Game Balance vs Old School Fun in 5e (follow-up post)

This is a followup post to Against the Funnel of Game Balance - Old School Fun

In that post, I laid out how the impact of character death shaped the style of play and how expectations of character death was very much shaped by other parts of the system. In other words, choice of game system is a strong factor in whether game balance should be a factor or not. I drew the lines up between TSR-era games, such as B/X and OSR retroclones, and WotC-style games like pathfinder and 3rd and 4th edition of D&D. But I didn't really cover 5th edition D&D.

So where does the current edition of D&D fall on this spectrum of Old School Fun --> Game Balance Fun-nel?

In this, as in so many other ways for this edition, it falls sort of in the bland middle - It doesn't do either style particularly well, but honours both enough that both types of players can enjoy it.

The first point to make is that it is different from 3e and 4e in this regard. In making this observation, I do not look to the stated rules (recall, 3e did not explicitly encourage game balance, but other parts of the game created a culture demanding it) but for how people are using it - Let's start with the major factor - The mini-game of character creation and planning:

One of the things that showed me that the culture had shifted focus away from the mini-game of adventure-as-character-actualisation in 5e was looking at the character optimization guides online.

Your classical 3e guides were assumed a culmination at level 20 as the pinnacle of the fully realised character.
5e guides as a rule depart from this, arguing "what is the point of building towards level 20 when the vast majority of gametime will be spent between levels 1-10?" They've brought a renewed focus on the experience of adventure gameplay at the table as opposed to the adventures as a means to the ultimate actualisation of your character concept.

Nonetheless, we can see 5e as a solid "in the middle" kind between TSR and WotC style game evidenced by the fact that we do still have character build and optimization guides. For those who enjoy this, it remains an option. The difference is that you can still opt to just roll a character in 20 minutes and play, and level up with a minimum of decision points, without ending up with a character that the charoppers will leave in the dust.

In 3e, this was not possible. In 4e, you wouldn't necessarily be left behind, but the breadth of choice and the fact you had to choose also did not encourage disregarding this mini-game (there is a reason the online character builder was so popular - in 4e, it was a lot of work).

The gains, demands even (feat chains - looking at you 3e), to be earned from optimization and planning ahead have radically decreased in 5e. The options to go simple have been placed more at the forefront of the game. In other words, it is easier to make 5e the kind of game you want.

The actual rules for encounter balance are a bit shit. In the comments to the first post, +Wright Johnson  hit the nail on the head I think in his analysis of 5e game balance in actual play:

I've found in running 5e that the game is straight-up more enjoyable if you ignore the encounter building guidelines and throw whatever makes sense in the fiction at your players, using CR to ascertain just how scary something is. The increased survivability and bounded accuracy mechanics not only work for "unbalanced" play, but actually work better.
The game generally gives the players plenty of chances to learn from their mistakes before they die horribly, and random treasure is given out on a per-encounter-CR basis, so the players can generally expect increased reward for increased risk. Clever play allows them to mitigate the risk through the advantage/disadvantage mechanic. And if the PCs take the increased risks, they often gain magic items which allow them a chance of triumphing in high-CR encounters they wouldn't have survived otherwise, not to mention the obvious benefit of speedier advancement. It turns "unbalanced" play into a virtuous cycle.
Which is why it's so baffling that the actual rules for encounter building in the DMG throw that virtuous cycle out the window and impose 3e's bonkers "adventuring day" nonsense on top of a system which feels worse when constrained in that way. It's harder for the DM to manage (have you seen the math you're supposed to do?) and less interesting for the players.

On the combat front, XP for killing is still the baseline - The DMG offers some alternative options that seem to have some usage - But it's fairly diffuse stuff, with no good discussion of how to use XP awards as incentives to set the campaign style. It's the 5e DMG in a nutshell - It does a great job of covering all bases, but not really in sufficient detail, or with crisp precision, for it to be the best option.

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In the interest of the full overview, I do think it is worth noting that some measure of challenge rating and game balance has existed in the game from the beginning. The math may not have been properly attempted until 3e (or actually working until 4e), but ideas about estimating how deadly an encounter is, and whether this is desirable or not, has been part of the game from the outset.

In fact, I think the designers of 4e put forward the best argument for why challenge ratings are worthwhile:

The basic premise being that there is a certain sweet spot in combat, where combat is not too easy nor plain impossible - that is just plain more fun. Being able to consistently challenge your players meaningfully in combat is more exciting than a run of too-easy encounters followed by a run-from-the-TPK encounter. Being able to determine in which ballpark that sweet spot lies goes a long way towards making combat encounters more fun and exciting.

So having a challenge rating for guesstimating this sweet spot can be useful - Whether it is the DM being experienced enough to just eyeball it, or the complex encounter building system of 4e.

It was never the "challenge rating" systems that my original post argued against, but rather what they were used for. The 3e DMG, before the designers realised that the game system as a whole implied the need for a social contract on game balance (which the challenge rating and encounter building systems were the means to enforce), actually states that around 5% of all encounters should be out of the PCs league.

Update on "Into the Unknown" - Kickstarter Boxed Set looking likely

Quick intro: "Into the Unknown" is my hack of 5e to make it run more like B/X - Old school meets modern. Many simplified mechanics; Race-As-Class; reaction and morale rolls are back; spend-gold-for-xp combined with downtime activities; simple but central hexcrawl framework; terse and short writing - And fully compatible with 5e. Click the tags below for more.

The player booklets are basically finished. Works has stalled a bit as I am working hard on the GM booklets. This is turning out to be a lot harder than the player booklets, but I want it to be good - And this is really demanding the best of GM wisdom from me! We're still a couple a months away from completion, but I have the structure of the booklet and just about every chapter and section lined up, so things should be proceeding more smoothly from here.

There are other good news though. The player booklets look quite good, even just printing it with a regular printer. And I've been researching the cost of making a proper print run - in a boxed set! This looks much more affordable than I first assumed, as long as it is 50+ made. At first glance, production cost here in Denmark could be as low as the 30 usd range for six booklets and a box which is not what I expected. So I went ahead and made a box cover in anticipation of putting this on kickstarter:

Obvious Homage is obvious

So yeah, I think this is really happening. A target of 50 backers seems realistic - I won't run until I have all the actual material written and I enter the final edit-tweak'n'polish phase (I am thinking to use the kickstarter as playtest as well) and I have a firm price offer from a printer. Sometime in autumn?

I guess that means I should look at stretch goals and stuff? I've never done anything like this before. Comission someone to make a kewl character sheet? Comission art from Russ Nicholson and Larry Elmore?

I guess I will need to set up a company as well, to report taxes on this for and all. Jeez. I did not anticipate all this when I first started hacking this.

Against the Funnel of Game Balance - Old School Fun

Game Balance is a totally different kind of fun compared to old school fun. It's more a fun-nel really, that basically seeks to minimize the parts of the game that old schoolers find fun.

Gamers, generally speaking, roll dice because the element of randomness brings a level of excitement to the table. And they applaud creative thinking or player skill being able to make a crucial difference in a tight spot. Because it is fun. Because they are variables making the game more open-ended.

Game Balance is the opposite: It is the premise that so long as the party manages its resources properly, they will be guided through a scenario of progressively more difficult encounters, each of which they should be able to defeat in turn and still come out with positive hit points, for a total combat experience that should be neither too easy nor too hard. If the GM knowingly presented encounters too strong for the party, that is seen to be GMing in bad faith. If they are too easy, the GM is expected to make adjustments so that the players can stay within the happy medium of challenging encounters in the Game Balance Funnel.

In other words, you can expect to come out on top as long as you stick to the guidelines on both sides of the table. You can roll dice and come up with zany stratagems, but the game is rigged so that the outcome is meant to be a foregone conclusion regardless of these variables.

This concept of "game balance" became part of the gaming culture during the 3rd edition cycle and was enshrined into inviolate law in 4th edition.

In 3rd edition, the Game Balance funnel was not originally intended to be part of the game. It provided encounter guidelines mostly as an tool for eye-balling Total Party Kill encounters and enabling the GM to steer clear of this if he wanted to. The gaming culture however, quickly began to take the guidelines as a social contract and part of the game. When Wizards of the Coast released adventures that did not follow these guidelines rigorously, there was outcry. They quickly learned not to do that again. The guidelines had become law.

In 4th edition, this was taken to its ultimate conclusion. Though the various mechanical widgets players had to choose from were probably more plentiful than ever, 4th edition was so perfectly balanced that it was virtually impossible for the GM to "break the game" (ie, kill the player characters) as long as players and GM alike stuck to very clearly defined guidelines. As part of the this, players also could not break the game either - Each class was designed to be perfectly balanced against each other, giving every player a chance to shine equally. 4e is maybe the most balanced RPG ever made.

Why did game balance become such a hot item? How did it go from 'here's a guideline' to being the holiest principle in the design of the game? And why wasn't it a bigger deal before 3rd edition? Whilst some of it might well be the zeitgeist of the times, I'd argue that the design of other parts of 3rd edition, developed even further in 4e, inevitably lead to a design where Game Balance had to become law. In two areas mainly:

Character build - with 3rd edition, making a character became a mini-game itself. "Builds", tracking progression from 1st to 20th level, became a thing. The game itself encouraged this sort of fiddling with prestige classes that could be combined in multitudes of ways and whose requirements and optimal benefits required planning ahead many levels in advance. Feats likewise, often required planning chains of them many levels in advance The tone of the game itself shifted, with a greater emphasis on self-actualisation through the character you are building to become over time, than the adventures to be had.

Say Player A spends half a day building a character, plotting out how Lazariavilnus the gray elf rogue was going to become a Rogue 1/ Wizard 4/ Daggerspell Mage 10/ Unseen Seer 2/ Arcane Trickster 3 at level 20, meticulously planning assigned feats and skill ranks to get just the right synergies at level X and Y - And then Lazariavilnus dies in fire at 2nd level due to a random encounter with a dragon - Player A is probably going to be unhappy that the GM took away the character he had invested so much time in already - Especially when the GM actually had encounter guidelines that could have avoided this.

It is only natural really - Player A invested his time in ways the game encourages - Engaging in the mini-game of character building. What's the point of doing that if you have no assurances that your player is likely to survive to ever see it come to fruition? That Game Balance became expected by players is almost inevitable when you design a character creation mini-game with that kind of investment in it.

The other part of the game that lead to this is the increasingly binary nature of encounters in the game. Gone were reaction rolls - Which, though in spirit intended to let GM decide for himself, tend to just lead to more binary outcomes of "Fight or.... fight?". As were morale rolls - creatures were now much more likely to fight to the death. And even more crucially - encounters changed from primarily being obstacles in the path between the PCs and their goal (gold, which = XP) to being the goal itself (XP).
Besides the more variable outcomes of encounters in TSR editions of D&D, it also gave ways of attempting to by-pass encounters that were way out of their league, without necessarily compromising their quest for the goal of the game (XP).

Contrast this to 3rd and 4th edition, where the combat encounter was enshrined as the ONLY real way to gain XP and thus advance your character - If combat is presumed inevitable and something the players are supposed to seek out in order to advance in the game, it becomes more natural for players to expect that they should be able to survive it. Sure, the party could have just sneaked away from that dragon, but that's not what the game incentivizes. As part of this focus, it is only natural that combat was more developed, and took up more of the game time in a session, in 3e and even more so in 4e.

So game balance became the pillar to stand on for the increased focus on the mini-game of character building and the different more combat-focused player incentives offered in the game.

Looking to TSR games, and their OSR offsprings, we can see why game balance is mechanically less relevant there and simply not in the spirit of these games.

Character creation is quick. You can roll up a character in less than 15 minutes. Discover more about it in actual play if it makes through the first few sessions. In fact, we can see that character mortality was considered a feature of older games, not a bug. Quote +Frank Mentzer, author of the BECMI series of D&D:

"The point is so obvious that many folks miss it (emphatically including the designers and players of the current version):

D&D Characters Die Frequently.

If you and your players refuse to embrace this axiom, you fall prey to an invulnerability that renders all the dangers impotent. You simply reenact plots knowing that the hero always survives and wins ::yawn::. But in accepting it you spring headlong into a world of thrills 'n' chills where failure and death are ever-present possibilities, surmounted only by the now-classic D&D resolution: create another heroic wannabe and try to do better."

Secondly, Combat is more avoidable - reaction rolls tend to produce different outcomes. Morale rolls tend to shorten fights. And more importantly, players aren't given strong incentives to look for fights. The real prize is the gold on the other side of the encounter. Why fight a dragon when you can just sneak past it and try to loot its hoard by stealth? Especially if you have doubts that you would be able to survive it.

This last part is the clinch in terms of fun - The social contract of game balance means players are simply not supposed to consider if they are able to survive the encounter - the rewards of the game are triggered by engaging in and winning fights and we're supposed to be able to survive each encounter - There should be no choice needed for that random encounter with the dragon - The GM wouldn't put it there if we couldn't defeat it. The world the PCs inhabit is basically solipsistic. It exists only as a level-appropriate response to the PCs and their goals of character advancement.

In TSR D&D, fighting is more of a choice - And one you can opt out of without detracting from your primary aims. This also means the GM can put in encounters that the players could not hope to survive if they engaged it in combat. And from there, create a world that is more open-ended - A world which feels less like a solipsistic funnel towards the next combat encounter and more like a world that has its own life independent of the PCs; where combat is but one aspect of the game and whether to engage in it at all is a legitimate strategic decision that the game will not punish you for opting out of.  Where achievement is earned and not a foregone conclusion.

The good GM then, does not go out of his way to set challenges that he knows will not kill the characters. Rather, he lays out meaningful choices for the players; to choose whether to fight the challenge, or look for other solutions to accomplish their goal. And he leaves it to the players, not the GM, to estimate the "challenge rating" for encounters they come across.

The point of this article is not to argue that all those who play pathfinder and 4th edition today are having BadWrongFun. When I played 3.5, I went all in on character builds myself and enjoyed the experience of tinkering with it. It was a fun solo mini-game to engage in outside the group play. And lots of combat can be fun - up to a point.

The point is rather to illustrate that when modern players consider older games to be unbalanced - That this is a feature, not a bug. And that this was by design, not accidental.
That developments of game balance do not necessarily constitute an evolution of the game, but rather a horizontal shift in focus in terms of what the game wants to be.
That there is a different kind of satisfaction in discovering your character in play, as opposed to building it and plotting out its future well in advance. And that being less attached to your character is actually somewhat liberating. That accomplishing your goals without the compulsion towards combat can create a wholly different style of play. And that combat is genuinely exciting - Because you could very well die.

It's a different kind of fun to the fun-nel you've been used to.

My advice to 3e/4e players wanting to give the OSR experience a shot - Try dying. Come to the session with a folder of character sheets. It won't take more than an hour to create a good handful or more. Just have a basic idea of what that character is right now. And die a couple of times. Get it out of your system.

Around that point, you will start to have a good feeling for how to navigate a world of fantasy full of dangers and glories to be had, where the skeletons of adventurers who failed might actually be found in dungeons - And do your best. Doing so WILL affect the outcome.