PicoBlog

This is Mechanical Mischief, a column on mechanical issues with tabletop (and video) games and what the potential solutions are.

There is a widespread desire to avoid explicit mechanics on a number of things in tabletop communities. The broad community believes that mechanisation will undercut DM discretion, make running games harder and lead to rules lawyers who backbite against the group.

They are not entirely wrong. It is something that arose during 3rd edition Dungeons & Dragons’ reign, and it is covered partially in the System Scorn article on 3.5e D&D.

However, it is important to grasp and understand what mechanics must be built. What are the reasons for the existence of mechanics and what mechanics are needed?

One of the ways to identify the need for mechanics is something this article is terming the Stealth Archer Problem (or SAP for short).

SAP is an concept where an issue in game design is down to the under-mechanisation of the ruleset.

This idea comes from The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim (2011) where many people report that they have a tendency to decide on a character concept but then just instead play a stealth archer which is, as the name suggests, an archery based character that attacks from hiding.

Skyrim’s combat tends to be slow, as most enemies have a large amount of health versus the player’s ability to cause damage. Players find this tedious, especially when combined with multiple enemies at once.

Players in Skyrim can crouch to become hidden. While hidden, the range enemies can detect them is reduced, dependent on various factors including how heavy armour is. This allows players to engage enemies and perform sneak attacks.

Sneak attacks have damage multipliers. By default, this is 2x for most weapons and 3x for single-handed weapons. There are special abilities that can be gained through gameplay that allow a player to have a higher sneak attack multiplier:

At most difficulty ratings and with level-equivalent weapons, these multipliers will kill ordinary enemies and greatly injure boss enemies.

However, performing a sneak attack will nearly always pull a player out of stealth. This means that any nearby enemies will engage and attack the player, who is usually lightly armoured and not designed for a protracted fight.

And this is where the archer component enters in.

Archery allows the player to receive a reasonable sneak attack multiplier without being caught. Players can perform multiple sneak attacks from a distant location, with enemies not being able to identify them as the source. Even at relatively close distances, the player can dip behind a convenient piece of cover and functionally disappear from the enemy’s radar.

Therefore, the stealth archer build allows the player to avoid the standard tediousness of combat while maintaining the defensive position of stealth.

What is the reason for this?

Skyrim does have some stealth mechanics, as mentioned above. Enemies spot corpses, but they only become temporarily aware for a short period. Aware enemies either search a small area or just become more likely to detect sneaking players.

Compare that with stealth games such as the Hitman series. Enemies patrol properly. Concerned enemies stay concerned. If someone finds a corpse, they can raise the alarm and the alarm changes the behaviours of enemies. Objectives can shift or be failed through not being appropriately stealthy.

This means that there is a distinct asymmetry in the game value of stealth versus the theoretical true value of stealth. In the real world, stealth is used as a way to assault and take out singular high value targets and, often, it is a matter of disguise or surprise rather than sneaking your way in. Slowly deconstructing an enemy force is not a real option.

On top of this, enemy AI response to archery is greatly lacking. Instead of taking cover or performing advancement tactics, most enemies will move straight towards the player, allowing them to be picked off in an open field.

To solve the issue, stealth and archery mechanics should have been more developed. Some Skyrim modders have tried to solve this issue, but the AI mechanics are heavily baked in to the underlying code. Even adding new enemy model skeletons has proven to be a complicated challenge.

The other consideration is to understand why players are taking the easiest option in combat, and that is simply because it is not engaging. At the lower difficulties, the player is a damage sponge, nearly unable to be killed. At the higher difficulties, even simple enemies absorb hits and simply deal more damage.

There clearly should have been an additional development and quality assurance cycle on this aspect of the game. Modders have managed to solve this issue by increasing lethality on both sides so that players and enemies both deal more damage and the player feels every combat is important.

At this point, many reading this article are probably wondering how this can relate to tabletop roleplaying.

The best example available is: Persuasion.

There are many stories online of players convincing kings to give up their kingdoms, dragons to fall in love with them and liches to decide that dying is actually the best option. A good number of these stories relate to 5th edition Dungeons & Dragons, but there are many aligned to 3rd edition as well.

Often, these are very experienced players who are aware of the foibles of the system and how to avoid long-winded combat to just get the result they want.

Much like the above Skyrim example, the SAP in this case is related to these issues:

There is no need to go into the details of why combat is tedious, even though fixing that would probably partially reduce the usage of persuasion.

There are three ways that persuasion is broken:

Persuasion systems could be fixed through any of these being improved, but just changing one can cause issues. Adding mechanical depth makes the players feel their time is being wasted. Adding negative outcomes makes the players feel that the system is swingy and arbitrary. Solving the problem of mechanical depth should solve the problem of arbitrarily large positive outcomes by making the expected outcomes clearer.

By building all three of these in, the system starts to feel like an actual and fully fledged cornerstone of the game, which persuasion should be. A mechanisation of faction reputation and mechanics would also contribute greatly to this.

I hope this is a helpful heuristic for working out whether something needs to be mechanised within a tabletop system.

One of the counter arguments against this will be that good DMs do not need mechanised systems, but that implies only good DMs should be allowed to run games. This implies that mediocre DMs should not be allowed, or they should be required to fail until they develop the skills and knowledge to match any task.

It is important to note there are roleplaying games with diplomacy systems integrated in the core rules, but they are few and far between. I have developing a more general system, able to be used broadly across fantasy roleplaying games and I do think there is a need for it.

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