One of my favorite designers, Spencer Campbell, explicitly forgoes balance in his games. By telling players up front that encounters will not be balanced, there's no expectation that things will be fair, which can help them account for both easy wins and punishing slogs. Like you say in your video, it's all about communicating that up front!
5:28 made me laugh so much. i used to pride myself on being able to balance really well, even on the fly - not so sure anymore :P i really liked your point about providing different types of solution to encounters. i think my players might have to be eased into it, but i think there's a lot of potential for really dramatic encounters with this strategy
I definitely try to balance my encounters, because you want them to be challenging and memorable but also not consistently deadly. XD For me, it's mostly about finding the "levers" that my players are looking for in combat and finding ways to change the difficulty there. One of my players really likes using the environment, so I look for different ways that might be incorporated. Another player has a strong mother-hen instinct, so escort missions are uniquely engaging there. I guess this is a roundabout way of saying that secondary objectives are a really great way to add depth to a combat -- especially if CR-balanced encounters feel overwhelming a lot of the time. Really cool post dude! Grounding the combat as much as possible and choosing where to put the failure points can really help point the focus away from the numbers and more toward the story you're building. :D
I can see what you mean. I try (when running a game with combat) to present situations and see how players respond. I always forecast danger. It is up to players to decide their actions afterwards!
I’ve been playing a game with level 15 characters I doubt I could kill them if I tried so I just STOPPED balancing my encounters. If it’s too hard then FINALLY a challenge for them. If it’s too easy then hooray the powerful characters FEEL powerful.
Everyone should be balancing their games. But not in the way most people think. Largely balancing should be about everything being fun and interesting. Whether it's combat, adventuring, or RPing everyone at the table INCLUDING THE DM should be having fun. So Balance is subjective to you and your party. No one wants slogs or one round wonders all of the time. But a slog is a subjective feeling of length and sometimes it's nice to have that power fantasy. And out of combat stuff. It's good to remember what your players are capable of doing a little bit so they can have fun with their character. It's not very fun to always check for locks to pick, traps to disarm, or secret compartments and passages if there are never any around. You can't plan for everything but don't forget to put anything. That's what balance is.
Balanced encounters tend to lessen the stakes. It is *far better* to set encounters to be logical to the situation. Balanced classes in DnD was probably best implemented in 4e. Unfortunately, that balance wasn't so well received by the unwashed masses - whether rightly so, or not. It did give it that video game or board game mechanics feel. The Three Pillars is certainly a good concept to draw from, though with DnD being so heavily combat focused, it can sometimes be tough to get the other Two Pillars into the game. Easily 5 to 10 minutes for 1 round of combat, and most will run 3-5 rounds. Will devour a substantial portion of a game session with just one combat. For the rest of balance, well, some of it is group-specific. Pass the ball around, gas each other up, toke-toke-pass, set up for the spike. Players themselves are not balanced, but if the social contract says "hey, pass it around so that everyone has a chance to engage with the game and immerse in the story and setting", then those things should certainly occur. With the rise of video gaming, you see some players come to tRPGs with the expectation that their character is the one main character. Maybe also because of films or novels. Fus-Roh-Dah! I'm the main character! Selfish play certainly does exist. The GM is the facilitator of the game and the adjudicator of the rules. Sure they can have narrative input too, so far as to define the setting, implement the behind-the-scenes plots going on, and react to what the PCs are trying to achieve, but it is far better to leverage the positive and negative consequences of the PCs actions and inaction, their successes and their failures. In this way, the story emerges from the game play - the PCs narrative of how they . The GM and the Players can put plots into the story. Of course, some players can't/won't/don't really get into the narrative side of tRPGs, preferring the GM to be the main narrator and the PCs are just making some decisions and hitting some orcs, maybe occasionally saying a catchphrase or some 1st or 3rd person dialogue/description.
To be fair, osr does kinda? have balance: the overworld is unbalanced yeah (even though that goes both ways as you can have a whole warband escorting you to the dungeon), but dungeons themselves? They follow a kinda video game logic of "deeper = harder" with dungeon level 1 being a challenge for level 1 characters. Of course, some "low danger" foes are capable of killing a level 20 pc with one save or suck ability, but ye. So eh, there is some balance, but encounters are still unbalanced
I found it occasionally very difficult to understand you due to rushing through the odd word. Please practice your diction; the speed is fine, you're not talking too fast, just, intermittently slurring some words together.
@@Blerdy_Disposition I used to perform a lot of Gilbert & Sullivan, always as the patter-part. I found practicing tongue-twisters, very slowly and with an emphasis on pronunciation as opposed to speed, very helpful. Speed came later, as a natural consequence of the practice.
One of my favorite designers, Spencer Campbell, explicitly forgoes balance in his games. By telling players up front that encounters will not be balanced, there's no expectation that things will be fair, which can help them account for both easy wins and punishing slogs. Like you say in your video, it's all about communicating that up front!
Honestly that transparency helps set player expectations too. Honestly I will try doing that now.
5:28 made me laugh so much.
i used to pride myself on being able to balance really well, even on the fly - not so sure anymore :P i really liked your point about providing different types of solution to encounters. i think my players might have to be eased into it, but i think there's a lot of potential for really dramatic encounters with this strategy
I definitely try to balance my encounters, because you want them to be challenging and memorable but also not consistently deadly. XD
For me, it's mostly about finding the "levers" that my players are looking for in combat and finding ways to change the difficulty there. One of my players really likes using the environment, so I look for different ways that might be incorporated. Another player has a strong mother-hen instinct, so escort missions are uniquely engaging there. I guess this is a roundabout way of saying that secondary objectives are a really great way to add depth to a combat -- especially if CR-balanced encounters feel overwhelming a lot of the time.
Really cool post dude! Grounding the combat as much as possible and choosing where to put the failure points can really help point the focus away from the numbers and more toward the story you're building. :D
I can see what you mean. I try (when running a game with combat) to present situations and see how players respond. I always forecast danger. It is up to players to decide their actions afterwards!
I’ve been playing a game with level 15 characters I doubt I could kill them if I tried so I just STOPPED balancing my encounters. If it’s too hard then FINALLY a challenge for them. If it’s too easy then hooray the powerful characters FEEL powerful.
🥳🫂👍🏿
Many thanks 🙏🏿
Happy to be of assistance!
Everyone should be balancing their games. But not in the way most people think. Largely balancing should be about everything being fun and interesting. Whether it's combat, adventuring, or RPing everyone at the table INCLUDING THE DM should be having fun.
So Balance is subjective to you and your party. No one wants slogs or one round wonders all of the time. But a slog is a subjective feeling of length and sometimes it's nice to have that power fantasy.
And out of combat stuff. It's good to remember what your players are capable of doing a little bit so they can have fun with their character. It's not very fun to always check for locks to pick, traps to disarm, or secret compartments and passages if there are never any around.
You can't plan for everything but don't forget to put anything.
That's what balance is.
Well said!
Balanced encounters tend to lessen the stakes. It is *far better* to set encounters to be logical to the situation.
Balanced classes in DnD was probably best implemented in 4e. Unfortunately, that balance wasn't so well received by the unwashed masses - whether rightly so, or not. It did give it that video game or board game mechanics feel.
The Three Pillars is certainly a good concept to draw from, though with DnD being so heavily combat focused, it can sometimes be tough to get the other Two Pillars into the game. Easily 5 to 10 minutes for 1 round of combat, and most will run 3-5 rounds. Will devour a substantial portion of a game session with just one combat.
For the rest of balance, well, some of it is group-specific. Pass the ball around, gas each other up, toke-toke-pass, set up for the spike. Players themselves are not balanced, but if the social contract says "hey, pass it around so that everyone has a chance to engage with the game and immerse in the story and setting", then those things should certainly occur. With the rise of video gaming, you see some players come to tRPGs with the expectation that their character is the one main character. Maybe also because of films or novels. Fus-Roh-Dah! I'm the main character! Selfish play certainly does exist.
The GM is the facilitator of the game and the adjudicator of the rules. Sure they can have narrative input too, so far as to define the setting, implement the behind-the-scenes plots going on, and react to what the PCs are trying to achieve, but it is far better to leverage the positive and negative consequences of the PCs actions and inaction, their successes and their failures. In this way, the story emerges from the game play - the PCs narrative of how they . The GM and the Players can put plots into the story.
Of course, some players can't/won't/don't really get into the narrative side of tRPGs, preferring the GM to be the main narrator and the PCs are just making some decisions and hitting some orcs, maybe occasionally saying a catchphrase or some 1st or 3rd person dialogue/description.
To be fair, osr does kinda? have balance: the overworld is unbalanced yeah (even though that goes both ways as you can have a whole warband escorting you to the dungeon), but dungeons themselves? They follow a kinda video game logic of "deeper = harder" with dungeon level 1 being a challenge for level 1 characters. Of course, some "low danger" foes are capable of killing a level 20 pc with one save or suck ability, but ye.
So eh, there is some balance, but encounters are still unbalanced
I found it occasionally very difficult to understand you due to rushing through the odd word. Please practice your diction; the speed is fine, you're not talking too fast, just, intermittently slurring some words together.
Noted for future recordings!
@@Blerdy_Disposition I used to perform a lot of Gilbert & Sullivan, always as the patter-part. I found practicing tongue-twisters, very slowly and with an emphasis on pronunciation as opposed to speed, very helpful. Speed came later, as a natural consequence of the practice.