The other day my friend (the one who had my Champions stuff) and I were discussing relative power levels in gaming the other day. Part of that discussion got me thinking about starting point levels, which prompted my post yesterday.
We were talking about the fun you get at different power levels. At some point, I said this:
If an orc is scary, and an orc can kill you dead in a single shot, then an orc and Demogorgon are about equally scary. You aren't any more dead as a PC if Demogorgon hits your with his rot-inducing tentacles or whatever. It's falling a mile versus falling ten miles - you're still dead. But if orcs are cannon fodder, and you go through them with ease, but Demogorgon can still kill you dead and rot your arms off, then Demogorgon is now scarier than an orc.
You can say that you "level up" (either literally in a class-and-level game, or figuratively in a point-buy system.) So Demogorgon is scary because he stays dangerous as the orc recedes in danger level. This is absolutely true, but just reinforces the point. You climb up the ladder and threats stop being "flat" and start being graduated. The point of leveling up and getting better is to make some threats less relatively dangerous and others remain so. The effective challenge level of the monster varies based on your power, and yet challenges can still scale - instead of an orc, you fight an army of orcs, or instead of a dragon, maybe you can only handle a single giant bat.
My friend brought up Bunnies & Burrows. One of our mutual friends didn't want to play "prey" and refused to play the game. After all, you're a rabbit - a hawk can fly by and eat you. But the would-be B&B GM retorted that, in a D&D game, a dragon can fly by and eat you. It's not all that different, just scaled. Our friend didn't want to play "prey" but had really played prey his whole gaming career, just with a "hawk" called a "dragon" and a "dog" called a "giant wolf." It's scaled challenges. It's having someone be powerful enough that the difference matters, or weak enough that the difference matters. Scaling the world differently so you have to run from things you would ignore in another game ("A hawk flies overhead." "Ignore it, look for dragons.")
This is one reason why the DF game I run can be so fun. My players love knowing that the orc brutes they run into and carve up, or the lizardman warriors they beat up despite the odds, and so are are exactly as dangerous as in our old game, where the PCs were less powerful. They get the thrill of being able to lord it up over what was once scary. The fact that we changed characters doesn't change this - you don't have to experience the "an orc is dangerous!" thing with the same character to appreciate being more powerful. You just have to experience it sometime, with some character, to have the capacity to appreciate it. The monsters that used to be such utter threats that they became a "flat" threat level (hit this point, anything above it is equally fatal to you) are now an interesting threat. The differences between them matter because you're tough enough to make them matter.
The reverse is true, too - it's fun to dial back to a lower power level (even if only occasionally) and face what was once easy. When those orcs your DF knight carves up two per second suddenly become such a challenge you can't face them without outnumbered them, three things can happen. One is that you can appreciate the orc more, the second is that you can appreciate the DF knight more, and third is that you can appreciate the challenge of the lower-powered character more. When you blunder into a pack of orcs in DF, you're fine - when you blunder into a pack of orcs in a low-powered fantasy game, you're pretty far from fine.
You get this outside of game, too - it's a real joy watching extremely good professionals play sports against each other, even if the relative challenge isn't more than two not-terribly-skilled teams play sports against each other. You can appreciate the skill and see the small differences in abilities and decisions play out in both, but they aren't exactly the same kind of fun. One is "who can exceed the other in ability?" and one is "who can overcome their own limitations more?" - both of which are enjoyable in their own way.
That's not to say the power levels don't matter. The color text does matter. Just because lifting a small rock might be a Herculean task for a weak character doesn't mean it's exactly the same kind of fun that lifting a huge boulder while running Hercules is. It's just a similar relative challenge, but provides a very different game experience for all of that, and the experiences feed each other.
And that this is why I like playing at different power levels.
This got wordy, but "If an orc can kill you dead, and Demogorgon can kill you dead, therefore both are equally scary - discuss" seemed kind of like a pithy but useless post. Heh. So you got to sit through my overly wordy discussion instead.
This gives me an idea for when we come back to our DF game from hiatus; I can pass out premade peasant characters to have get slaughtered by goblins before the PCs come and mop the floor with them. Could be fun!
ReplyDelete"Prologue" encounters like that can indeed be fun, and are applicable to a lot of different game settings, especially horror and military.
DeleteWe keep talking about running another low-lowered group of delvers based on DF Henchmen into Felltower, just to see them struggle and die. The survivor(s) would be available for hire by the PCs.
DeleteWe decided the last one would automatically somehow live and escape to tell the tale, so the player's other characters could draw off their knowledge and stories.
I definitely see your point, though the "Orc = Demogorgon" assertion is a little excessive, only because the scariness of Demogorgon in OD&D wasn't just that he could kill you, but that he could kill you so many times over, and in so many different ways, that it was harder to imagine even outwitting him or getting in a lucky shot. If you're a peasant facing an armored orc carrying an automatic shotgun, you might at least envision sneaking up and landing a lucky pitchfork blow, or him flubbing his first shotgun burst with a critical miss to give you a chance to escape. Demogorgon, in contrast, has the veritable "golf bag of death", between the rotting tentacles, the life-draining tail, the hypno-madness gaze, and all the magical powers, with literally god-like hit points wrapped in a nigh unhittable armor class. While there might be folks out there who remember their 30th level wizards and 15th level fighters taking him down without too much trouble, I'm sure he was still a much more multi-dimensional threat than an orc could be, even to a party of zero level administrative assistants.
ReplyDeleteI think something more like an "orc = bulette" comparison might be more appropriate.
I'm going to stand by it, because there is an important part you're missing - the "If an orc is scary, and an orc can kill you dead in a single shot" part. Not "he might" kill you but "he will" kill you. Certainty of loss. Muddying it up with "but the peasant can get a lucky shot" is, I think, missing what I'm getting at. Once you start reducing the orc to "I have a chance against him" it's the ORC that needs to change in the example, not Demogorgon.
DeleteBesides, isn't part of the ethos espoused about OD&D online is the "you always have a chance due to your wits" thing? Demogorgon isn't any different, right? ;)
I guess I follow, but then you really do have to change the orc, since he might be a challenge to rookie characters, but I'm not sure who, short of a quadriplegic, would find one truly invincible.
Delete"Using your wits" against Demogorgon would presumably be based on that Wargames premise, where the only way to win...
You can pick away at the example if you like, but I think it doesn't change the essential argument: once something is too dangerous to beat, it doesn't matter how dangerous it is relative to the other things too dangerous to beat. It's a flat end result. Bringing a different power level to the table changes what is too dangerous, and their relative power matters again.
DeleteI see what you're saying, but in addition to the relative scale of power, there is also the issue of complexity and evolved behavior.
ReplyDeleteNot only is a more powerful character more complex to run, it is only marginally likely that a player who started with such a character and another player who built his character into exactly the same thing will run them similarly. The player who starts with the enormous power is forced to fall back on what he imagines a powerful character of that general sort will do. The player who built up to a powerful character from a starting point of lesser power has the benefit of experience playing the powerful character and evolving his approach to fit precisely that character.
Which is not saying that either approach is inherently better, of course, only that they are quite a bit different in kind, not just in color. As I said before, I have a decided preference for the "evolve the character" approach, but I have played in games (mostly Supers-type games) that start the other way, and that's an interesting and fun approach, too.
I think you're conflating starting points with power level. The discussions sprung from the same conversation I had, true, but here I'm talking about what those power levels mean. How you got there is a different question, I think.
DeleteI like growing to power, too, and in the comments on my starting point level post I mentioned guys starting at 250+50+5 in my DF game (which some would regard as end-game level power) and getting to over 400 and still thinking that the lower levels of the dungeon are pretty terrifyingly dangerous. They're growing to power, too. But they are the "ignore the hawk, look for dragons" power level guys from the start, but that doesn't mean they don't grow and develop.
Well, I was thinking in terms of levels, starting at first (or 0th) and rising from there, but yeah, it's the same thing.
DeleteI still say, though, that as you increase the starting power, you increase the complexity of the character - it simply has more options from the start than a lower-power character does. This means that the player starts with a set of assumptions about how a character of that power "should" act, instead of developing the way that it does act organically. When you start the power level at "typical, generic human", then the heroic and superheroic stages of the character's career are natural growths from that. When you start the power level at "Jason Bourne" (to pick an example not at all at random), then the character acts like the player envisions a Jason Bourne would act, and grows from that base of complex stereotype instead of the much less intrusive stereotype of "typical, generic human". That is, the complexities and all their options start out stereotyped instead of the more limited, simple options being stereotyped. Anything that didn't develop in play is something that exists by simple fiat, while anything that did develop in play is something that is a synthesis of the player, the Referee, and the other players, plus elements of chance. The more of it that is fiat, the more of it that is not such a synthesis.
Well, they certainly increase complexity in some games. Not so much in others - as Doug Cole likes to point out, we have the same small set of choices each turn in Swords & Wizardry at 1st level, 2nd level, 3rd level, etc. And nothing in the game makes it look like I'll have a lot more choices at 10th level either.
DeleteYou're totally right that how a character got to where it got is important to how it plays and is played. The house you buy with $500,000 isn't the same as the house you get for $250,000 and sink $250,000 into over the course of a few years. Organic growth to power vs. starting at a higher point of power is a really worth of more thought. We've all seen the "If I have 100 points I'll just buy +5 DX" versus how you really spend 100 points given out 5 at a time every few weeks of real time.
A magic-user or cleric has obvious choices to make in their spell selection, but even a fighter may have to choose whether to use the Rod of Smiting with 35 charges left or the +2 longsword, not to mention the less mechanical choices that have to be made when a character has power in the game world which he doesn't have the opportunity to make when he has less power. For instance, the low-power character might have the choice of taverns to go into, which is a relatively meaningless choice, while the higher-power character might have to choose which noble's daughter he will woo, or where to build his castle (and how much to spend on it, and so on, and so on).
DeleteI'm not saying leveling up changes nothing, just that in some games the choices are pretty narrow, and leveling up doesn't really add that much complexity of choices.
DeleteI do think it's worth comparing apples to apples, though. Level 1 dude isn't choosing taverns and level 10 dude nobles to marry - compare level 1 dude choosing to allow that NPC to join the party or not vs. level 10 dude choosing to ally with noble A or noble B. Both choices are fraught with consequence, if there is more going on than you are ready to handle. Comparing a no-consequence choice for a level 1 dude versus an extremely high consequence choice for a level 10 dude isn't really getting at the heart of the choices.
Still, do I go left or right in the dungeon at a low power level, when anything can kill you, vs. should I put my castle here, and have to fight monster X off before army Y, vs. should I put it here, and have to fight the army first and the monster next, is a fair comparison. And like I said, different kinds of fun.
Yeah, I think we're on the same page.
DeleteComparing Demogorgon to an orc? Blasphemy!
ReplyDeleteDon't demons like blasphemy?
Delete