The Difficulty in RPGs thread

[Mistborn]

So, I've been weighing whether or not we need to have this thread for a while. It seems like we need to talk about difficulty/challenge in RPGs and how much of a real thing they are. I start this thread with great trepidation, knowing that the usual suspects will immediately spring to action and begin spewing their egregiousness bullshit.

In as few words as possible some value of objective difficulty can exist in RPGs, fuck initially that was the default. Any scenario where all the scenery, treasure, monsters and the general tactics for those monsters have all been generated before the players begin to interact with it has an objective difficulty. It is entirely possible for the MC have the monsters use whatever tactics have the best chance of defeating the players. The players can then defeat those monsters and say "We legitimately won this encounter."

These are undeniably true facts. The fact the most gamers, most of the Den apparently play with spineless MCs that have challenges that might beat the players, immediately nerfed to triviality does not in any way make the potential for objective difficulty not a thing. In fact objective difficulty is what allows player agency to exist. The core mechanic of RPGs is not rolling dice or telling a story, the core mechanic RPGs is making choices. In order for the players to have agency in order to have a Game and not just a cooperative storytelling exercise, those choices need to matter.

[PhoneLobster]

Well this is just short of total nonsense.

But worse it is thoroughly shallow nonsense with absolute no thought for consequences, let alone enjoyable game play.

Because a GM can play opponents optimally. And they can provide opponents either by set "level appropriate challenge" rules or using some sort of fixed "these guys over here are always this big" or I guess "challenge level geography" bullshit that many "I'm totally not a spineless wuss GM hur hur hur" wankers enjoy.

And indeed to SOME extent a good GM SHOULD do those things. A bit. Sometimes.

But this inflexible "objective difficulty" stuff is total fucking bullshit that only a moron who hasn't put ANY thought into it spouts.

Challenge level geography is basically arbitrarily decided, just in a less flexible way well in advance so as to almost ensure it is basically inappropriate unless everyone rides the planned plot railroad.

Level appropriate challenges... often aren't. That's pretty much the entire criticism of those in a nutshell.

It is often more appropriate simply for story and immersion for some opponents to not play optimally. To a degree that on occasion playing optimally is not only not required but outright unpleasant and jarring.

But most of all there are the Consequences of pretending to be a hard ass "Competitive" GM.

You might win.

I'm sorry but your players are probably just not that great. They can't deal with encounter after encounter of level appropriate or greater opponents played optimally.

So what if they lose.

That is OK... if you have a means through story or mechanics to enable a "soft" defeat like capture or robbery or something that allows the game to continue.

But "Imma Hardcore GM Hur Hur Hur" wankers will ruin that with bullshit like PC death, permanent mutilation, major level loss, outright Total Party Kills and worse. And that basically means the very unpleasant end of the game and probable (and probably justifiable) anger and acrimony.

And even if you DO have a "soft defeat" option... you can't just keep using it all the time. If the players are CONSTANTLY robbed of the shirts off their backs, KOed and dragged off into captivity and so on... the game WILL suck.

The "Hur Hur Imman Objectivist GM!" crowd responds to this problem with... no response at all. But it IS a problem and if you don't do something about it, sorry but your game WILL suck.

And as if that were not enough your lack of consideration for consequences fails to even consider what the impact of the SUCCESS of your strategy might have.

Because...

What if the players win?

What if you pull out tough so called "objective" challenges. Play them as optimally as your tiny GM brain can handle. And then have the 4+ brains with their individually hand crafted uber characters totally but stomp you to the curb AGAIN AND AGAIN.

Because after all there ARE more of them and only one of you when it comes to who can outsmart who, they just plain have more brains at the table. They CAN pay more attention to finely optimizing their one character each and one set of actions each compared to all the things you have to manage.

They MIGHT indeed beat you, a lot, if you really do use "objective" or otherwise fixed challenges.

BUT by your own "objective difficulty" manifesto in that situation YOU CANNOT MAKE THE GAME HARDER.

And then your game will still suck because it will be TOO EASY.

And that is why you are a total ass.

PS should I link my old how to be a Good GM FAQ, because I think it would blow Mistborns mind.

[K]

There is no such thing as objective difficulty when playing against humans. This counts for RPGs and computer games alike because human skill is not consistent or objective. People make mistakes some of the time and make inspired moves well beyond their play ability all the time (True story: I once beat a Korean Starcraft champion so hard that he refused to play a rematch... I am not a frequent Starcraft player).

Second, player agency has nothing to do with difficulty or objective challenges. Agency is simply having choices be reflected in the story and the game.

Third, RPGs almost always use luck to determine the outcomes of events, and by that measure alone you cannot measure objective difficulty. At best, you can try to calculate average difficulty by looking at average player and DM skill and average rolls and then use that as a benchmark.... this is why the CR system in DnD will never be a truly accurate determination.

Fourth, you are mistaken if you think that RPGs were ever about objective difficulty at in point in their history. The only people who believe that have a problem separating reality from fantasy because the wargamers at the start of RPGing always knew that the difficulty was always the human and not the game.

Fifth, you are going to have to live with the fact that even when playing scripted games, the only real tactic is to learn what the AI tactics are and counter them. The fact that walkthroughs for scripted games even exist should be more than enough proof to show that people should not be taking pride in their gaming achievements since beating an objective game is simply a matter of following a script. For example, solving a Rubik's cube is not a challenge when you know that the simple script that will get you the solution within a fixed number of twists, so pretending that you are some kind of genius because you can solve one makes you either delusional or a liar.

[ishy]

When you're dealing with games run by people you also have to account for the fact that there is certain stuff they won't do.

Say I'm making a 2nd level character in D&D. If I get 900 gold to spend (wbl for lvl 2) and I buy 36 guard dogs, my DM will just tell me to fuck off. Even if it is technically allowed by the rules.

[Foxwarrior]

That's your DM's limit? I am quite unimpressed. Although it isn't very wise of you to forget to buy your dogs any food.

[Koumei]

Although it isn't very wise of you to forget to buy your dogs any food.

What do you think the enemies are for?

[Foxwarrior]

Clearly, I assumed that there wouldn't be anything left for the dogs after the PCs had had their fill.

[Chamomile]

I think my breaking point with the dogs would be less "that's OP" and more "I am not slogging through thirty-six goddamn dogs taking individual turns in every single combat."

[infected slut princess]

The Gaming Den has a thread about the 3.5 Giant Crab, where said monster is judged to be "too difficult" for its level. This seems like a reasonable thing to say.

But then how can it be coherent to say anything is "too difficult" (or too easy) if there is no intersubjectively ascertainable standard for difficulty?

[Foxwarrior]

Infected Slut Princess: Perhaps it would be more accurate to claim that one cannot measure the objective difficulty of something precisely enough to tell whether a fight against one Orc is easier or harder than a different fight against two Orcs. The giant crab is just so extreme that one can expect it to be an excruciatingly painful fight in most situations.

Chamomile: That's a fair point, D&D does have some problems in that field.

[Voss]

So, I've been weighing whether or not we need to have this thread for a while.

I'm curious as to why you think its significantly different then your other threads that have devolved into this topic, or if you have actually already forgotten about them. My guess its either that or you have a strict 'trolling thread' schedule.

[Stubbazubba]

It seems like we need to talk about difficulty/challenge in RPGs and how much of a real thing they are.

What in your lunatic perception of reality led you to arrive at this conclusion, that we need to talk about this, again?

[Juton]

Even if you could make an encounter 'objectively difficult', character builds vary so much that this objectively difficult encounter will be a wildly different difficulty for a druid then a monk.

There are way to many factors in TTRPGs. Let's look a video games, can we have 'objective difficulty' in <insert favourite game here> or will the difficulty always be subjective? What about video games where you are matched with an opponent depending on your skill level, since everyone is fighting roughly equal opponents is the difficulty objective, in that you have a 50/50 chance to win?

[Bill Bisco: Isometric Imp]

This topic is a legitimate and a good one. And one that affects many games. And, something a well designed and robust game and design team will address.

Let me start with my own background and experience on the issue. No matter the game or the genre there will be casual players and harcore players. Casual players enjoy playing the game or at least their version of the game. When confronted with too much difficulty they will quickly complain and stay in the game or bolt. Harcore players are open to confronting what the game actually can be and are willing to explore the limits of the game.

I've seen casual and hardcore chess players, Civilization Series Players, and of course D&D players. In order for any game to maximize it's popularity, it needs to have difficulty levels and be honest about them. Adventures should be labeled as Easy, Medium, Hard, or Insane or have multiple versions of the same encounter for more dedicated players.

This way a game can be both easy for people who like things easy and hard for people who like things hard. The more flexible a game is to meet different desires of different groups of people, the more robust and popular it will be!

[Wrathzog]

Perhaps it would be more accurate to claim that one cannot measure the objective difficulty of something precisely enough to tell whether a fight against one Orc is easier or harder than a different fight against two Orcs. The giant crab is just so extreme that one can expect it to be an excruciatingly painful fight in most situations.

Actually, One Orc vs. Two Orcs is easy enough (given that all three orcs are carbon copies).
The issue is when you start trying to compare X Orcs vs. Y Centaurs vs. Z Drow Wizards vs. # Trolls vs. etc, etc... and you start trying to compare things that aren't directly comparable.
And that's before you get into things like Tactics and Environment; party composition/capability; game mastery level of the players... there's just so many factors and we can only do so much.

To get back on topic... I'll ask Mr. Harrison Ford to comment.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kS5XRsHh6vU#t=4s
Seriously, who actually cares? If we were to make a game that was "objectively" difficult, who actually benefits from that? If players couldn't tell the difference between an objectively difficult game and one that was not... then what is the point of making the distinction?
(Answers: No one and None)

[Kaelik]

Mistborn, I regularly tell people that they play monsters like shit, because they are stupid.

I am currently saying that in the Tome Challenges thread. That was the main thing that I said in the Bone Devil TPK challenge on theRPGsite.

So I am literally the closest thing to an ally you will ever have on your stupid fucking "objective difficulty" threads. I say that as a precursor, so that you will take me seriously with the following:

You are still wrong. "Objective Difficulty" cannot be refined to a point where it is even different from "Subjective Difficulty" without simplifying the game to 4e levels.

Yes, you can play a Beholder at a certain higher threshhold of intelligence, or a lower one. But here is the thing, the difference between the well played Beholder and the poorly played Beholder is still less than the difference between either one of those and some other monster with different abilities against the same party.

Ultimately, Beholders are just not much of a threat when most of the party is made up of non magical archers. Likewise, every other monster is tougher or weaker based on the party.

So if you write up some encounters of "CR" and then put a party against them, the difference in strength of the encounters will be determined more by how the PCs abilities interact with monster abilities than how hard you play the monsters.

So if you play "Objective Difficulty" then the encounters range from 6-9 on the hardness scale. And if you play the "Subjective Difficulty" then the encounters still pretty run from 6-9.

So all your crusading for "Objective Difficulty" does is change the play style, without changing the overall balance range of encounters.

[Username17]

There is no such thing as objective difficulty when playing against humans.

This is basically horse shit. Of course there is objective difficulty. If the DC is 23 it is objectively less likely that the save will be made than if the DC is 22. If your opponent in a Go match is a 5-Don master, that is objectively more difficult than if your opponent was a 4-Don Go master. Objective difficulty objectively and demonstrably exists to a quite fine and tunable degree. Even in cooperative storytelling games.

Now, if you weren't trying to make stupid hyperbole arguments, you might make the claim that subjective elements in cooperative storytelling games are so large and hard to account for as to make objective difficulty hard or pointless to evaluate. I might agree with that assessment. But to say that objective difficulty doesn't exist is just obviously wrong. Like, Elennsar levels of wrong, because you're making Elennsar's actual argument. While the DM can make a lot of choices that affect the difficulty of an encounter, an adventure, or a campaign in ways likely too subtle for even the DM to notice, at the end of the day there will be a certain number of die rolls and they will have specific chances attached to them of producing specific results and collectively they will create a total decision tree and have discrete chances of ending at each branch.

Iterative probability is totally a thing, and objective chances and difficulty can be measured. Even if it would be too much of a pain in the ass to dissect the flow of the game finely enough to actually do it, you still could. And the objective difficulty still exists whether you put in the effort to figure out what it was or not.

-Username17

[infected slut princess]

The fundamental flaw in the Difficulty Skeptic position is revealed as soon as you realize how inconsistent it is with other things that they say.

Here are propositions that Difficulty Skeptics will have no problem making:

• "The CR for Dragons is "'too high.'"
• "That's the Boss Fight: it is more challenging than the previous fights."
• "That module is pretty easy."
• "The character must be strong enough to face the challenges at her level."
• "We don't want the DM to accidentally kill the characters with a monster that is too difficult."

All of these types of statements presuppose a measure of some sort. None of these make any sense, unless -- somehow -- we can actually communicate with an intelligible idea of what is difficult or challenging or easy.

Basically, the Difficulty Skeptics have blindly walked into a performative contradiction, and their argument spirals into a black hole of fail.

There are two things determine the "objective" difficulty. 1) The rules and numbers in the game, and 2) the "ideal" role of the monster/npc. We say a DM "goes easy on the players" if he has the Beholder make bite attacks instead of using of eye rays. That doesn't jive with the Beholder's role. One rebukes fools who proclaim, "yo my 20th level fighter killed the balor, no prob!" by pointing out the balor was probably inconsistent with his role.

[K]

There is no such thing as objective difficulty when playing against humans.

This is basically horse shit. Of course there is objective difficulty. If the DC is 23 it is objectively less likely that the save will be made than if the DC is 22. If your opponent in a Go match is a 5-Don master, that is objectively more difficult than if your opponent was a 4-Don Go master. Objective difficulty objectively and demonstrably exists to a quite fine and tunable degree. Even in cooperative storytelling games.

Fundamentally, the game may measurably harder when the DC is one higher, but that's not meaningful. It's equally not meaningful to me whether I play a 4-Don Master or a 5-Don because I'm going to lose all the games against both because I know so little about the game that the idea of a X-Don is an unknown term.

Subjective difficulty is a real thing. Personal difficulty is a real thing. Statistical difficulty is a real thing. Skill is even a real thing when luck is not a deciding factor.

But objective difficulty? Fuck no. If I win an encounter easily because my character had all the right abilities, then the subjective difficulty was low. If I win it easily because the chance of me making all of my attack rolls was very high and those numbers were bigger that the enemy numbers, then the statistical difficulty was low. If I win the encounter easily because I've fought this kind of enemy many times and I know the script like my own cock, then the personal difficulty was low.

But there is no objective difficulty. That's for dreamers and silly-hearts.

[PhoneLobster]

You're having the wrong argument anyway.

Mistborn and most "I do objective difficulty and its awesome!" people may use those words, but if you actually look at what he is saying the specific word you stick before the word "difficulty" is totally irrelevant to his ramblings.

Boil his argument down and it goes like this "Imma hardcore tough ass DM and I make my games difficult and I never adapt to the situation players just have to man up or GTFO it's awesome!"

It's an OLD manifesto. And I remember a time back on the WOTC forums when that bunch used to run around calling themselves "Evil DMs" or some junk.

He just stuck "objective" on the front because it sounds better than "inflexible" or "obliviously stubborn to the point of sabotaging games" and he thought it would be a word that would play well around here.

I doubt he even knows what it means and if you look closely at his OP the word "objective" has at best tangential relevance to what he says.

[Koumei]

Boil his argument down and it goes like this "Imma hardcore tough ass DM and I make my games difficult and I never adapt to the situation players just have to man up or GTFO it's awesome!"

As Privateer Press would say, you need BALLS to play with Mistborn.

He just stuck "objective" on the front because it sounds better than "inflexible" or "obliviously stubborn to the point of sabotaging games" and he thought it would be a word that would play well around here.

I doubt the word is going to work well here, given the kind of people who try to defend their shitty positions with "I'm just being objective".

[Red_Rob]

A lot of people really want to feel like they are achieving something in a measurable way when they succeed at a challenge, so it's not surprising that there's a big movement towards "measuring" the difficulty of challenges. 3e even encourages it with its Challenge Ratings and Encounter Levels. And to a certain degree they have a point, there are a variety of ways you can ensure that the challenge is predetermined before the players make their decisions, and therefore that their decisions are the thing that decides their success or failure. Which is, I think, all that most people who claim to want Objective difficulty are really looking for.

[Dean]

• "The CR for Dragons is "'too high.'"
• "That's the Boss Fight: it is more challenging than the previous fights."
• "That module is pretty easy."
• "The character must be strong enough to face the challenges at her level."
• "We don't want the DM to accidentally kill the characters with a monster that is too difficult."

As a "Difficulty Skeptic" I can actually accept all of those statements without contradiction. You see my position is not that CR is meaningless and should be thrown out or that all aspects of the game are unmeasureable and unknowable. I feel completely comfortable in saying that the Monster Manual Orc is less powerful than a Nightwalker. Because essentially what I'm saying there is that in a featureless gray plane consisting of only the Orc and the Nightwalker measured only against each other one would be able to beat the other in combat. What I would not be comfortable saying is that an adventure where you killed a Nightwalker would have been more difficult to accomplish than an adventure where you killed an Orc.

The second scenario features the actual game of D&D. Which is a co-operative storytelling game with a NOT impartial judge dictating all of the actions and events. It is a game where literally anything is possible, from disintegrating thousand foot tunnels under enemy camps to pushing rocks over ledges to asking questions of Gods as played by your partial judge. Where about half a dozen intelligent humans get to decide what they do every six seconds from a Menu that consists of literally every imaginable task. It is a game where one man decides over the course of potentially years what the terrain looks like, what characters you get to interact with and what allies you make and items you get. It is a game where that given Orc could be encountered in a dark prison cell or in the middle of a field, where you could be armed with your bare fists or the Staff of the Magi. The variables involved in an actual D&D game are literally immeasurable which combined with the fact that the actual games rules are incomplete and unknowable, combined with the fact that the entire game is run by a biased judge means I have no problems saying that Dungeons and Dragons is literally the worst choice I can think of if trying to find a game to measure your actual skill at.

I accept that if given sufficient explanation and detail I could look at two scenario's and roughly guess which one would be more "difficult" for a given party to accomplish in D&D's rules. What I don't think you accept is exactly how vast the volume of critically absent information is when someone says "I played through White Plume Mountain". That is a data point so hollow as to be literally worthless.

[PhoneLobster]

A lot of people really want to feel like they are achieving something in a measurable way when they succeed at a challenge, so it's not surprising that there's a big movement towards "measuring" the difficulty of challenges.

Er. No. just no. You are mixing up a whole bunch of stuff here.

The movement you are talking about with 3.5 is not about the same desires Mistborn is espousing. The 3.5 CR stuff was about avoiding bad outcomes and balancing the game, providing tools with which to help DMs appropriately set a balance point that is thoroughly in easy mode and adapt it appropriately.

Mistborns agenda is expressly about having an balance point where TPKs are a real and regular risk, and where the DM very specifically refuses to adaptively adjust difficulty to make it harder or easier than their predetermined "Immza Hardcore Evil DM Yarz!" mode regardless of ongoing outcomes.

Because god damn it he just magically "Objectively" (note the quotation marks) determined the appropriate difficulty well in advance and damnit, if the players keep TPKing (or by implication ROFLStomping) then that is THEIR fault and his difficulty is sacred and unchangeable, and in any way adapting it in the face of in practice actual failure would only undermine the awesome benefits of.... in practice actual failure...

[ishy]

The fundamental flaw in the Difficulty Skeptic position is revealed as soon as you realize how inconsistent it is with other things that they say.

Here are propositions that Difficulty Skeptics will have no problem making:

• "The CR for Dragons is "'too high.'"
• "That's the Boss Fight: it is more challenging than the previous fights."
• "That module is pretty easy."
• "The character must be strong enough to face the challenges at her level."
• "We don't want the DM to accidentally kill the characters with a monster that is too difficult."

I don't think I understand what you mean by objective difficulty then.
Lets say I play a game of Cowboys and Indians. If I understand correctly there are no rules and people who play it just go MTP ho!
Yet if I play someone with futuristic power armour which is immune to bullets, you can claim my CR is too high, I'm more challenging than previous fights, my opponents aren't strong enough to face the challenge that I offer.
Basically every example of your list. And yet I'd claim there is no objective difficulty in C & I.

All of these types of statements presuppose a measure of some sort. None of these make any sense, unless -- somehow -- we can actually communicate with an intelligible idea of what is difficult or challenging or easy.

Difficulty != objective difficulty, at least to me personally.
Say I have a D&D fight, where I have a lurker monster. The party knew they'd be in a fight, and a wizard casted mirror image before the fight.
Even if the wizard didn't cast it, I may or may not have decided to attack the wizard.
If I still decide to attack the wizard, the question becomes how does Mirror Image actually work in my games?
Can my monster interact with it and disbelieve it? If yes as a standard action? A move? If not does my monster close its eyes so it only has a 50% miss chance?

Those are all subjective choices people make while playing the game that change the difficulty greatly. If the mage is attacked, I can't tell you beforehand how much easier the fight became because of Mirror Image, since I don't know the interaction yet.

And even if I did know exactly how this group would run Mirror Image, casting it might even make the fight harder, if the monster then chooses to attack someone more vulnerable than me.