I’m calling shenanigans.

Of late the meme has arisen that the difference between “new school” and “old school” gaming is “rules, not rulings”. The free Lulu PDF A Quick Primer for Old School Gaming seems to be a primary infection point and I don’t think we’ll go too far wrong by quoting it:

Most of the time in old-style gaming, you don’t use a rule; you make a ruling. It’s easy to understand that sentence, but it takes a flash of insight to really “get it.” The players can describe any action, without needing to look at a character sheet to see if they “can” do it. The referee, in turn, uses common sense to decide what happens or rolls a die if he thinks there’s some random element involved, and then the game moves on. This is why characters have so few numbers on the character sheet, and why they have so few specified abilities.

There are several problems with this meme.

BAD EXAMPLES

The Spot and Search skills tend to get targeted a lot by people trying to explicate the “rules, not rulings” concept. For example, the Quick Primer for Old School Gaming goes into a pair of lengthy examples of “old school” vs. “new school” play.

In the “new school” example, a player says they’re searching a hallway. They find a pit trap. They ask the GM if they can disarm it. The GM rules that they can. They jam the mechanism. (The results of the search and disabling attempt are handled by skill checks.)

In the “old school” example, a player says they’re checking the hallway. They fail to find the pit trap, but they’re suspicious so they try a different method of searching. They find the pit trap. They ask the GM if they can disarm it. The GM rules that it can’t be disarmed. They go around the trap instead. (The results of the search and disabling attempt are handled by GM fiat.)

Now, if you’re trying to establish that the difference in play here is GM fiat vs. dice rolling, then these examples would be just fine. But what the author actually does is load up the “old school” example with a bunch of details — using a 10-foot pole; carefully inspecting the floor; pouring water onto the floor to detect the edges of the trap — and then tries to attribute that additional detail to the GM fiat.

But the GM fiat has nothing to do with it. It’s an artificial conflation of two different distinctions between the examples. The use of GM fiat vs. predefined mechanics only matters in the moment of resolution. The amount of detail that goes into searching a particular stretch of hallway, on the other hand, is an entirely separate issue.

The “old school” example could just as easily read:

GM: A ten-foot wide corridor leads north into the darkness.
Player: I carefully check the floor for traps.
GM: Probing ahead you find a thin crack in the floor — looks like a pit trap.
Player: I try to jam it so it won’t open.
GM: No problem.

And the “new school” example could just as easily read:

GM: A ten-foot wide corridor leads north into the darkness.
Player: I’m suspicious. Can I see any cracks in the floor? Or a tripwire? Anything like that? [makes a Search check]
GM: Nope. There are a million cracks in the floor. If there’s anything particularly sinister about any of them, you certainly don’t see it.
Player: Hmm… I still don’t like it. I’m going to take my waterskin out of backpack. And I’m going to pour some water on the floor.
GM: [calls for a new Search check with a circumstance bonus for using the water] Yeah, the water seems to be puddling a little bit around a square shape in the floor.
Player: Can I disarm it?
GM: How?
Player: Jam the mechanism? [makes a Disable Device check; it fails]
GM: There’s no visible mechanism. The hinge must be recessed.
Player: Is there enough room to walk around it?
GM: About a two-foot clearance on each side.
Player: Okay, we’ll just try walking around it. Everybody watch your step!

Here’s a different example:

What I like mostly is more of the focus on descriptions rather than mechanics.

Player: “How wide is the ledge?”
GM: “Maybe 2 inches..”
(New School) Player: *seeing the modifiers of the Balance skill for that short a span* “Oh, nevermind, I better find another way across.”
(Old School) Player: “Okay … can I press myself up against the cliff face and side-step across?”
GM: “Sure. Since you aren’t pressured and can take your time, you don’t even have to roll anything.”

In other words, it’s more about player (and GM) creativity.

The poster here ascribes the difference to “creativity”, but that’s not what the example is actually demonstrating. Although the poster obfuscates it by giving different outcomes to the “old school” and “new school” games, the core of the example boils down to a single question: “Will I be able to cross this ledge?”

In the “old school” system the GM determines this by fiat (automatic success, automatic failure, or some probability of success based on an arbitrary dice roll). In the “new school” system the chance of success is determined mechnically.

Isn’t the “old school” GM getting to be “creative” because he determines the probability of success? I guess. But, of course, the “new school” GM also gets to determine the probability of success — he set that probability as soon as he described the ledge as being only 2 inches wide.

LOSS OF CONSISTENCY

So we’ve discovered that “rulings, not rules” is really just a mantra for, “I like GM fiat.” Fair enough. What’s the problem with pervasive GM fiat?

The loss of consistency.

Ben Robbins’ essay “Same Description, Same Rules” is an excellent summation of the problem. Here’s a quick quote:

Rules should not surprise players. More specifically, if you describe a situation to the players and then describe the rules or modifiers that will apply because of the situation, the players should not go “whaaaa?”

If they are surprised it’s either because you specified an odd mechanic (a will save to resist poison) or a really implausible modifier (-6 to hit for using a table leg as an impromptu weapon).

[…]

On the other hand if the same thing uses different rules on two different occasions, it’s hard to see how it makes sense no matter who you are. This might just be the result of inconsistency (oops) or you might intentionally be using another rule to get an advantage.

I recommend reading the whole thing. Robbins’ basic point is that players cannot make logical, informed decisions if their actions have inconsistent results.

The problem with pervasive GM fiat is that you are either (a) creating inconsistency or (b) creating house rules on the fly. And if you’re creating house rules on the fly then:

(1) You have to keep track of them.

(2) Hasty decisions will frequently have unintended consequences.

(3) Even if the house rule you came up with on the fly is good the end result is no different than if you’d had a good rule to start with.

OLD SCHOOL DID WHAT NOW?

So you say, “Screw that. Ben’s wrong. Consistency is vastly overrated.” Well, sure, that may be true. Everyone’s entitled to their own tastes and opinions after all.

But that really brings us to the crux of the issue: The whole concept of using “rulings, not rules” as a distinction between “old school” systems and “new school” systems?

It’s complete, unmitigated bullshit.

For example, take a peek at the example given in A Quick Primer for Old School Gaming: The difference between GM fiat and mechanical determination of success in finding and disabling traps. That’s a distinction that’s been around since the Thief class was first introduced in Supplement I: Greyhawk.

In 1975.

And if your contention is that the New School started in 1975, then I think it’s safe to say that your use of the term is out-of-synch with the way that most people use the term.

But this extreme example only highlights the other core failure of the meme: It claims that the great thing about the “old school” is the lack of rules (which, in turn, allows for GM fiat). But all of those “old school” games seem to feature all kinds of incredibly detailed, nitpicky rules — betraying a bugaboo for the exact sort of consistency that the “old school” movement is now trying to forswear.

Having a Search skill changes gameplay? Sure. But let’s not pretend that’s any kind of systematic preference for rulings vs. rules, because you know what else changes gameplay? Explicit mechanics for determining the loyalty of hirelings. And those rules are part of OD&D, but not 3rd Edition or 4th Edition.

The truth is that the game has moved towards GM fiat in some cases and away from GM fiat in other cases.

CONCLUDING THOUGHTS

There is, I think, a legitimate philosophical divison being alluded to here: The difference between “do what you want and we’ll figure out a way to handle it” and “you can only do what the rules say you can do”. But let’s not pretend that this is a division between “old school” and “new school” play. The term “rules lawyer” is older than I am.

In addition, I think the truth is that a properly structured rule system facilitates rulings — assuming, of course, that you’re not using the word “rulings” as an ad hoc synonym for “GM fiat”. The 3rd Edition skill system doesn’t just give you a tool for differentiating character concepts — it also provides a robust and open-ended mechanic which can be used to make any number of rulings.

It’s certainly possible to look at any ruleset as being a set of shackles that prohibits you from doing anything not explicitly proscribed. But, in my opinion, a properly designed ruleset is a flexible foundation on which an infinite number of structures can be securely built.

Honestly? The whole “rules, not rulings” thing was a valiant effort. But you’re going to have to keep trying if you want something more than “old school is what I point to when I say ‘old school'” as your definition.

On page 10 of Men & Magic we get the first RPG stat block ever published. “A sample of the record of a character appears like this:”

This is also the closest thing we get to a character sheet in the OD&D rules. (Like many things in OD&D, you have to reverse engineer the general principle out of the example.)

I think the simplicity exemplified by this character sheet is something that a lot of gamers (including myself) look back on fondly: Roll your stats. Pick a class. And you’re ready to go.

Of course, like many things tinged with nostalgia and viewed through rose-colored glasses, this idyllic simplicity never actually existed. Xylarthen’s player still needs to select a race (since he’s an M-U he must be either a human or an elf), equipment (budget those 70 gp wisely), and his spells (well, a spell). And then he still needs to roll or calculate hit points, AC, encumbrance, and speed.

This division between between perception and reality actually proved quite vexing during the early design work for Legends & Labyrinths. I kept trying to get the game to the point where it was literally “(1) Roll ability scores; (2) pick race; (3) pick class”. And, of course, I kept failing. It wasn’t until I took a step back and re-analyzed what I was really trying to accomplish that I was able to get a satisfactory result.

But I digress.

The other interesting thing about Xylarthen is the description of his hypothetical creation: “This supposed player would have progressed faster as a Cleric, but because of a personal preference for magic opted for that class.”

I’m fairly certain that this makes OD&D the only edition of the game to put the idea that not all characters need to perfectly optimized front-and-center. But I also find the passage interesting because it highlights one of the features of rolling your ability scores in order: You are given the raw core for a character. What you choose to do with that core is up to you.

When was the last time you saw a wizard who didn’t have their highest ability score in Intelligence?

The insistence that the game can only be “fun” if your character is perfectly optimized limits the scope of the game. It takes character concepts off the table.

Of course, there are plenty of people who would argue that the guy playing Xylarthen is destined to have “less fun” than if he’d played a cleric. (Or was playing in a game where he could tweak his stats so that Xylarthen looks like every other magic-user in the game.)

And I get that. I can also appreciate that it can be annoying to come to the session saying, “I want to play a magic-user.” And then rolling an Intelligence of 6 and making the character you want to play completely untenable.

And this does, in fact, become less tenable because of the expected longevity of most characters in modern RPG’s. When a character has an expected lifespan of a couple of sessions (if he’s lucky), you can be a bit more philosophical about tackling an unexpected challenge than when you’re expecting to be playing this guy for the next year and a half.

But, on the other hand, Xylarthen sure looks like fun.

The counter-argument, of course, is that nothing stops me from making a wizard with his highest abiltiy score in Wisdom. True. But there is a distinct difference between facing a challenge and dealing with a self-imposed handicap. Just as there is a difference between being given a character and seeing what you can make of it and carefully scultping every detail of the character for yourself.

And I think there’s also a tendency to read the word “challenge” and think that I’m merely talking about the gamist side of the game. But I’m also talking about a creative challenge. The act of creation does not always have to begin with a blank slate. In some cases, deliberately eschewing the blank slate will give unexpected and extraordinary results which might never have been achieved if you limit yourself to a tabula rasa.

The Holmes Basic Set has an interesting section on “Hopeless Characters”:

Sometimes the universe of chance allows a character to appear who is below average in everything. At the Dungeon Master’s discretion, such a character might be declared unsuitable for dangerous adventures and left at home. Another character would then be rolled to take his place.

The act of rolling up a set of ability scores is literally perceived as the moment of creation. When you reject a stat block you aren’t rejecting numbers which aren’t appropriate for your character, you’re rejecting a character who is unsuitable for your play.

The shift in perspective is subtle, but notable.

And this, again, gets back to the idea that character creation itself is a part of the gameplay — not merely a means to an end, but an important part of the process itself. Character creation is not being seen as a prelude activity in which you craft the character you will be playing. Rather, from the moment you pick up 3d6 to roll up their Strength, the game has begun: The ability scores give you the character you will play. And then, from that point forward, it’s your decisions that shape that character’s destiny.

Back to Reactions to OD&D

I stumbled across these in a post over on Troll Lord’s messageboards:

Gary’s OD&D House Rules:

For a score of 15 or over:
STR: +1 to hit and +1 to damage if a Fighter
INT: +1 1st level m-u spell
WIS: +1 1st level cleric spell
DEX: +1 to AC, and +1 to move silently
CON: +1 HP per HD (same as a Fighter class gets, +2 if a Fighter)
CHA: +1 (positive) on reaction checks

HPs: Characters are only unconscious at 0 HPs. For each level a character may have a minus HP total equal to the level, so a 1st level PC is dead at -2, a 2nd level at -3, etc.

Given the recent Reactions to OD&D essays, I thought it might be of interest. These help spread a little love around the prime requisites, fix the oddly incomprehensible rules for Constitution, and gives Charisma a front-end effect as well as a back-end effect (Charisma already had a really important role in governing follower loyalty in OD&D).

From Volume 1: Men & Magic, pg. 5:

Number of Players: At least one referee and from four to fifty players can be handled in any single campaign, but the referee to player ratio should be about 1:20 or thereabouts.

From Volume 2: Monsters & Treasure, pg. 3:

* Referee’s option: Increase or decrease according to party concerned (used primarily only for out-door encounters).

And from Volume 3: Underworld & Wilderness Adventures, pg. 16:

Large Party Movement: Parties numbering over 100, including pack or draft animals, will incur a 1 hex penalty. Parties over 1,000 incur a 2 hex penalty.

These passages, colletively, refer to a style of gaming quite distinct from the modern standard in which a “campaign” refers to a stable group of roughly half a dozen players. And, in point of fact, they refer to a style of gaming quite distinct from that found in most of the published modules from TSR.

OPEN TABLE: The first distinction of classic play is the open table. When Arneson and Gygax talk about a single campaign involving fifty players, they don’t mean that they lived in mansions with massive gaming tables where 50 players could huddle around a battlemat.

Under the open table model of gaming, the adventuring party was fluid. This Saturday your companions might by Bob, Steve, and Lucy. Next Tuesday it might be Steve, Suzanne, Ben, and David. And then on Wednesday you might get together with the DM for some solo play.

This kind of mass participation in a single campaign had a significant impact on how scenarios were designed: The dungeon complex was never designed to be “cleared” or “won”, because if you cleared the dungeon complex where was Tuesday’s group going to go?

And this extended beyond dungeon play. The entire campaign world was a limitless sandbox made interesting not only through the creative faculties of your DM, but also through the actions of your fellow players.

OPEN DMING: Both Arneson’s Blackmoor campaign and Gygax’s Greyhawk campaign featured co-DMs who would run adventures within the same setting and for the same players. For example, Rob Kuntz, who receives special thanks on the title page of Men & Magic, is known for having become Gygax’s co-DM for Castle Greyhawk and co-designing several levels of that infamous dungeon.

It was also common for characters to adventure in both Arneson’s campaign (which was based in Minneapolis) and Gygax’s campaign (which was based in Lake Geneva). And this kind of “campaign visitation” was common.

In fact, my gaming buddies and I used to do the same thing when we started playing: We each had our stable of personal characters, and these characters would be used interchangeably in all of the campaigns we would run (and we all had our own campaigns).

(On a tangential note: Some people ascribe this style of play as having been lost in the mists of time, but I’m not sure that’s actually true except on a personal level. Certainly as I started to place a higher value on verisimilitude and coherent character arcs, the “illogical” nature of campaign-swapping meant that I abandoned this style of play. But on those rare occasions when I’ve seen younger players, they often have the same carefree style of freeform gaming that I used to have.

So if this is something that you miss or that you want to have again, consider simply embracing it anew.)

MULTIPLE CHARACTERS: Part and parcel with all this is that it was apparently fairly typical for players to have more than one character playing in the same campaign. Sometimes they would be playing them simultaneously, but it was also quite typical for you to be playing one set of characters on Wednesday and a different set of characters the following Monday.

BEYOND DUNGEON-CRAWLING: You know what I’m tired of hearing? That D&D is a game about “killing things and taking their stuff” and nothing else.

Has combat and treasure-hunting always been a part of the game? Sure. But the game is about a lot more than that, and it always has been. For example, here’s the description of the fighting-man class from Men & Magic:

Fighting-Men: All magical weaponry is usable by fighters, and this in itself is a big advantage. In addition, they gain the advantage of more “hit dice” (the score of which determines how many points of damage can be taken before a character is killed). They can use only a very limited number of magical items of the nonweaponry variety, however, and they can use no spells. Top-level fighters (Lords and above) who build castles are considered “Barons” (see the INVESTMENTS section of Volume III). Base income for a Baron is a tax rate of 10 Gold Pieces/inhabitant of the barony/game year.

The idea that successful characters were destined for more things than dungeon-crawling was part and parcel of the game. There are rules in OD&D for stronghold construction, political assassination, the hiring of specialist tradesmen, baronial investments (in things like roads, religious edifices, and the like), assembling a naval force, and so forth.

And when you realize that this type of “realm management” play was an integral part of the original gameplay of D&D, then tables in which “40 – 400” goblins were capable of appearing begin to make sense: Sometimes you were a bunch of 1st level nobodies trying to root out the local goblin gang that had taken root in hills north of the village. And sometimes you were a band of nobles riding forth at the head of your host to wipe out the goblin army marching on your barony.

Now take a moment, if you will, and consider the type of game that arises when all of these elements are true: Some of the PCs have become the local nobles. Others are still lower level dungeon-delvers. And the entire world is developing and evolving as a result of their cumulative actions.

OFFICIAL SUPPORT

Ironically, this style of play never received any meaningful support from TSR. Not even in its earliest days. Have you ever seen a module with 400 goblins in it? There are a few glimpses of it here and there — in the Wilderlands campaign setting from Judges Guild or B2 Keep on the Borderland. But for the most part, the type of game being played by Arneson and Gygax — the type of game that led to the codification of the D&D rules — was not the type of game that was being supported through published modules.

Partly this is because that style of game is organic in its nature. You can’t actually capture the essence of the Greyhawk or Blackmoor campaigns, for example, because they were always evolving. (When Wizards of the Coast published Jonathan Tweet’s Everway, a member of the company memorably said something to the effect of, “If we could just include a copy of Jon in every box, we’d sell a million copies.” They couldn’t and they didn’t.)

But, on the other hand, that shouldn’t stop you from publishing the raw material from which a rich sandbox campaign could be played. But the Wilderlands campaign from Judges Guild is probably as close as we’ve ever gotten to that.

What stood in the way? Well, partly the resources. Publishing such a product in a single volume would have been a huge investment. And by the time TSR was capable of pursuing such an investment, that style of play was already becoming “outdated”, Arneson was long gone, and Gygax was already beginning to lose his control of the company.

And even if the resources had been available, such an undertaking would constitute an incredibly large and complex project. Gygax himself spent 30+ years trying to get Castle Greyhawk into print. It has never happened.

So what got published instead? Tournament modules. The earliest TSR modules — stuff like the A series, G series, and S series that we now think of as classics and defined the concept and format of what a “module” is — were all designed for tournament play. And tournament play is almost precisely the opposite of the type of game that Arneson and Gygax were running: The scope is limited (because you have to finish it within a single convention slot), the outcome premeditated (because the next round of the tourney was already designed), completion anticipated (so that scoring could be done), and the impact to the wider world nonexistent (because there was no wider world that could be effected).

For better or for worse, those were the modules that the gamers at home were buying. And they became the models around which their games were fashioned.

And, hand-in-hand with that, the mechanical support for those styles of play were purged from the rulebooks. 3rd Edition — designed by old school grognards working for a company which was, at the time, run by another grognard — saw a return of some of that lost mechanical support. But 4th Edition, of course, has reversed course once again.

The designers of 3rd Edition understood the value of open-ended, fully-supported play. You can see it in Ptolus (the campaign setting Monte Cook used to playtest the 3rd Edition rules). The designers of 4th Edition, on the other hand, openly proclaimed that the game was all about killing things and cited that getting back to those “roots” was one of their primary design goals.

Talk about your false premises.

Back to Reactions to OD&D

In my essay “Festishizing Balance“, I talked about the ugly side of balance: The point where the obsessive desire to measure up against some arbitrary baseline results in people needlessly acting against their own best interests.

But I also made a point in that essay of making it clear that balance is also an important element of game and scenario design. On the other hand, a lot of confusion arises because people actually mean very different things when they talk about “balance”. In my Reactions to OD&D yesterday I talked about Gygax looking for a “very different type of balance” than the balance of mechanical equivalence.

Let’s talk about this for a bit.

CONCEPT BALANCE: Concept balance maintains that all character concepts should be equally viable. In other words, the guy wanting to play Conan the Barbarian and the guy wanting to play Robin Hood should both be equally effective in combat. Why? Because otherwise the system is inhibiting creativity (by making it less attractive to play Conan and/or Robin Hood). In addition, these less effective character concepts serve as “traps” for inexperienced players — they think it would be cool to play Conan, but instead they find themselves always playing second fiddle to Robin Hood. It requires at least some degree of system mastery in order to recognize and avoid these traps.

NATURALISTIC BALANCE: Naturalistic balance, on the other hand, recognizes that not all character concepts are realistically equal. If you’re playing in a realistic World War II game, then the martial arts specialist is just not going to be as combat effective as the guy with a machine gun. (However, naturalistic balance should not be misunderstood as being equivalent to a desire for “realism” in a game.)

SPOTLIGHT BALANCE: With spotlight balance, characters focus on disparate types of gameplay and the balance between them is achieved by the GM making sure that all types of gameplay get an equal share of playing time. For example, when confronted with both Conan and Robin Hood, the GM needs to make sure that there are equal opportunities for both melee specialists (Conan) and ranged specialists (Robin Hood) to show off their best stuff.

THE PROBLEM WITH CONCEPT BALANCE

The problem with concept balance is that it requires you to severely limit either (a) flexibility of character creation; (b) the scope of gameplay; or (c) both.

Many advocates of concept balance will, at this juncture, attempt to degrade the concept of “flexibility” as being the “freedom to play a weakling”. While it certainly can mean that, flexibility more usefully means “I want to focus my character creation resources on gameplay X versus gameplay Y”.

The inherent imbalance of flexibility becomes apparent when you realize that different campaigns will feature different mixes of gameplay types.

A simple example of this is the difference between a campaign focusing on lots of melee fighting in the tightly confined quarters of a typical dungeon (favoring Conan) and a campaign focusing on lots of ranged fighting in the wilderness (favoring Robin Hood). A more complex example of this was the subject of my essay “Death of the Wandering Monster” — certain types of campaigns allow the spotlight balance between fighters and wizards to skew one way or the other.

Let’s make this an extreme example: If you’re playing in a campaign with little or no combat, a fighter is less useful. If you’re playing in an entirely urban campaign, druids and rangers become less useful. If you’re playing in a campaign taking place entirely within an area of antimagic, wizards become less useful.

(D&D makes an easy example for this sort of thing because one major type of character creation resource investment is neatly encapsulated in a single decision point: Class selection.)

There’s no way to “balance” the fact that fighters aren’t very effective in campaigns where there isn’t any combat without either (a) disallowing people from playing a fighter (limiting the flexbility of character creation) or (b) disallowing campaigns that don’t feature a lot of combat (limiting the scope of the game).

This is why many proponents of combat balance often focus exclusively on a character’s combat effectiveness: By narrowing the scope of the game to a single type of gameplay (combat), concept balance becomes possible.

The other way to work around this issue is to isolate each distinct style of gameplay and then make sure that all characters are balanced within each style of play. (This, of course, is another example of limiting the flexibility of character creation.)

THE PROBLEM WITH NATURALISTIC BALANCE

We’ve already touched on the problem with naturalistic balance: It invalidates character concepts and creates potentially unforeseen “booby traps” in character creation that require system mastery to avoid.

The result is that people end up with characters who aren’t fun to play. Combined with the typical modern paradigm of gaming in which character attrition is low, players can end up stuck for a very long time playing characters they don’t want to play any more.

Partial solutions to this problem include allowing players to redesign sub-par characters or switch to entirely different characters. But these are only partial solutions: If someone wants to play Robin Hood and the system doesn’t make Robin Hood a viable concept, then it doesn’t matter how many times you let them re-design the character — they still won’t be playing what they want to be playing.

THE PROBLEM WITH SPOTLIGHT BALANCE

The problem with spotlight balance is that it can mean that characters in spotlight A have to sit and watch while characters in spotlight B are doing their thing.

For example, look at the “decker problem” in cyberpunk games (such as Shadowrun). In these games, non-deckers frequently have to stand idly by and do nothing while the decker characters hack into a computer system. This problem arises partly because of scenario design (hacking frequently happens while nothing else of interest is going on) and partly because of mechanical design (actions taken while hacking take less game time than non-hacking actions).

Concept balancers would try to fix this problem by either (a) getting rid of decker play (narrowing the scope of the game); (b) requiring that all characters be capable of participating in decker play (limiting the flexibility of character creation); or (c) figuring out how to combine decker and non-decker activities into a single type of gameplay.

(For example, I understand that the most recent edition of Shadowrun uses augmented reality to effectively fold hacking into the combat-and-stealth gameplay of a typical ‘run.)

In a more general sense, spotlight balance requires that a GM be capable of designing scenarios involving more than one type of gameplay. In addition, either:

(1) The scenario must allow for both gameplay A and gameplay B to be happening simultaneously, with the GM flipping back and forth between the split party; or

(2) Characters must have at least some abiltiy to participate in all forms of gameplay.

The former, frankly, is non-trivial and requires an experienced and talented GM. The latter, however, can be mechanically achieved and is, in fact, the default method for classic D&D play.

PROBLEM? WHAT PROBLEM?

So, to sum up: The problem with concept balance is that it requires limiting the scope and flexibility of the game. The problem with naturalistic balance is that it offers unfun options. And the problem with spotlight balance is that it requires characters to sometimes NOT be in the spotlight.

But, on the flip-side, there are plenty of people who will stand up and say, “Problem? What problem?”

Some people have no problem with the scope and flexibility of the game being curtailed, if it means that they can have fun within the resulting focus.

Some people have no problem with a game requiring a certain degree of mastery, if it means that they get sensible and flexible results.

Some people have no problem with being an audience to awesome, if it means that — when their turn comes — they get to be awesome, too.

There is no One True Way to be achieved here. All of these forms of balance have their disadvantages and their advantages. Which trade-offs you prefer is going to be a matter of personal taste.

MY SWEET SPOT

With that being said, allow me to use my soapbox to talk about my own, personal sweet spot.

CONCEPT BALANCE: I like immersive roleplay and open, sandbox-style scenarios. Thus I prize both flexibility in character creation and a broad scope of potential gameplay. As a result, I have no taste for the trade-offs demanded by concept balance.

However, that doesn’t mean that the lessons of concept balance should be completely ignored. While I don’t necessarily believe that all character concepts need to be legitimate options, I do believe that all legitimate character options should be viable in the game system.

NATURALISTIC BALANCE: My preference for immersive roleplay and sandbox-style scenarios similarly makes naturalistic balance appealing to me. The need for system mastery, on the other hand, is not inherently appealing to me, but flexibility and meaningful choice both require the possibility that poor choices can be made. Ergo, I’m not particularly averse to the negative aspects of naturalistic balance, while remaining open to its positive aspects.

SPOTLIGHT BALANCE: I like my players to have many different gameplay options for overcoming a given obstacle. And I recognize that giving players meaningful choice in character creation means allowing them to choose where to focus their character creation resources.

Therefore, I embrace spotlight balance.

Fortunately, when you embrace open-ended scenario design, spotlight balance tends to take care of itself. When you give players the ability to craft their own course of action, they’ll defend their own interests and pursue those strategies and tactics which best reflect their own strengths. (You’ll need to watch out for players who get excluded from the group’s decision-making process, but that’s a group dynamic that will cause problems far beyond the issues raised by spotlight balance and would need to be dealt with in any case.)

I also tend to believe that, when spotlight balance is working, the problems commonly associated with it aren’t actually meaningful problems. Even if all of the PCs are perfectly balanced for combat and your entire game is completely dedicated to combat, each PC is still only capable of being at the center of attention for a limited amount of time. (If there are X PCs, then that time is limited — on average — to 1/Xth of the game session.) If you don’t like being an audience for the awesome things the other players are doing, then you’re never going to be satisfied with anything except solo and one-on-one play. (Me? I like having an audience for my escapades and I like watching the clever escapades of others.)

So, in my opinion, most people who protest that they have a problem with spotlight balance acutally mean that they have a problem with spotlight imbalance — in other words, someone else is getting more than their fair share of the spotlight.

What I will concede is that spotlight play is not something that can be mechanically enforced within the traditional structure of a roleplaying game. (It can be mechanically enabled, but that’s different.) Ultimately the GM, working in concert with the group dynamic, must make sure that the spotlight gets turned to each PC in turn. This is something that must be managed in the moment. It can’t even be easily quantified. Knowing where, when, and how to focus a spotlight depends on the tastes of your players and the circumstances of the session. It’s a matter of pacing and narrative need, coupled with practicality and an honest gauge of players’ current interests, attention, and energy. It’s more an art than a science.

As a final note, I’ll point out that the exact mixture of concept, naturalistic, and spotlight balance depends on the game and the campaign concept I’m running at the time. Just as there’s no One True Way, in my experience there’s also no One Size Fits All solution to these issues.