I try to make sure that my rules allow variety. Some rules might be argued to disrupt balance, but IME, the rules work just fine for the target audience.

I would argue that unless the specific goal of the system is to do everything possible to minimize abuse (best noted in the d20 system and other intentionally newbie friendly systems), any kind of quantitative system balance plays second fiddle to the reinforcement of the game's creative focus.

I don't disagree that balance problems can occur because of the people playing. As a designer, the only thing you can do, however, about this, is to make the rules as little prone to this as possible. This is a standard rebuttal to System Does Matter that gets made all of the time. That people also matter. Well, they do, you just can't affect that with your design. Or, rather, you can only affect play via the system that you present, so the only advice one can give is to do as good a job with the system as possible (and, I guess, take into account that the players are fallible humans).

Anyhow, as far as objectives, this is what Creative Agenda is all about. It sounds to me like you're saying, Doplegager, that one should understand what sort of play the game should encourage, and make sure that the player is empowered to have fun in that mode. I couldn't agree more.

Further, it's nigh axiomatic (but always worth repeating, I suppose) that one shouldn't try to prevent abuse, but instead present a effective vision of how to play. Again, you can't really prevent abuse, you have to trust to the players to want to play the game. And if you give them a good vision of how to have fun with it, they'll be less likely to feel the need to abuse the game anyhow.

Interestingly, this applies to "newbie" games as well - the fact that people see new players as needing to be reigned in is a function of the fact that the games in question do not provide that vision, often, and so players have to be hammered into a single vision by the more "experienced" players. Give a new player a game that supports the vision in question and the problem never occurs in the first place.

Mike

Just clarifying:

Mike said: "This is, I agree, outside CA, but this is beyond the scope of the game. This is the social contract layer. "

May be, but not beyond the scope of the concept of balance, IMO.

Mike also said: "I don't disagree that balance problems can occur because of the people playing. As a designer, the only thing you can do, however, about this, is to make the rules as little prone to this as possible. "

So, Mike, is your take on the concept of balance that it needs be defined as inclusive of the game contract layer or not, for the puposes of this excercise? The argument here is specifically about the concept of balance I thought, which I see as one that needs to be as broad as possible to encompass the layers in which inequity can occur... or are we trying to limit the concept of balance to only what can be writen into the game mechanics?

Evan

Well, there's balance, and game balance. I'm not saying that social balance doesn't exist. Social balance seems to me to be somewhat outside of the scope of game discussions. That is, unless you can make it pertain to RPGs, then I'm not sure how it's germane to this site. I'm not saying you can't make it pertinent, just that I'm not seeing it right now.

Further, I may be glossing it over, but wouldn't just saying "play fair" cover it about as well as possible? We're taught from day one how to be social properly - if one isn't, then that's nothing we can fix here. If one doesn't want to be social, that's not something we can deal with here.

I may be missing something.

From a design POV, all you can effect is how your game affects balance, and as such the discussion of that angle has to ignore the social part of things and remain firmly on how the game itself can affect balance. I think that from this POV that the designer has to assume that the players are "playing fair" about as well as the average person does.

Mike

I have seen systems where the social contract is included in the game mechanics. Where there are in-game rewards for game supportive out of game activities.

Some examples: the rewarding of Game Masters of a LARP by allowing them to play characters with greater plot import and power than others, The awarding of experience (et al) to people that come to a game in costume or provide props, or character portraits, or venue, or food etc...

In the extreme, the GM rewarding his girlfriend can be seen as an element of this, which fits into your fair play concept, and may be what you are aiming at here, but I think we cannot ignore the ability of game mechanics to influence and work on the social contract layer if we are considering balance.

In most games, it is irrelevant. In LARP I think it is much more relevant because there are so many more material concerns that need to be logistically managed, and reward in game is a method of ensuring it...

Evan

My main concern was that many of the discussions that I've been a part of on the topic of system balance have been strongly influenced by the d20 system. It may be coincidence, but, IME, it seems like an after-effect of the d20 system is that balance, unfortunately, tends to be viewed as a kind of attempt at an airt-tight or fool-proof system. I would argue that this is appropriate for some games; one of the charms of the d20 system is that it is run in a relatively consistent manner no matter where you are. For other games, even ones with a strong gamist focus where system elements can 'easily' be measured quantitatively, I would argue that it is far less appropriate.

Further, it's nigh axiomatic (but always worth repeating, I suppose) that one shouldn't try to prevent abuse, but instead present a effective vision of how to play. Again, you can't really prevent abuse, you have to trust to the players to want to play the game.

Plot Device, you sorta caught me there. In fact, I actually posted a set of add-on rules for Universalis to the website that do precisely the sort of things that you're talking about.

Still, I'm not sure that this is related to balance. That is, it's a reward system, but it seems to me that the only thing you can say about balance in this regard is that it should be applied equally to each participant. Rather, is there some way a system like this could become unbalanced? Other than GM failure?


Doppleganger - actually the theory around here considers D20 to be just another system. Hence my definition by CA. In any case, I completely agree that much of the "balance" rules in GURPS and D&D are to prevent abuse. And I think that they're very bad rules. Basically they don't work, or aren't neccessary, or do work but cause unneccessary pain for players.

But your point is valid. That is, yes, some games have this sort of "balance." But it's still intended to create CA. That is, it does so negatively, by penalizing playing in the other CAs. So, to refine my definition:

Balance refers to rules intended to create a CA by either empowering a player to play in that CA, or disempowering them to play in another.

That avoids being judgemental, but if I were to be, I'd add: the latter method being problematic.

System does affect social contract, or, rather, it's a specialized extension of the social contract, according to The Big Theory. This is the part you can affect. All I've said you can't affect with system is how well the players get along and the like. Those things that are social contract, but not the game per se. Put another way, the dynamics that would still exist if the game did not. This is what the game can't try to control.

Mike

Since I started the thread, I guess I'd just like to say that I agree with Mike's last post overall, with one slight caveat: I think balance is a particular kind of empowerment or facilitation of playing with a particular CA - particularly, the kind that relates to giving all 'standard' players of the game relatively equal access to meaningful participation. It's the distribution of empowerment etc. where balance comes in. I'm not sure how different this is from what Mike's saying, actually, but I thought I'd throw in my 2 cents on it.

The first bad thing that often happens is when something that makes sense for facilitating roughly equal distribution of meaningful input in a Gamist CA (wanting all the players to have roughly equally meaningful powers to deal with a situation, assuming roughly equal intelligence and competence, etc.) is applied haphazardly to e.g. a Sim or Nar rules-set, where it might not matter at all. For that matter, it might not even matter in a different Gamist rules-set: what mattered for instance in the 'Theives' Guild' D&D variant was roughly equal meaningful input into larcenous situations, with combat ability only being one small subset of that. To figure out what balance means for your game it's absolutely critical to figure out what your game is about, which means not just or even primarily the imaginative content, but what you expect players to actually be doing during a session of that game.

The second bad thing that often happens is when 'balance' as a whole, roughly equal distribution of meaningful input between the players relative to the game's CA, is confused with balance relative to some particular conflict-type or set of techniques employed within the game.

Hello,

Sean, I'm seeing a lot of overlap, maybe even identity, between your "balance" and my "coherence." That's not a criticism, merely an observation that I hope is thought-provoking to people.

Best,
Ron

Ron - 'Boink' moment delivered - thanks! I agree - maybe 'the aspect of coherence relating particularly to distribution of meaningful input across the table', though whether that can be separated that meaningfully from coherence-in-general is questionable. (Hence my choice of 'aspect'.)

Sympathy also offered, if perhaps, sometime many years ago, you had a thought process like this: "There are issues relating to 'balance' that are important, but the word is such a landmine among gamers and used so ambiguously that it would be better to start over with a new technical term - like 'coherence'!" Then, that done, you proceeded to distinguish between 'coherent' and 'incoherent' game systems, and people came to your writings only to be horrified that they're being accused of incoherent behavior, or writing games that make no sense at all on any level, or the like.

I run into this all the time in my professional life. The thankless work of the theorist...

I definitely agree that a game's CA can be promoted by the penalizing of other CAs by the system. IMO, though, there is little difference between encouraging a CA and discouraging others. While it's very possible, and arguably a very good thing, to allow multiple CAs to work well with a system, I would argue that they work because, to some extent, all of them were encouraged by the system. CAs not intentionally constructed into the rules of a system will have a hard time operating in that system unless they can bypass the rules.

I was rummaging around in some college of my college textbooks from last year, and I came across my graphic design textbook. There will probably be protests of erroneous analogies, but I thought I might share them any way. Feel free to bash:
Symmetrical Balance: Balance achieved through similarity. This is similar to Sean's first form of balance. All of the characters have equal influence in all of the conflicts. I would put forth the definition as balance through general equality.
Asymmetrical Balance: Balance achieved through disimilarity. This is similar to Sean's second form of balance where specific characters have inequal influence in specific conflicts. I would put forth the definition as balance through specific inequality.
(As a side note, I was looking over Sean's third form of balance. I'm not entirely surely that I fully understand. While it's definitely important, wouldn't any attempts to fix this third kind of balance take the form of one of the first two types of balance? Is there any way to implement this kind of balance independently of the first two?)

There were a couple of other terms that I think would transfer well between system design and graphic design, especially emphasis and focal points. It might be interesting to do a graphic representation of how system elements interact. If it's been done, does anyone have any links?

Heya again.

I think what I am getting at here is that, for me, like for some of the others that have posted, the word balance is bandied about in different contexts with different meanings, and what I am driving for is the creation of an uber-concept for the word balance, and then sub categories similar to what Doplegager has suggested to indicate what kind of balance we are talking about.

I think "coherance" has some merit but suffers of mistaken context as Sean points out.

I don't think we need to throw out the baby with the bathwater here. I think the term balance can catch all the sub meanings, and that we should subsequantly be able to nail in some terms for the subsidiary areas.

Mike, thanks for the graciousness. I miss stuff all the time. Don't have a mind for detail.

On to point: In my mind how the game supportive stuff is rewarded and how equitable those rewards are is a question to fit within the topic of balance. It could be unbalanced if cirtain things are rewarded inappropriately or without equity. So, to take a simple example, d20: you give 100 xp per session if players write a log of the session. One player writes 2 sentences. Another writes 1000 words. Both get same reward. Or, you reward xp based on word length, but it turns out one player has an urge to get published... and uses your game as an avenue to have others read their work... Or, you reward for character portraits, and one of the players is an artist. Or you give too much reward for one type of activity, too little for another in a continual ongoing game, and thus one player or group gets heaps more rewards than others.

Whoops! Too many examples.

Anyhow, I think I hit my point. More or less.

Warm regards,
Evan

How about:

Balance refers to system methods or player efforts intended to create a coherent CA, by ensuring that players have proper incentives to play that CA?

Neatly addresses any purely social issues as they might pertain, Ron's concerns, and rolls the positive and negative up into one statement. And it matches all commonly used meanings for the term when used by gamers.

Evan, coherence is jargon from the GNS essays, meaning simply a CA that is understood by all to be one thing. The idea being that this produces better play. If we see balance as trying to promote better play, then we can see why the above all works together.

And, yes, "fairness" or even better "equity" is an essential part of balance. Meaning the same incentive for the same action.


Doplegager, the Symetrical Balance, and Asymetrical Balance is a perfect way to describe what we were discussing before. For instance, the GM having more power than the players is Asymetrical Balance that works when the GM is, for instance, in "referee" mode. As we all know, too, Asymetrical Balance is problematic when the GM is in competition with the players. This would be an Intra-CA problem.

Oh, and I've been a huge proponent of the ideas of emphasis and what I've called "focus." I like your terms better, however, because people have a problem with my use of focus, occasionally. These, I think, are tangential to balance, but related to CA. That is, I think that Ron would say, again that Focus per se, having one, is coherence, again. But what I wanted it to mean was what, specifically is focused upon. Focal Points is perfect. Focal Points are the individual things focused upon to create a focused, or coherent CA. Emphasis is how you make something a Focal Point.

I reeeely like that. I'm so going to use that. In fact, I'd be tempted to ask for instant introduction into the glossary. But instead I'll put it through a test thread (in part to separate it from the balance concerns).

Mike

Something you said gave me an interesting thought, Mike. When I mentioned Symmetrical and Asymmetrical balance as analogies for types of system balance, I was predisposed to entirely dismiss the asymmetry between a game master figure and player figures. Most of the games I have participated in have had some sort of centralized control structure.

However, since you bring it up, it occurs to me that in some, if not most, situations, there may be a difference between Player Balance and Character Balance.

By Player Balance, I refer to the balance of input that the players have. This may vary from symmetrical, where all players have equal control over the events in the game, to asymmetrical, where there is centralized control in one person (ie the GM). In some ways, this may be described as balance by controlling how players create the SIS (Please note: by creating the SIS, I am refering the 'actual' SIS, not the just the individual's interpretation).

By Character Balance, I refer to ways in which characters are relatively balanced. In some systems, the difference between Player Balance and Character Balance may be null, but, in some, such as when there is strong centralized control, Character Balance can play a bigger role. In some ways, this may be described as balance by controlling how characters interact with the SIS.

Now that I think about it, this may be getting at the same issue that Sean's third form of balance was trying to resolve. Whereas Sean's first two forms where describing Character Balance, the third was describing Player Balance.

This is all based on the presumption that you can seperate Player as Narrator and Player as Character, which may be erroneus since it's arguable that they are both system manifestations of the player and that any difference between the two is artificial. However, I can also see arguement for, in some cases, being able to seperate the two (Interaction with the SIS may be considered to be development of the SIS, and thus a form of creation, but I would argue that Player Balance is focused on the framework of the SIS and Character Balance is more supplemental). Thoughts?

I think the are 3 different balance 'issues' here:

The first is balance at the 'Social Contract' level: the most simple expression of this is that everyone needs to be enjoying themselves (not necessarily for the same reason.) At this level, the role-playing session constitutes a 'game' in the Transactional Analysis sense - it's a vehicle for increasing self-esteem by exchanging social 'stroking'.

The second issue is balance at the SiS level, which equates to 'Player Balance' in the last post.

The last issue is 'power balance', which I think equates to 'Character Balance' as defined in the last post.

The reason I mention this is that I think that a campaign has to function at the first level in order to be a success. However, this is the hardest issue to address through game design - I think that the best that can be achieved from a design standpoint is to interfere as little as possible with the group's Social Contract.

Similarly, a large number of games (and especially earlier games) are heavily focused on power balance, but this doesn't really matter if the other two levels (social and SiS) are balanced.

I'm not saying that power balance is a bad thing - and if I've understood the terminology correctly, power balance is a vital part of ensuring higher-level balance in a Gamist environment. However, I think it comes in at the end of any process of ensuring that player 'balance' needs are met, and not at the beginning.

Am I on the right track here? I've taken the 'fast course' in Forge Terminology, so please correct me if my usage of terms here is slack.

Tetsuki

Heya,

By Player Balance, I refer to the balance of input that the players have. This may vary from symmetrical, where all players have equal control over the events in the game, to asymmetrical, where there is centralized control in one person (ie the GM). In some ways, this may be described as balance by controlling how players create the SIS (Please note: by creating the SIS, I am refering the 'actual' SIS, not the just the individual's interpretation).

By Character Balance, I refer to ways in which characters are relatively balanced.

And, yes, "fairness" or even better "equity" is an essential part of balance.

Dopplegager,

That split is what's often refered to as Metagame, vs. In Game. Basically, does the power in question derive from the player's ability to manipulate their agent (the character, normally) in the game, or do they manipulate things on a level outside of the game, or at the Metagame level. Many rules try to blur this line, by refering to the metagame as something that may seem to be In-Game, for instance, Karma Points. I refer to this as "Semi-In-Game" meaning that it's actually metagame, but trys to seem to be in-game.

Tetsuki, again, the end goal of all RPGs is to have a good time. Yes, we assume that it's a form of transaction. And, again, I don't think there's a lot we can do in terms of this here, other than to deal with the metagame and in-game balances, other than to remind each other to be nice to one another. Again, this is what would exist if we were watching a movie together, and as such isn't a part of RPG design or theory, AFAICT. That's not to say that it shouldn't be noted, just to say that it has been, and that I can't see where we need to discuss it.

Power Balance, is tough to nail down in terms of what it's good for. Everyone agrees that it tends to be important for Gamism. That said, the "gentlemen gamists" will tell you that it's not as important as people think. That is, they'll tell you that they don't need this balance, because they basically handicap themselves in their heads so that all interactions are equal. Still, certain kinds of gamism make power balance even more neccessary. PvP for instance, would be hard to properly handicap. Further, if power levels get too disparate, then some characters may fall out of a range of adversity where the player actions are judegable at all. That is, for instance if the challenge makes loss automatic, then there's no test for the player.

All that said, the real problem is the term power. Because, if I have the ability to change a story, not to win, but to create theme, isn't that power, too? For instance, in Hero Quest, I personally see the ability ratings as intended to show relative importance of things in terms of story, and not so much the power that those things provide. The point being that, in that game, it's important that all characters have similar "breadth" to their characters such that the player has similar power to affect the story.

This is, perhaps, my fault for using power to mean player ability to change things - especially since it's very similar to the idea of Credibility as it pertains to the Lumpley Principle. But the point remains that character effectiveness ratings can be designed to provide player ability to affect things in more than just gamism. In fact, it remains the primary source of player ability to change things in most games that support narrativism as well. Perhaps also for Simulationism if you consider a need for balanced experiments?

Mike