Balancing TTRPGs | Chaosium Interview

[@foxross]

“They can call upon magic that *very few* people in our modern world can do” Jeff. I love that this suggests that some people in the modern world can, in fact, channel the power of Orlanth’s lightning.

[@davidbrennan660]

Lots of politicians have Trickster Rune points and the ‘Lie’ Rune magic.

[@JohnSmith-ox3gy]

@@davidbrennan660 Yeah, also some illusion to hide their reptile nature.

[@SSkorkowsky]

Fantastic discussion.

[@princessepingouin]

What a great interview! Game-design videos like this are so rare,thanks a lot for this content.

[@Smittumi]

IMO the only balance that matters is spotlight time.

[@S0nyb1ack]

Agreed, but that goes hand in hand with the idea that the GM does have to try to diversify what happens in the game. If it is always just a skirmish the combat focused characters will have an easy time to take the spotlight, while any other characters can easily feel "useless". It really doesn't help that combat often takes up more time than other activities... At least in certain RPGs out there :P

[@joncarroll2040]

Every player in an RPG should be able to feel that the story of the game is their story. RPGs are ensemble stories, though of course it's fine if someone wants to play a sidekick (I had one friend in college who was perfectly happy to play the "torchbearer" because he just enjoyed hanging out with the group). But if any of the players feels like they're not contributing to the narrative, that game is heading for failure.

[@davidmorgan6896]

@@S0nyb1ack surely, it's up to the players to determine the type of game. If they want to get characters into fights, those characters will seek out fights. If they want to run a caper or a heist they will do those things. The GM has to provide a world rich with opportunities.

[@dungeoneerofphilosophyphd172]

@@davidmorgan6896 That's just not how most games are run these days. Most modern APs (for the dragon game at least) have a set beginning, middle, and end where the means of progressing plot is usually gated by combat.

[@FrostSpike]

@@dungeoneerofphilosophyphd172 An AP is, by definition, a sort of linear story and expects to have character advancement - so called "milestone levelling" - as an integral part of the story. It's basically taking a video game and putting it into a tabletop context with certain expectations about how the characters are going to be "run through" the AP. Unless the GM is happy to allow the players to go and do some off-book "weird stuff" those APs also end up with being somewhat of a railroad or, at least, present constrained options to players. As you say, "chapters" in the story tend to have gates, but they don't neccesarily have to be combat gates. They could be achieved by investigation, negotiation, or exploration instead. Of course, if they've paid 60 bucks for an AP a GM isn't going to let the characters get stuck behind a gate forever or they won't get their money's worth.

[@michaelcremin6496]

Guys, this is fantastic. Thank you so much for sharing, and for presenting a thoughtful, knowledgeable discussion of game design theory. I have been at this for more than 40 years now (!) and I am still learning a ton. (Also: look at that big-boy haircut, James! Your mom must be proud! :)

[@jamesrickel3814]

For me Balance is primarily a question of party vs adversary. Or what can I throw at the party and not end up with a TPK. That extends to opponents but also traps and environmental conditions. I just want to put the challenge in a similar ball park.

[@evanhughes7609]

They can always run away, right?

[@jamesrickel3814]

@@evanhughes7609 While that is true in many games, I have been in situations in Pathfinder/D&D where mechanics made retreat impossible. Willow Wisps with high move on a island nearly almost TPK a group I was playing with.

[@mishima70]

@@jamesrickel3814 And that is Pathfinder/D&D. Also, different GM's with different ideas.

[@davidmorgan6896]

They can run away and they can do research or investigation to scope out the problem. Not always, true, but very often.

[@kornwallsdiceandadvice3538]

I would say it depends one of my favorite DMs always had things that could tpk us with ease but we would be able to figure out that it was there before we got there basically you should only need to balance sudden encounters and when there isn't really a way for them to figure out beforehand but otherwise whether it be a sneak mission, a diplomatic approach, or an extremely tactical attack but your players should not expect everything stronger than them to avoid them

[@kornwallsdiceandadvice3538]

The thing that goes hand in hand is making sure that everyone that makes their character has the same understanding of the direction and expectations for the game the biggest example was a friend of mine had a terrible playing experience because she was invited to join a campaign but the DM didn't tell her what it was about so she made a barbarian and turns out that the DM was running a mystery and she had no skills or abilities that were relevant you don't have to mono theme your games but just make sure your players know what the plan is so they can all have fun

[@jasonGamesMaster]

OMG. Thank you for this. Such good advice. One of the things that has always frustrated me about D&D is how closely tied to combat it is. Don't misunderstand me, I've done investigations and political games in which we had a combat once in six sessions, at the most. You can do anything in any setting. What I mean though, is that I have had a character I've wanted to play for almost 20 years that is a farmer who, through tragedy, is forced to become a warrior and eventually becomes a paladin. Its impossible in D&D. There is no way to build someone who isn't a combatant. especially in 5e with its "everyone has the same base attack bonus" thing. In RuneQuest though, its easy to have that kind of progression, going from a farmer or herdsman who eventually becomes a runelord or whatever.

[@PhilHibbs]

I keep reading the thumbnail title as “DONT BALANCE OUR GAMES”, like don’t you dare!

[@joncarroll2040]

To Jeff's point about Merry and Pippin vs Aragorn and Legolas, I agree that it's fine if you have players who are content to play characters who are significantly less proficient than half the group. And it is a truly great GM who can keep those players engaged when they are spending most of their time on the sidelines watching their friends do their thing. Another great (maybe better example) is the MCU Avengers where you have Hawkeye and Black Widow (ordinary people), Captain America and Iron Man (enhanced but still essentially human) and the Hulk and Thor (figurative and literal forces of nature). The problem with systemic imbalance (which is a whole different issue than the imbalance of an individual game) is that in the worst examples players don't choose the Merry/Pippin role but are forced into it by either random dice rolls (this was a huge problem in early D&D) or by the player's inability to properly understand the system (as happens in a lot of point buy skill based games)and this is a big problem. I would argue that the Chaosium games are actually much better in regards to systemic balance because (as long as the GM is doing their job and building/choosing scenarios to all of their players' characters) it's actually very easy to build what you want to play and the system doesn't really favor one approach over another since all skills are pretty much created equal and advance at the same rate so long as they're being used.

[@katjalehtinen8101]

Hi, I'm a year late. No it wasn't. "Bad characters were a big problem in early D&D" no it wasn't. Why is it people who never played back then just make this shit up all the time. Everyone always just makes shit up about old D&D. I've ran multiple campaigns in OD&D and B/X I started with AD&D 1e. I've never had this issue. 5e stats are VERY important and rolls are near constant. Your best stat will be half of your bonus to rolls until level 15 or something when your proficiency bonus goes higher than your stats can go. In games like OD&D rolls are very uncommon and stats are roll under. This means that even if your score is average you have a better chance to succeed on average than a D&D 5e character doing something they are both proficient in and is their best stat. Below average puts you at the 5e average and well below average is like a 5e character making a roll without proficiency and their worst stat. In my last campaign a 3 WIS 8 CON average every other stat Barbarian killed a god. My 8 STR fighter did just fine for herself and rescued a great deal of people and stood toe to toe in a massive battle with ogres. Stats barely mattered in old D&D, so having bad stats was nearly irrelevant compared to what that would mean to 5e.

[@joncarroll2040]

I started playing D&D back in the Rules Cyclopedia/2nd ed days and I actually used a B/X expert set for a lot of my first games so I know what I'm talking about. While I will agree that abilities mean more in modern D&D, due to the way bonuses progress, older editions (3e and before) were much more restrictive in terms of what characters were even feasible. 1st and 2nd ed AD&D limited your options based on ability scores so you might want to play a wizard but get stuck being a fighter because your INT was too low. 3rd ed was a little more forgiving since it did away with arbitrary limits but you were still limited in concept by your abilities (you still needed mostly high scores to be a paladin for example even if they weren't absolute requirements). If you were playing AD&D 1 or 2 you would not have even been able to play a fighter with 8 STR since the minimum was 9. You might have had to play a wizard or thief instead. The games in the OD&D lineage including B/X and BECMI were a little more forgiving since you didn't have ability requirements, but the fact that they all used a 3d6 straight down the line of abilities (which AD&D never really did) meant that you had no control over what your character was good at and it might not have lined up with how you wanted to play. Would your fighter have been as fun to play if you had would up with a 5 STR instead of an 8? And all versions of D&D prior to 3rd (or the 2nd ed Complete Fighter's Handbook) suffered from the fact that you could end up with a roll of 1 or 2 on your first hit die, bad enough for a wizard or thief but a recipe for disaster for a fighter. And yes the DM could always modify rules to make them more conducive to what the players want but you can do that with any system. I am talking about the kind of play that the RAW implied.

[@katjalehtinen8101]

@@joncarroll2040But the relative power is wildly different. 8 STR isn't even a penalty in B/X, and 5 is a penalty on only 2 types of rolls, in 5e it's a penalty in the most common roll you'll make plus a penalty in something like 5 skills and any flat strength checks you make. It is also compared from -3 to +3 to -4 to +4. A 6 STR fighter in B/X has the same hit chance as a 15 STR fighter if the 6 STR fighter is using a magic sword +1. In 5e to have 6 STR and hit as often as a 15 STR fighter you'd need a better than the best possible magic sword (+3). The gap between 3 and 18 STR is great in both games, sure, but it's still two smaller in B/X and still only affects 2 rolls (melee attacks and opening stuck doors). The ability to make up for this deficit is also lower in 5e because of the bounded accuracy and tightly controlled attribute progression. Again, I run OD&D and B/X only, my heroes have often had sub 8 attributes and been fine. Not just fine, very successful. Totally different than in 5e where I'd constantly make attribute checks which would put me at a huge disadvantage.

[@joncarroll2040]

​@@katjalehtinen8101you're correct that 5e abilities are more important than in 0D&D, B/X and BECMI. What you're missing is that you are far less likely to have a low score in an ability that matters to your class because of the curve on which the default method generates numbers and the fact that you can assign the scores as you like. 5e also does a fairly good job of balancing the classes' features so that you only need two or three bonus level abilities (one ability for class features, CON for HP and maybe DEX depending on how good your armor proficiencies are). The bigger problem with the editions you're talking about is really HP since it was possible for your character to roll really low and be completely unsuitable for the role the player wanted to play.

[@Wolfsspinne]

There is so much I love in this video. Thanks for taking the time and sharing it with us.

[@venusboys3]

This is a great discussion and very much aligns with my own feelings about 'balance' in games... and focusing on the strengths of TTRPGs vs. video games. One picky point though: the soft transitions between questions/answers here are offputing to me. In film language, soft transitions usually suggest that some time has passed. So here it makes it feel as if the two people are not actually speaking to each other in real time, more like the interviewer is reading a question they mailed to the guest.

[@PjotrFrank]

I used the musician analogy as well in the past. It's true beyond the points Jeff is making, because in a good jam session everybody should be granted some solo-time (=character spotlight). A well balanced table of players is made out of folks, who have no problem, when somebody other than him/herself has time to shine, once in a while. Collaborative storytelling > power fantasy!

[@thornkirinsdottir9032]

As someone who has found the Big Model helpful and considered myself primarily into Narrativist play, I used to find Hero Wars the very best "improv with a director" sort of game, to paraphrase another interview with Jeff. But now I think some of the "crunch" from older editions of RQ has been combined with what Hero Wars did best, and RQRPG (I see what yall did there, @chaosium) has rapidly become the most interesting and successful game with my play group, half of whom have only been playing ttrpgs since the pandemic began

[@thornkirinsdottir9032]

Also, our party is super unbalanced, like fundamentally so, in combat capacity, as we have a warrior, a carpenter, a *jeweler*, and a Dragonewt (Beaked/Warrior). So three humans with differing combat abilities, and then an immortal inhuman draconian being, whose player portrays him as part anthropologist and part social critic of Sartar

[@danielmount2931]

Thank you so much for this video! You eloquently explained how I see roleplay games. I will be stealing everything you just said when convincing people to move away from... *Cough* cough* ... Other games with classes.

[@becmiberserker]

Loved this. Thank you. I like games to be as unbalanced as I am. Makes the world make sense to me.

[@Caitlin_TheGreat]

It occurs to me that the sort of TTRPGs that are "over balanced" and feel rather constrictive and limited because of the hard "balance" they hew to may be the result of those games being expected (or marketed?) to include strangers. The sort of games that came into being with the idea of being played at a game shop or a convention with whoever shows up. And so I can sort of see the thought process behind trying to solve the problem of strangers having very different views or expectations of what the game will be about or how they will inhabit the game's world by just fencing them in to a fairly rigid "balance" of player options. And, at least some times, that seems perfectly fine. But it does seem completely unnecessary and even detrimental to a game played among friends and family where the people know each other pretty well and may have even spoken at some length before hand about what they want to experience and have gotten on the same page. It's a competitor to Chaosium, but I think Fate is a great example of a game that relies on the players knowing one another at least well enough to communicate clearly with each other... but also it respects the ability of strangers (who share an interest in playing a game together) to be capable enough to communicate with one another about _what_ they want to play and how each other's characters and ideas will come together. Fate _does_ have a number of balancing parameters, certainly, but it also allows for a lot of freedom and _chaos_ in determining the details of the characters and the world and what the heck the story is going to be about. And what scale of abilities characters will have.

[@FrostSpike]

If you consider a game like, for instance, GDW Traveller (and even the latest Mongoose version to a large extent), the characters are pretty much all random. The player can opt for certain professions, but might not get them. They can choose which skill progression tables to roll on, but the results from them are then random. The game is, by no means, considered as "balanced" in terms of character abilities or relevance and makes no attempt at being so. The idea is, much like Jeff is saying, that you've got an actual person with some life experience, and now you're running them through some adventures. Some times they'll have abilities to help, other times not so much. Much like the Ringworld campaign that he talks about, Traveller isn't really about "levelling up" the character but more telling their story as they make their way through the world.

[@simonpeter2024]

I’m posting this at about 8 minutes into this video. I want to define the importance of game balance as I agree with it. It is when I can create challenges that could kill PCs but they always have a few ways of saving themselves in a way that allows them to feel like they accomplished something important in their growth as a TTRPG enthusiast. A game that continually surprises me in how simple or deadly encounters will be is a game that becomes too burdensome on the GM to be fun for long. PC death is acceptable only when that death is fair, given the investment of a serious player. Unintentional death, or too many miraculous saves, ruin the development of story Roleplaying. Now I’ll finish the video and see if they cover this aspect.

[@larsdahl5528]

Now... Balance can refer to many aspects. The simple balance for balanced play is approximately spending your role-playing time as follows: 20 % as GM 80 % as PC Technically what it says is to do it both as GM and as PC. - Do not get stuck in one of them. --- Something that I find very interesting is the rule of 7: Measure how much time you spend, while playing, in these three categories: At least 4 out of 7 should be "role-playing and NPC interaction". Around 2 out of 7 should be "investigation and exploration". At most 1 out of 7 should be "combat". That is the recommended distribution for healthy role-playing. Only a few people know about the rule of 7, despite it being based on a survey of approximately 6000 role-players. It often brings out a lot of discussions, as it tends to surprise people when they hear it. Though it does make sense, I do think the survey was not detailed enough. I would like to know about "role-playing" and "NPC interaction", each of them, which are the more important? The same goes for "investigation" and "exploration", though I can see there need not be a fixed ratio between them, just the amount is filled with one or the other, thus it matters less what the ratio is. --- I think where most people get derailed when they hear the word "balance" they think of the boredom optimization system, often nicknamed "CR". CR is from war games where it is used to balance the battlefield so both sides do have the same amount worth in soldiers and weapons. The problem is when it gets used in role-playing games it becomes "the boredom optimization system", as it breaks "the rule of 7" by forcing "combat" to fill 7 out of 7, thus leaving no time for anything else. Honestly! Dudes! CR does not belong in role-playing games. --- For balance between players goes, then it is worth keeping an eye on if all players get their "time in the spotlight", here the GM usually is sure to get time. - It is about being aware of if someone hogs the limelight, often the GM is the one taking the unfairly too large share of the time. --- An old classic balance problem is the random character generation (Which fewer and fewer systems use, due to this problem!) where the dice almost always cause one player to get the feeble dice rolls and end up as the lame character in a wheelchair. - It is not fun to be the slug who slows down the rest of the group. --- A more modern balance problem is again character generation, as we often agree on the group has to consist of a certain type of character. For example; musicians. If everyone creates the stereotypical musician, then it becomes boring as the characters are too identical. -> And it can go to the opposite end of the scale where the characters have too little in common for it to make sense that those characters are together. -> Or the most common: Some are too identical while some others are too far away.

[@mishima70]

Whose survey? What survey? When was it done? Recommended healthy distribution by who? "The rule of seven" is just another arbitrary construct that *you can obey if you like*, but I just don't see the point of it.

[@larsdahl5528]

It was two years ago, a large questionnaire asking about a lot of topics. I have forgotten the details, I think some of the KZbin channels were behind it, to make some statistics about a lot of topics concerning role-playing games. But... If you do not see any point in it, then why bother at all?

[@mishima70]

@@larsdahl5528 If you present something as ‘the answer’, then it is incumbent upon you to be able to say where you got it from.

[@mishima70]

@@larsdahl5528 You present it as an answer, but cannot provide a link for me to read and evaluate it on my own. You have 'forgotten the details'. As the old saying goes, "the Devil is in the details." If you can't provide them, then why did you even bring this questionnaire up? The statistics mean nothing if they aren't available for everyone to read. Blah Blah Blah... is each hour to be divided into precise sevenths? Or the total time of the session? How to measure- before or after? And what if some cheeky player tries to do a bit of role-playing in the 1/7 that is earmarked for combat?

[@jameskbarron]

This explains so much about why these games fall short of their potential.

[@PhilHibbs]

48:15 Don’t you just hate munchkins! From memory the essay types were Real Man, Real Roleplayer, Munchkin, and Fool. Munchkin was synonymous with powergamer. Ok I was close, it was “loony” not “fool”.

[@evanhughes7609]

Remember the Fourfold Path from Different Worlds back in the day? The Power Gamer The Wargamer The Storyteller The Role-Player The last one played RQ as Timmy Trollkin, who lived 'in a large, well-upholstered hovel outside Boldhome'. He collected string.😁

[@PhilHibbs]

@@evanhughes7609 Yes it’s possible that Jeff is conflating the two.

[@Caitlin_TheGreat]

I mean, you want to have just enough "balance" so that when you come to a point of making a choice, there's not one option that is immediately and clearly better (or worse) than any other. They should all be viable enough but offer something different. And it's that "something different" that can be and usually is lost when a game is overly focused on "balance". Where everything is essentially the same with just cosmetic differences. And at that point you could just delete all the mechanics and just focus 100% on improvisational roleplay with no die-rolling because the mechanics basically cancel themselves out. Of course, no rules-focused curmudgeon would ever dream of not having all the crunch possible even if it winds up being balanced into redundancy. And ultimately, I _could_ just not buy any game at all and just make up stories with my friends. But it does help to have some sort of guidance in the form of a game system to get everyone on the same page and to arbitrate those points that might otherwise become disagreements. And also for inspiration and maybe pacing. But it is important to remember that TTRPGs are not video games. Video games would love to have the same sort of free license for story and interactivity as TTRPGs, but they are limited by how complex they can make their algorithms in a given time frame and what sort of means they can think up for allowing for more variability in how things play out. But for a table top RPG it's a very different matter. So it really is best to not get caught up in the mathematical, equation-like balance between different player options/paths. Again, you need to tend to it to make sure they're all more-or-less equally *fun.* But that's a far cry from all being equal in any given gameplay moment. It's far better to allow for that player who wants to be really into the verisimilitude of pastoral life and community, or the one who wants to delve into political maneuvering and intrigue and mystery, or the one who wants to have a character explore concepts of honor and being a protector. Because... well, let's say there's this game out there -- massively popular -- that really only concerns itself with one aspect or concept of play: killing things. It comes up with like 9+ variations for fighting and killing things and gives those variations their own sub-themes, but ultimately it's a rather one-note kind of game. Can a player do other things in the game? Sure, it's all just talking and imagination so the game can't stop you. But it won't support you either, if you're "going off the rails" and not engaging in life-or-death combats on the regular, you're not really engaging with the bulk of the game and instead are stretching some periphery, under-developed sub-systems as far as they'll go to give some sort of structure to your play. If people want to jury-rig a game like that, you can't really stop them. But it is generally a good idea to provide a game that offers a fuller suite of tools for varied engagement.

[@becmiberserker]

“Build” is anathema to me.

[@DM_Dad]

Wanting players to make characters, not piles of stats and abilities, was what made me decide on only going to allow PHB races when I run D&D. I've been finding that people who want more esoteric races, classes, or combos of the two don't take their character beyond those aspects.

[@andrewtomlinson5237]

Two words I hate when discussing creating a character are; "Build" and "Optimisation". I don;t give a toss about "Balance" and don't much worry about detailed back story. All I need from my players is that they know who their character is at the point they start playing. If that requires a 130 page novella FINE, if it needs a few lines to describe some of the background options/rolls from the books... FINE. Consequently my attitude to character creation is VERY laissez-faire, often not even using dice or point buy to decide initial attribute scores. The rationale I apply, that has stood the test of time, is that if a player is playing the closest they can to the character they have in their head, the less of a care they have about whether that character is on par with everyone else.

[@jannichols4550]

If Jeff is at GenCon next week, I hope he can stop by the Jazz Kitchen.

[@Wolfsspinne]

A usual problem (that gets fixed by mechanical balance) I encountered is having too many players... Instead of a comfortable 3-4 players and a GM some games I played had up to 8 players plus a GM. And in that big of a party there usually isn't enough time to do much but mechanical stuff.

[@PhilHibbs]

What I say is, “if you want game balance, go play Stormbringer”.

[@joshuaturner4602]

I dont know if I can agree with mr richard, it seems like he is saying "Mechanical balance doesnt matter, you can have fun being deadweight !" and maybe he can, but some of us dont enjoy being the only person at the table who fails to be effective, Sometimes when you have a goddess who has 300% chance to succeed at everything it just makes you feel like " Why am I here at all ? " and maybe thats an issue with me, but in a group activity there is some expectation that that you can meaningfully contribute to the group, and maybe you can sit there and tell jokes about how your character sucks and is a waste of oxygen, but sometimes it is nice to actually be able to do something that another person couldnt do better or faster.

[@thorinbane]

That not it at all. What he means is if the goddess character is only good at one aspect, no matter how awesome they are. But you have parts of the game that don't pander to that then there is balance. Mechanical balance is like 4E or Pathfinder 2... Every character in combat is good, even first level wizards. What people forget is how much better the wizard is out of combat despite the so called balance. With high int they get extra trained skills in pf2 and that means they can get several +3 bumps into skills they are already good at. Balance doesn't always work out as intent. So many ancestries in pf2 have a similiar bonus feature. Low or dark vision , claws and or teeth that are exactly the same. So background is always +1, +1 stat, and then 2 mechanical advantages that are the same for 75 percent of other races...why even bother if in the end they flavour just slightly different by appearance and maybe cultural flavour. What if in my game orcs aren't like that and I can't template them without breaking the math?? Might be ok if everyone plays orcs, but what if 2 want to be halflings.? So the math is so tight and everything feels too similar from race to race and even class to class. Wizard has book, witch has familiar, you know all the spells but can only carry x amount because level, not even class anymore. No more half magic classes. So you get balance, but everything feels the same. At least in other systems you know everyone is staying at X and they are different because they took A,B, and C

[@PhilipDudley3]

"Planned Progression" or "Power Advancement" isn't my whole bit of fun, nor does it lead to "long-term play" because eventually you're just a god.

[@michaelboucher5673]

was hoping this would be captioned. guess not.

[@the11thhour14]

This is a false dichotomy though. I am tired of TTRPGs creating a false equivalency between Combat and Social interactions. I am making a TTRPG where the social abilities are an entirely separate system from combat. Because just because someone likes to hit something doesn’t mean they should not be able to do anything socially.

[@rqstaffan]

Interesting second-order Meta discussion (a Meta discussion about Meta)

[@abstractbybrian]

Another reason for solo TTRPG

[@Greg-jd9nu]

Balancing games ruins them, when every character is equal what's the point of having different character types

[@rayortiz313]

You can't (very much at least), numerically balance the endless variables of make-believe-with-dice. In D&D you half-nerf the Cleric every adventure you don't put undead in. You just cant tell the customers this fact because they will not believe you and revolt. They want to believe that there's a "textbook" way to play these games.

[@virginiano9285]

I have had a on going discussion on the chaosium forums, which i feel is unfrotunately echoing the sentiments here, to a drawback of the product. i have uttered by blasphemy saying that i want a 'cr-like' stat. members of the chaosium community have raked me over the coals because of the sentiments regarding balance. however, thats not my issue with an omission of a 'cr-like' stat. my problem with not having a 'cr-like' stat is that it takes immensely longer to compare stats. one might ask why i would be comparing stats, of course. they might insist that you can only be asking about that if you have some notion of balance in mind. i very adamantly reject this notion. i want to plan for my sessions. i compare stats and so does everybody else. i see the comparison of stats as an inevitability. i also see stat comparisons as 'square one' for session planning. that all being said, it is incredibly frustrating to read through an entire stat block and compare stats in a line by line fashion because of how long it takes to comparing stats from a system that has a 'cr-like' stat. i know that the designers of this system have less resources and i wonder, was any consideration made towards the GM and how much time they spend getting ready to play, but not actually playing? it seems like a major oversight of the system, which creates a barrier to entry and lessens ease of access. overall, i love the BRP rule set, but i cant help but feel like my time is being inappropriately wasted due to a strange design limitation regarding thoughts of balance. thoughts? i also wondered about non human races that are playable by the players. again, the community really wants to rake me over the coals in regards to thoughts on balance. however, again, this is not truly the krux of the issue. you might say its semantics, but i firmly believe that playable races should be FAIR. another word that could be used is equal. i know these words are balance adjacent, but thats really not my problem. the problem with having one race that is not on par with another race, is that all of the min/ maxers pick that race. i cant help but feel like i am arguing with some diehard fans of the system that refuse to see things another way. not only are alternative races fun to play, there should be a way to make them fair in term of ability to anybody not picking those races. thoughts?

[@davidbrennan660]

Balancing a game....... and then you have a campaign in Dorastor....

[@henrykkaufman1488]

You freaking bet you shouldnt balance your games. Shouldn't do that for single player cRPGs either. You should only assure the game is completable by as many diffirent builds as possible. This makes diffirent builds make natural gradient of difficulty and makes games much richer, or rather balancing them makes them one-dimensional and bland.

[@mixedsuccess]

The entire discussion comes down to the false dichotomy of mechanics and roleplaying, the idea that in games with balanced mechanics players will inevitably engage with them to the detriment of roleplaying. Which can happen, certainly, but is in no way unavoidable, and is mostly up to the group. Besides, you can use a "balanced" system to run "unbalanced" high-concept games, the example of a goddess and a dolphin in a walker suit at the end of the interview even spells out how to do it: have a level 25 and level 1 characters in the party. What "balanced" systems allow you to do, however, is more easily run games in the manner they're balanced for, i.e. adventuring in D&D with equal-level PCs, instead of having to figure out how to let level 25 and level 1 characters have fun together all the time.

[@joncarroll2040]

I would say that the reason a lot of D&D players don't RP as much is because of the ways in which they are unbalanced. Like it's very hard to roleplay in 1e/2e AD&D when you're railroaded into a role by the dice with fewer resources to resolve the problems in the game. Your only concern is how to survive. What's sort of ironic here is that the Chaosium games were a lot better balanced than early D&D because they didn't systemically favor one approach to play over another.

[@dungeoneerofphilosophyphd172]

@@joncarroll2040 You must have some fundamental misunderstanding of what roleplay is if you don't think 1e and 2e can facilitate it well.

[@Prosy137]

I get that he doesn’t care much about “traditional” numbers balance… but I feel it’s lazy to ignore it too much. For instance, “you’re all knights, so it’s inherently balanced!” No, not at all. The mechanics themselves still need to be balanced. For instance, say I’m playing in an “only knights” game system as a one-handed axe + shield knight. My friend is playing a 2-handed sword knight. Axe does 10 damage, shield blocks 2 damage. 2H sword does 20 damage. Is this balanced? Could be, depending on total health pool, body armor, action mechanics, etc. But it very well could not be.

[@DMRaptorJesus]

Once again another RPG video youtube is not letting me watch. Clearly other people are able to watch this from the comments.

[@DMRaptorJesus]

hah, finally this thing will play. was wondering if I was banned or something lol

[@GreenTeaViewer]

@@DMRaptorJesus damn my plot to block you from chaosium content has failed

[@thorinbane]

I hate game balance because everything feels the same. See D&D 4E and pf2

[@leonelegender]

both great games

[@thorinbane]

@@leonelegender No they aren't. My 1000 word reply didn't show up. Mythras, GURPS, Rolemaster even Palladium all feel better.

[@leonelegender]

@@thorinbane you have a right to have bad taste

[@Sacramentoidioto]

Well, what did I expect from a company producing games like CoC? I've played TTRPG for 40 years and I can say that one of the worst written games are Runequest: Glorantha. Listening to this guy makes me understand that it couldn't be in any other way. This guy isn't on my side of the table, and I will not be playing RQ:G for long. I now understand why RQ never got to be anything else than a different TTRPG that not so many play. You got to respect them from the point that they didn't produce games that many people want to play just because they want to play the game in a certain way ... or not!

[@ArchonLicht]

How can a proper balance stop you from roleplaying? And how can a poor balance force you into roleplaying? This makes no sense. Balance is one aspect, roleplay is another, they don't directly affect each other. Maybe poor balance can stop you from roleplaying, 'cause you die before your manage to play your role. But not the other way around. Good balance ensures you live long enough to roleplay, doesn't it?