Note that this is the player version to identify themselves. The GM gets more tips on how to cater to these core engagements.
-------
Challenge
Challenge seekers generally come in two varieties that are relevant to medieval fantasy role-playing games: the tactical challenge seeker and the cunning challenge seeker. Both seek to influence the outcomes through their own discreet actions, the former by manipulating the combat mechanics available in the game, and the latter by manipulating outcomes based on other context.
In spite of the name, ‘challenge’ seekers are not necessarily looking for difficulty in their fantasy medieval role-playing games. The probability of overcoming an obstacle is less relevant; what is more relevant to the challenge seeker is their ability to affect the outcome. If a challenge seeker succeeds in overcoming an obstacle, they want to know it is because of something they did or chose to do rather than the whims of a dice roll or the intervention of the GM.
The tactical challenge seeker is most interested in the war game aspects of the game. Like the hobbyist, they are more interested in the combat compared to exploration and interaction. The difference is subtle but important: the tactical challenge seeker wants combats which provides a mental exercise or puzzle to figure out the best tactics. The tactical challenge seeker wants to succeed in the combat due to specific choices she made, be it at optimizing character builds or careful placement and choice of action in combat. Cover, positioning, spell choice, preparation and reconnaissance are the some of the tools used by tactical challenge seekers to achieve their goals.
The cunning challenge seeker also seeks to manipulate outcomes through their own actions rather than the luck of the die or GM intervention. However, unlike the tactical challenge seeker the cunning challenge seeker will try to circumvent, trivialise and avoid combat altogether. The cunning challenge seeker examines cues provided by context other than the mechanics of combat in the game system in order to “cheese” through encounters.
How do I know if I am a challenge seeking player?
Most players try to embrace some of the tactical challenge engagement that medieval fantasy role-playing games offer in order to survive the potentially deadly combats. Tactical challenge engagement players can be recognised by the effort they put into becoming well-acquainted with a game system’s unique set of combat rules and find efficient strategies and tactics within the confines of the system.
Actively seeking ways to circumvent or trivialise combat even though they enjoy combat is a curious contradiction that characterises cunning challenge seekers.
Both tactical and cunning challenge seekers may spend a lot of time in discussion and planning, both in and out of combat. Strategizing is a fun activity for challenge-seeking players, after all. To them it is fun to determine the most efficient use of resources and correctly identifying which courses of action leads to the best chance of success.
Hobbyists may mistakenly identify themselves as primarily tactical challenge seekers when all they really want to do is lay back, roll dice and rock some monsters hard without thinking too hard about it. Like the tactical challenge seekers, hobbyists may be interested in optimizing their player characters for combat as they are also interested in victory in combat. As a matter of fact, game designers have made this same mistake in thinking that hobby seeking players of medieval fantasy role-playing games want tactical challenges, and so designed a relatively recent edition of a medieval fantasy role-playing game with a strong focus on tactical challenge much like that of a war game. Unfortunately, that edition of the game did not meet the wants of the hobbyist, and was denigrated for being “too much like a computer game”, “too much like an MMO”, or “too much like a board game”. None of these criticisms hold water for a tactical challenge seeker as tactical challenge seekers enjoy the board games aspects and may even appreciate medieval fantasy role-playing games emulating board games even further. Hobbyists want to roll dice, kill monsters, find treasure and become powerful heroes. Having to carefully consider positioning, cover and other tactics in great detail, not so much. On the other hand, tactical challenge seekers may feel less satisfaction if victory is achieved due to the whims of the dice rolls rather than specific choices they made. Hobbyists have less issue with the dice rolls ‘winning the game’ for them; after all, they’re the ones rolling the dice.
Compare the choice of Wizard spells used by a hobbyist and a tactician. To the hobbyist, Magic Missile, Fireball and Lightning Bolt are considered key spells as these are the primary damage spells in the Wizard’s arsenal that are almost always useful in battle. Tacticians may occasionally cast damage spells, but they are much more interested in spells which give tactical advantages such as creating difficult terrain to slow enemies down with spells such as Black Tentacles, creating Fog Clouds which renders enemy ranged fire ineffective, or dividing up the enemy forces with a well-placed Force Wall. The latter selection of spells need more contextual and tactical awareness as not every battle calls for those spells. Worse yet, battlefield control spells do no damage and assign the glory of tearing the monsters a new one to other players instead.
Expression seekers may want to also be cunning challenge seekers. They may want their character to be cunning and effective because being cunning and effective are admirable qualities which they want their character to have. The difference is that expression seekers will seek actions which are dynamic and full of flair and style rather than being thoroughly effective. Cunning and effective actions may not always be flashy and steal the limelight, and challenge seekers may happily allow someone else to hog the glory as long as the team is as effective as possible. It is the limelight on the stage and the glory of the position of leadership that the expression seeker may seek rather than the mental exercise and satisfaction of sharpening of their own wits as a player. It’s okay to want to become cunning challenge seekers, but correctly self-identifying the core engagement one enjoys helps one enjoy games more and helps the GM engage one better. If the expression seeking player does not enjoy taking the time to strategize and lay out plans carefully with the rest of the party, it may be better to leave the decision making to the players that do.
Some of the games often played by challenge seekers include Into the Breach, Professor Layton, X-Com, Commandos, Civilization, Crusader Kings, Stellaris, Total War, Starcraft, Space Chem, Portal, tower defence games and a large number of board games and war games which emphasize strategy and tactics. Difficult games like Cuphead, Getting Over It and Dark Souls are difficult and reward persistence rather than providing opportunities for genius, and thus don’t quite scratch the same itch.
Conflicts: Many
Some folks have no interest in learning the combat rules. Even the GM may not bother learning all the rules of the game he’s running! Shocking, right? While this may seem like a breach of the social contract of agreeing of playing a game together, keep in mind they are playing the game of the other core engagements. Why are they even playing the game? Well, not for the war game aspect of the game, clearly.
Some folks just don’t want someone coming up with brilliant ways to completely bypass of trivialize the dangers of combat. Hard to imagine, right? But it’s true, submission/hobbyist players want to sit back and enjoy rolling the dice and kicking monster’s behinds.
Some folk don’t want to put time into coming up with good plans and strategies for problems. It’s not that they don’t want to win, it’s that they can’t be bothered to put the effort into it. Not as much as you, anyway.
Specific advice for challenge seeking players: Keep in mind that not everyone is so into the war game aspects of medieval fantasy role-playing games, including the GM. Even players who want to win battles may not seem to want to master and play with the rules of the battle. But that’s okay: if everyone did it better than you, they would be taking away the fun and opportunity for you to do it instead. So take satisfaction in that you are the team’s strategist. But try not to take too long and to take away from other’s enjoyment of the game. Compromise is another aspect of the game to manage.
-------
Challenge
Challenge seekers generally come in two varieties that are relevant to medieval fantasy role-playing games: the tactical challenge seeker and the cunning challenge seeker. Both seek to influence the outcomes through their own discreet actions, the former by manipulating the combat mechanics available in the game, and the latter by manipulating outcomes based on other context.
In spite of the name, ‘challenge’ seekers are not necessarily looking for difficulty in their fantasy medieval role-playing games. The probability of overcoming an obstacle is less relevant; what is more relevant to the challenge seeker is their ability to affect the outcome. If a challenge seeker succeeds in overcoming an obstacle, they want to know it is because of something they did or chose to do rather than the whims of a dice roll or the intervention of the GM.
The tactical challenge seeker is most interested in the war game aspects of the game. Like the hobbyist, they are more interested in the combat compared to exploration and interaction. The difference is subtle but important: the tactical challenge seeker wants combats which provides a mental exercise or puzzle to figure out the best tactics. The tactical challenge seeker wants to succeed in the combat due to specific choices she made, be it at optimizing character builds or careful placement and choice of action in combat. Cover, positioning, spell choice, preparation and reconnaissance are the some of the tools used by tactical challenge seekers to achieve their goals.
The cunning challenge seeker also seeks to manipulate outcomes through their own actions rather than the luck of the die or GM intervention. However, unlike the tactical challenge seeker the cunning challenge seeker will try to circumvent, trivialise and avoid combat altogether. The cunning challenge seeker examines cues provided by context other than the mechanics of combat in the game system in order to “cheese” through encounters.
How do I know if I am a challenge seeking player?
Most players try to embrace some of the tactical challenge engagement that medieval fantasy role-playing games offer in order to survive the potentially deadly combats. Tactical challenge engagement players can be recognised by the effort they put into becoming well-acquainted with a game system’s unique set of combat rules and find efficient strategies and tactics within the confines of the system.
Actively seeking ways to circumvent or trivialise combat even though they enjoy combat is a curious contradiction that characterises cunning challenge seekers.
Both tactical and cunning challenge seekers may spend a lot of time in discussion and planning, both in and out of combat. Strategizing is a fun activity for challenge-seeking players, after all. To them it is fun to determine the most efficient use of resources and correctly identifying which courses of action leads to the best chance of success.
Hobbyists may mistakenly identify themselves as primarily tactical challenge seekers when all they really want to do is lay back, roll dice and rock some monsters hard without thinking too hard about it. Like the tactical challenge seekers, hobbyists may be interested in optimizing their player characters for combat as they are also interested in victory in combat. As a matter of fact, game designers have made this same mistake in thinking that hobby seeking players of medieval fantasy role-playing games want tactical challenges, and so designed a relatively recent edition of a medieval fantasy role-playing game with a strong focus on tactical challenge much like that of a war game. Unfortunately, that edition of the game did not meet the wants of the hobbyist, and was denigrated for being “too much like a computer game”, “too much like an MMO”, or “too much like a board game”. None of these criticisms hold water for a tactical challenge seeker as tactical challenge seekers enjoy the board games aspects and may even appreciate medieval fantasy role-playing games emulating board games even further. Hobbyists want to roll dice, kill monsters, find treasure and become powerful heroes. Having to carefully consider positioning, cover and other tactics in great detail, not so much. On the other hand, tactical challenge seekers may feel less satisfaction if victory is achieved due to the whims of the dice rolls rather than specific choices they made. Hobbyists have less issue with the dice rolls ‘winning the game’ for them; after all, they’re the ones rolling the dice.
Compare the choice of Wizard spells used by a hobbyist and a tactician. To the hobbyist, Magic Missile, Fireball and Lightning Bolt are considered key spells as these are the primary damage spells in the Wizard’s arsenal that are almost always useful in battle. Tacticians may occasionally cast damage spells, but they are much more interested in spells which give tactical advantages such as creating difficult terrain to slow enemies down with spells such as Black Tentacles, creating Fog Clouds which renders enemy ranged fire ineffective, or dividing up the enemy forces with a well-placed Force Wall. The latter selection of spells need more contextual and tactical awareness as not every battle calls for those spells. Worse yet, battlefield control spells do no damage and assign the glory of tearing the monsters a new one to other players instead.
Expression seekers may want to also be cunning challenge seekers. They may want their character to be cunning and effective because being cunning and effective are admirable qualities which they want their character to have. The difference is that expression seekers will seek actions which are dynamic and full of flair and style rather than being thoroughly effective. Cunning and effective actions may not always be flashy and steal the limelight, and challenge seekers may happily allow someone else to hog the glory as long as the team is as effective as possible. It is the limelight on the stage and the glory of the position of leadership that the expression seeker may seek rather than the mental exercise and satisfaction of sharpening of their own wits as a player. It’s okay to want to become cunning challenge seekers, but correctly self-identifying the core engagement one enjoys helps one enjoy games more and helps the GM engage one better. If the expression seeking player does not enjoy taking the time to strategize and lay out plans carefully with the rest of the party, it may be better to leave the decision making to the players that do.
Some of the games often played by challenge seekers include Into the Breach, Professor Layton, X-Com, Commandos, Civilization, Crusader Kings, Stellaris, Total War, Starcraft, Space Chem, Portal, tower defence games and a large number of board games and war games which emphasize strategy and tactics. Difficult games like Cuphead, Getting Over It and Dark Souls are difficult and reward persistence rather than providing opportunities for genius, and thus don’t quite scratch the same itch.
Conflicts: Many
Some folks have no interest in learning the combat rules. Even the GM may not bother learning all the rules of the game he’s running! Shocking, right? While this may seem like a breach of the social contract of agreeing of playing a game together, keep in mind they are playing the game of the other core engagements. Why are they even playing the game? Well, not for the war game aspect of the game, clearly.
Some folks just don’t want someone coming up with brilliant ways to completely bypass of trivialize the dangers of combat. Hard to imagine, right? But it’s true, submission/hobbyist players want to sit back and enjoy rolling the dice and kicking monster’s behinds.
Some folk don’t want to put time into coming up with good plans and strategies for problems. It’s not that they don’t want to win, it’s that they can’t be bothered to put the effort into it. Not as much as you, anyway.
Specific advice for challenge seeking players: Keep in mind that not everyone is so into the war game aspects of medieval fantasy role-playing games, including the GM. Even players who want to win battles may not seem to want to master and play with the rules of the battle. But that’s okay: if everyone did it better than you, they would be taking away the fun and opportunity for you to do it instead. So take satisfaction in that you are the team’s strategist. But try not to take too long and to take away from other’s enjoyment of the game. Compromise is another aspect of the game to manage.
No comments:
Post a Comment