RPG Design: That Which Is Not Forbidden...
At Something Awful, they have an amusing discussion of the old-school party-killing D&D module, Tomb of Horrors (warning: harsh language). I think I played only briefly through this one once. I showed up in mid-adventure, and the rest of the players were too terrified to take any actions, and the DM was being extra kind and not playing it to its full ruthless potential. Still, I didn't see much. I have the module, and I've read through it a couple of times (to get myself in the proper "old school" frame of mind for Frayed Knights design), but I haven't subjected my players to that particular nightmare yet.

A few years ago, however, I ran my players through part of Gary Gygax's Necropolis, updated for 3rd edition Dungeons & Dragons. It was billed by the publisher (Necromancer Games) as "Tomb of Horrors on steroids." (Yes, that's the one for which I wrote the 'prequel' module, "Set's Daughters.") Oh, it was plenty nasty - full of insta-death traps, powerful bad guys, and puzzles with obscure clues. A brutal adventure that would no doubt prove a meat-grinder for many groups of players.

But both Tomb of Horrors and Necropolis left a lot up to interpretation by the Dungeon Master (the person who "runs" the game). And I try and run my games by a guiding rule which, lamentably, tends to be ignored in more recent editions of the game, and ignored by players who are used to computer games: That which is not expressly forbidden is fair game to try.

The result? The most powerful spells in that adventure were not the fireballs and lightning bolts and insect plague spells. In fact, Tomb of Horrors virtually gave away the trick by having very few monster encounters in the entire adventure. No, the "trick" to both of these adventures (well, Necropolis was actually a collection of about eight adventures) was the use of utility spells. And creatively thinking outside the box. And connecting patterns together. Oh, and - if possible - interrogating prisoners (or even interrogating the dead with spells like Speak With Dead).

Things like Divination spells were the chief weapons in a caster's arsenal. The Disintegrate spell, when I ran the adventure, was not used against enemy forces, but was rather used to bypass a really deadly-looking trap. That's right - Disintegrate CAN be used to obliterate stone, wood, and steel too - not just enemies. Or did you forget?

Deadly situations were also resolved by experimentation. That green devil-face trap with the sphere of annihilation in it in Tomb of Horrors is often used as an example of how nasty the dungeon was. I always thought the poison gas was worse. I never knew any of my friends who lost characters to the sphere. When you are in a dungeon that deadly, you don't just stick your head inside dangerous-looking black holes. You test it out first with that handy 10-foot pole you are always dragging around. Then you test with a fingertip.

Let's pretend I have a point for a second. Or maybe even two points.

One issue is just how much this kind of play slides into a game of "Mother May I." If every move can be lethal and game-ending, how fun is it to cast a spell with each step to make sure the next one is safe? The lack of infinite spells (in a game where you can't exploit saving and reloading to make virtually infinite information-providing spells) requires pen-and-paper players to me judicious with the use of spells to tease out solutions, forcing them to make decisions about risk, and to come up with clever and inventive tests to pick their way through the minefields of these kinds of adventures.

Can this kind of gameplay be interesting and decision risk? I tend to think so, based on past experience, with pen-and-paper games. But in a computer game? Idealistically, I'd like to think so, but the constraints of the medium would definitely make it a challenge to keep it fun. But one need look not much further than classic adventure games - often with "insta-death" endings for wrong decisions - for a possible model.

More importantly, it has been argued that while players had a tough time with this module back in 1978 or whatever, they would have an even tougher time with it now. They don't make 'em like they used to, and players tend to rely on "Brute Force" tactics to get through the dungeons nowadays. This has been blamed on the "dumbing down" of adventures by the Pen & Paper RPG publishers, and on computer games. Especially MMORPGs - thinking outside of the box in those games is called "exploiting" and can get you banned!

The problem is that - for the most part - RPGs aren't made as anything resembling simulations. That's too difficult, and it is too hard to put the player on the kinds of rails that many designers prefer. So spells have very particular, extremely limited uses, and tend to be more of the "blow crap up" variety. Spells that provide knowledge, hints, or "intelligence" are subject to exploit in single-player games, as the information they provide to the player is persistent, even when the player reloads the game immediately to 'restore' the expended spell.

Our worlds are just too restrictive to allow this kind of play. But do they have to be?

(Oh, and a hat tip to Whiner for the SA link).

Labels: Game Design, Roleplaying Games

- posted by The Rampant Coyote @ 10:42 AM (Permalink)