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Resource Constraints in a Pen and Paper World
By Cameron Sorden | April 8, 2008
In a post he made today, Jay tackled a very interesting issue about player expectations and resource management. He discusses the concept of a 15-minute adventuring day that occurs in pen and paper RPGs– the PCs throw everything they have at the encounters they get into and just retreat to rest up for the next one. Any encounter that doesn’t require them to fully unload becomes trivial. Healing is cheap and easy, and hit points become more of a per-encounter limitation (as in MMOGs) than something you’re supposed to manage over multiple encounters (as in traditional pen and paper).
These attitudes are part of what I was trying to explain when I wrote this post, and they’re the same problems I was having with my PCs in my D&D campaign. I tried to force them to creatively solve encounters, avoid combat, manage their very limited resources, and make successfully exploring the story with realistic constraints part of the game, but it wasn’t the game they wanted to play. It’s really difficult to create a situation like that when your PCs can be reasonably confident of killing anyone (and they’re willing to try with little provocation).
Honestly, I think forcing your way through every encounter by being heroically amazing and laying waste to all in your path is only fun for an encounter or two. Eventually, the experience starts taking on tinges of the mundane no matter how “cool” the foes are. “Oh, another being from an outer plane hell-bent on destroying the world? Yawn. Hand me my sword.” I think that managing your resources per adventure instead of per encounter is a far more interesting way of handling things because it forces you to think about not only your immediate situation, but also the situations that are likely to occur. It brings a lot more strategy into what was previously a straight-forward situation.
The resource management aspect of gaming is something I thought Dungeons and Dragons Online captured very well and it was something I found to be really compelling about that game. You had to save your skills, hp, and mana for when you really needed them because you weren’t getting them back until the next waypoint shrine. Personally, I wish more games would handle things like this and focus on successfully completing the adventure rather than the encounter.
Honestly, I think that thinking like that is our first step towards creating games that reward you for creative solutions to moving through dungeons instead of punishing you for not brutally slaughtering everything. As cool as it is to kill the Ogre king, sneaking up and slipping him a sleeping potion so that you can steal his treasure is also very cool.
Topics: Random |
April 8th, 2008 at 3:44 pm
“I think that managing your resources per adventure instead of per encounter is a far more interesting way of handling things because it forces you to think about not only your immediate situation, but also the situations that are likely to occur.”
Yes, definitely, but that assumes you average Leroy wannabe online MMO junkie player likes to think.
April 9th, 2008 at 1:20 pm
I agree. Back when I did pen and paper role playing, I ran a Star Wars campaign under the old west end game series. I actually buffed the rank and file millitary and bounty hunters to match their description, making the fights extremely difficult. My player characters knew this up front and as a result, became extremely resourceful in finding alternatives to fighting. When they did fight, the fights were always hair raising and very close to the wire. It gave them such a thrill to thwart opponents that were stronger and more numerous than they were, especially by outsmarting them. It also genuinely made them fear for their life. They never fought anyone like Vader, but his name genuinely struck fear into them when I dropped it here or there in setup diaglogue.
I even had some old hands who had run D & D campaigns for years take some cues from my style, and integrate them into their new campaigns.