It seems that ever since Dragon Age: Origins was released, RPG gamers have been pondering how much choice is reasonable choice. It’s easy to understand why. Personally I usually hate the talky parts of computer RPGs. I’ll often skip over long-winded exposition, elaborate cut scenes, and the inane prattling of NPCs. They keep away from the fun part—actual game play. But with Dragon Age: Origins the opposite is true. I typically find the combats mildly exciting, but the real fun of that game is its story choices. The story choices are so well done, and seemly out of nowhere, that I think it knocked DMs on their collective asses.
Wow! Can story choices be this compelling and this interesting?
The answer is yes, but not without some difficulty. First off, Dragon Age: Origins deals with the choice of one player—they person gripping the console’s controller. Pieces in the game (be they NPCs or events) respond to a complicated but finite decision tree. When you are running an RPG like D&D you have to take into account group and individual choices. This points to a more complicated matrix, and can seem extremely daunting.
In Dragon Age: Origins (and other BioWare RPGs) you’re usually given a list of three choices. Each one of those choices is important in some way. Are three choices enough for RPGs like D&D or are we going to have to come up with something more robust?
On a basic level, each combat in D&D (whichever edition) accomplishes this in small; your choices about where to move, when to unleash attacks, or use this magic item or that all have consequences on the battle field that. Both enemies (often NPCs) and allies (often PCs) respond in the wake of your choices and their consequences. The various moving parts of the D&D game play, creates this kind of complex choice matrix.
For many groups and instances of play, this matrix for meaningful choices is often sufficient. It’s the dungeon crawl, the random dungeon, the casual game, the one-off. The goal is purely gamist (to once again overuse that misnomer). The players want to kill monsters, take their stuff, increase in levels, gain new abilities, and repeat just short of ad nauseam. Purely recreational players and combat junkies love this game and play it over and over again in its various forms, both analog and digital. And the funny thing is that as long as you have a DM who is willing to run this and find the right variety, few players will become bored and stop playing.
But after a while many players—often DMs—start looking for more.
People like combat or at least challenge, most games teach us that. But players also need context. They want reasons. They want backdrops. They want to be part of stories that feature consequences. And DMs in particular start to get a yearning to tell stories that don’t only involve their antagonists meeting an untimely end at the end of a PC’s sword. But it is easy to go too far. I think DL1 Dragon of Despair went off the rails because of this desire taken to the extreme. The story goals of the Dragonlance product line came before the main goals of D&D on the player’s side.
If you’re not familiar with the end of DL1, a spoiler follows. I’m going to tell you how the adventure ends. If you are on the fence on whether or not you should read the spoiler, I don’t think you should run or play this ending as written anyway.
Here’s the summary: The PCs are exploring the ruins of Xak Tsaroth looking for the Plates of Mishakal—the magic item that will bring clerical spellcasting back to Krynn. The PCs should have the Blue Crystal Staff with them—a staff imbued with clerical magic, so pretty powerful stuff for Krynn at this time. The dragon Onyx guards the Plates of Mishakal, and the PCs must defeat the dragon to gain the plates. It’s a hard fight. The dragon can fly and has room to do so. Onyx also has a breath weapon and an assortment of spells, including charm person and sleep, so he has a decent amount of control. Since it is the last fight, spellcasters will often be depleted; non-spellcasters may not be fully healed. Like I said, it’s a hard fight.
But, if the PCs have the Blue Crystal Staff, a soft feminine voice whispers the following to the wielder.
“Retrieve the disks and hit the dragon with the staff. All will be well.”
Poor Onyx. He seemed so cool in this Clyde Caldwell painting, but he was just a paper tiger. Now if Flint would just get out of the way, and allow Goldmoon to push the “We win” button, everyone could go home content in the knowledge that they beat D&D.
And what happens when you hit the dragon with the staff? You win! Sort of. The dragon disappears with a flash of light. The character who hit it and the disks are transported to safety, and the rest of the group must run for their life to escape the collapse that this powerful magical interaction creates (which I imagine most DMs just hand-wave unless they want to burned at the stake by their players).
It’s very cinematic, it progresses the plot of the Dragonlance saga, but when I ran it, it was met with vocal dismay by my players. Now keep in mind if no one wants to play Goldmoon (the original staff wielder), the adventure assumes that Goldmoon is an NPC. The only way for the players to get the staff is to take it from Goldmoon, who is protected by the barbarian Riverwind, and if this has occurred, trust me your game has already gone off the rails. This means that unless your players decided they wanted to play the pre-generated characters, the dragon is likely defeated by a deus ex machine, leaving your players running for their lives wondering what the hell just happened.
The end of the adventure just doesn’t give the player enough choice. In fact, it often appears it has no choice at all. This leads to frustration, and frustration is a symptom of unfun (that’s a technical diagnosis, BTW). To make a good adventure, with a good story, you have to give your players options…real options; game-changing options (at least to their point of view). At the same time, in order for your story to be coherent and often pleasing to the story crafter, those options can’t be infinite, nearly infinite, or seemingly infinite. Too much choice and you create confusion, not only for the DM, but also for the player. Confusion is also a symptom of unfun. So instead we must find a middle ground. And here is where I think that RPGs can learn from and take clue from other games, including Dragon Age: Origins.
But I’ll get to that on Friday.