thread: 2006-03-06 : Unpopular Idea #2: Punish the Loser
On 2006-03-07, Neel wrote:
Hi Walt, your comment that "Any time lag between when an outcome has become predictable and when it is decided upon is bad, because it's an interval in which play no longer sufficiently contributes to the outcome." doesn't ring true for me.
If the pace of decision in your game is too fast, then it won't be fun. By "pace of decision", I mean how many interesting choices the players get to make before the conflict is resolved. Critically, note that you can have interesting decisions even when the final outcome of the conflict is a completely foregone conclusion.
Take DitV as an example—pretty much any conflict with 3 Dogs and 1 NPC will be decided in the Dogs' favor, simply because the Dogs have so many more dice. However, those conflicts are still interesting, even though they are lopsided, because the NPC still has the potential to take meaningful action before the whole conflict is resolved.
For a negative example, look at Exalted's social rules. There, basically, you roll a whole bunch of dice, and then you succeed. This is not much fun, and the reason it's not much fun is that there's no place for anyone involved to make any interesting choices on the way to the conclusion.
Feng Shui also does a really good job at this, and is the system where I learned this principle. There, you can have an AV 13 character fight an AV 18 character, and everyone going in knows beyond a shadow of a doubt that the second character will win. However, the player of the first character will always have the opportunity to make a choice about whether they try to run, or try to accomplish something before they die, or try to stall long enough for allies to arrive, or beg for mercy, or something.
My own criterion for a well-balanced game is that wide differentials of power lead to conclusive victory for the more powerful side, BUT that such differentials shouldn't strongly change the pace of decision of play.
