Punji pits and an RPG blind spot

[mr_orgue]

Last night I ran a game of D&D 3.5, for a revived group of way-back D&Ders. As always, it gave me much food for thought, technique-wise. There's one aspect that I'm now turning into a post, in hopes it helps me make sense of it

Comments

[tcpip]

Given that the big picture battle was being hand-waved anyway, I don't see how this could have been resolved otherwise. Unless you wanted to run it as a BattleSystem scenario, or similar.

[mr_orgue]

This is true - so I guess my issue is how to avoid the Battlesystem, and avoid the hand-wavium, and still find a place where a player contribution to the fiction contributes a specific effect. Argh, I still can't quite put into words what's bugging me, maybe in other comments to this post I'll figure it out better.

[rpgactionfigure]

As the punji-pit digging player, I was entirely satisfied with the way things panned out. Lacking in knowledge of how the D&D 3.5 system actually functions, I was treating it mostly as colour narration anyway. I didn't figure the few pits that a gnome and and some local kids as having a major impact on a rampaging orc horde. I was entirely happy that they existed in the fiction, but not (to any great extent) in the system.

I'm sure I have more thoughts on this, but will sleep on it and get back to you!

This probably isn't contributing much to your point, but the bits of the game I really enjoy are the opportunities (like the pit digging) to add to the colour of the game. The tactical elements are secondary to that.

Cheers
Malcolm

[jarratt_gray]

Also I think that while D&D3.5 doesn't really have mechanical experience rewards for this sort of thing it is certainly something you could use. Intelligent tactical thinking, playing in character, adding interesting narration and backstory to the game = bonus XP. Assuming the characters were level 3 and that they gained about 1500-2000 xp for this session a %5 or %10 bonus wouldn't probably be too far wrong.

Of course if it wasn't an ongoing game I'm not sure what you would do, but then I think D&D really has to be played as a serialized game. Part of the joy is seeing your character grow.

[mr_orgue]

This is interesting - you're right, these colour contributions can end up having weight in other ways, even if they don't affect the way a situation is resolved. But right now I'm most focused on resolution...

[mr_orgue]

Knowing you, I was confident that would be the case, which is why I haven't been losing sleep on it!

I might even be thinking about a player who cannot exist - is there anyone in the world who'd stress about this? - but there's something going on here that bugs me.

Hmm. Perhaps it's about scaling up from the specific to the abstract. That if you're using a resolution system that derives its values from the content of the fiction, then you can't scale up to address things from "on high" without nullifying the process of that resolution system.

So there's no way to get from one kind of resolution system to the other.

*flails around in poorly-expressed concerns*

[broin]

This is really interesting and I don't understand it yet.

Say you were using a conflict resolution system of some sort. Two players. One contributes punji pits on the left flank. One contributes ten thousand armed soldiers. They both, mechanically, add one dice each to their collective pool (versus the enemy's Monstrous Nature).

Do you feel that the two players' contributions shouldn't be equal?

[mr_orgue]

I don't understand myself what's annoying me, but this comment strikes me as helpful.

My first feeling is that the kind of resolution systems that trad games (e.g. D&D 3.5) employ demand that these contributions shouldn't be equal. In other words, that the mechanical weight of any component in the fiction is derived from the content of that fiction; we have to figure out how much these two factors have an impact on the likelihood of success. It's all about verisimilitude, and letting the fiction lead, I guess.

So if you're using a conflict res system, there's no problem - because the fictional specifics are a function of the mechanics, not the other way around.

Maybe this gets closer to the fundamental thingy: is there any way to model the effect of 100 punji pits without (a) rolling 100 sets of punji pit damage, or (b) making 100 punji pits mechanically indistinguishable from any number of other things the player might have said?

(I'm not sure that does get any closer.)

[boxninja]

Maybe it's tied in to the "can of peaches" stuff and the shared imagined space. What in that space? Who put it there? What effect does it have? Is it backed by the belief of the group? What would give it credibility

[grandexperiment]

Interesting

[mr_orgue]

4E skill challenges still fascinate me. I've never used them in play, and I suspect they make me uncomfortable because they exist with one foot in a kind of play where what you do in the fiction matters, and the other foot in a kind of play where it doesn't matter what you do in the fiction. I don't think they balance these two well, but they're trying to do so and that is interesting.

I think the thing that is bugging me here is still present in a skill challenge version of the same; but in a slightly more refined form. Hmmm.

(See also my reply to Gregor.)

[grandexperiment]

I am not sure I really understood anything you said here

[stephanie_pegg]

I think that if I were GMing something like that, I'd take account of the pits in my handwaving fiat - you dig the pits, and they slow down the orc advance, or the main advance is channeled to an area where the pits aren't as thick, or somesuch. But then I'm pretty used to playing in games where the GM resolves player initiatives inside his/her head and lets us know the result - the mechanics aren't so important, so long as the result seems consistent and everyone trusts one another.

[mr_orgue]

Yeah, that's pretty much how it went down. And it play it was fine, because (as you say) everyone in our group trusts each other. Its only in the thinking about it afterwards that I started confusing myself, hence this rambly confuzzled post...