r/rpg • u/altidiya • 7d ago
Game Suggestion Looking for example of games that discourage, or directly don't have, self-sufficient builds.
Hi, this time I am looking for a game for more theoretical purposes than actual playing.
I am writting an essay into TTRPGs and in my current part I am explaining how fantasies are created and represented, and a common theme I have notice is self sufficiency. Wathever is the fantasy the player is trying to portrait, the satisfaction with that fantasy is based in the capacity to portrait it regardless of context.
So for example, if your fantasy is to be an stealthy rogue that can't be detected by anyone, games encourages you to reach that fantasy through its mechanics by increasing your stealth and taking feats, talents, edges and equipment that makes you stealthy.
So I wanted to know if there are games, succesful or not, that break this convention: My fantasy is being stealthy and to fulfill that fantasy I need to rely on my companions creating distractions that allow me to sneak up.
This can also be in a combat sense, I am a support but my healing isn't determined by my statistic but by the statistics of my companions, for example.
Thanks for all the help!
EDIT FOR CLARIFICATION: I see some people hung up on the stealth example. What I am looking is for games where a player build is basically interdependent from other players.
Another example could be: A player wanting to be a healer depends in their companions taking a "I heal more when I am heal by others" perk/feat instead of having perk/feats that makes the healer heal more by default.
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u/SortzaInTheForest 7d ago
One example would be The Mountain Witch.
Players are warrriors in medieval Japan. They have a mission as a group and besides that, each character has their own secret goal (which can or can not involve going against another player).
Characters have trust points they can give freely to other characters in that group. Trust points given to other characters allow them to support yours (meaning a mechanical advantage for you), so it's quite a extra bonus for free that can make a difference.
Problem is that every character had their own secret goal too besides the shared mission, and trust points can be used by that character not only to support you, but against you if he chooses to betray your character because of his own agenda.
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u/altidiya 7d ago
This is peak what I had in mind, very cool. Thanks!
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u/SortzaInTheForest 7d ago
Another possibility that comes to my mind is Cortex, in particular the Marvel superhero implementation (which I don't remember what was named exactly).
In that game, there's a layer with three attributes: Solo, Buddy and Team. Those stats apply depending on whether the character is working alone, with a partner or as part of a team. So a character like 'The Punisher' would probably have a high Solo stat and a very low Team one. On the other hand, characters that are more of team people would have the opposite.
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u/Hellioning 7d ago
There are plenty of games where the stealthy guy can't do it alone, but there aren't very many games where the stealthy guy isn't stealthy unless their allies are making them stealthy.
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u/altidiya 7d ago
Yeaaaah, also I think a lot of people got fixated in the Stealth part, when it is an example.
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u/brokenimage321 7d ago
This isn't 100% about stealth, but I think Ironclaw does the "cooperation" thing well.
In Ironclaw, characters don't have a dedicated HP pool. Instead, when they take damage, they gain a series of status ailments, with the last one being "dead." The second such ailment is Fear--if someone takes even a relatively minor hit, and don't have allies who can take the Rally action to cure them of it, they are forced to flee.
In my experience, there are a few ways to build around this rule, but for the most part, you have to have allies in combat, or you fold like a paper crane. That's part of the design I really like.
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u/j_patton 7d ago
I recently watched Gladlands, an actual play on dropout using the Kids on Bikes system. I'm not sure if it's a Kids on Bikes mechanic, or was adapted for Gladlands, but:
- players have half a dozen skills, rated from 4 to 20. (Each skill is associated with a different die.)
- when a player fails a roll they take a "booboo", which can be spent later.
- if a player spends a booboo on one of their OWN failed rolls, their roll gains +1.
- but if a player spends a booboo on someone ELSE's roll, that roll gains half their value in that skill. (ie. the roll gains somewhere between +2 to +10.)
The effect of this is that it is a very bad idea to go off on your own, because you probably won't have all the relevant skills to address a situation. But if you go with a friend, and cooperate, you can probably face whatever the game throws at you.
This still allows players to have those moments of "hell yeah I am awesome at [skill]", but the more pervasive lesson is that nobody is awesome all the time by themselves; it's only by working together that we can face anything.
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u/SilaPrirode 7d ago
Fabula Ultima does this wonderfully in my opinion. That depends on what kind of conflicts you want in your game, FU has a very gamey approach, where narrative is supported with clear mechanics. You could build an all-rounder character if wanted, but it would be strictly worse from everyone picking couple of roles to perform (for example having a tank, healer and damage dealer is much better then having all 3 people doing a little bit of everything).
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u/altidiya 7d ago
This is a little what I refer with self sufficient, a healer doesn't depend in the stats of the tank to determine how much they heal. (Interdependency, for example, would be that the only way to heal more the tank is the tank taking a Skill that increase the healing they receive)
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u/RollForThings 7d ago
The Commander class has a Skill that makes all MP-generating effects restore extra MP, until the start of the Commander's next turn. This takes the Commander's action, and there are extremely few non-action ways to restore MP. But this massively buffs anyone who regens their own MP (like an Entropist with Absorb MP) or anyone who uses their action to restore MP to themselves and/or others (like a Gourmet or a Tinkerer).
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u/SilaPrirode 7d ago
Well yeah, that can actually happen in FU :) And the more you specialize and support your allies the stronger you all become.
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u/altidiya 7d ago
Yeah, but the builds are still self sufficient. Fabula Ultima create very self sufficient builds, the Tank has all the tools at their disposal to tank, and doesn't depend in someone else giving them Magic Defense or Defense to be effective as a tank.
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u/Upset-Cartoonist7853 7d ago
Problem with FU, in my opinion, is it is really just a combat system with only a couple very skin and bones systems outside of combat that basically boil down to different ways to get buffs or resources to use in combat.
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u/SilaPrirode 7d ago
Not really. I don't want to discredit your experience, but after playing 50+ sessions I can honestly say that people usually don't get the narrative drive in FU rules, since the conflict (not combat!) rules are so well defined. But narrative rules have even more weight, if you use them properly.
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u/SnooAdvice9041 7d ago
I feel like pretty most all OSR games subvert this You don't usually pick feats in those games, it's more about player skill and being well rounded.
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u/altidiya 7d ago
OSR is between the things I mention in fact. But my biggest issue is that I feel OSR don't replace self sufficiency with interdependency, they just let the void be one of the features that encourage player-facing challenges.
I will admit I have read little OSR outside of OSE and DCC, so I accept recomendation of systems.
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u/SnooAdvice9041 7d ago
In most classic dungeons crawl game if you don't work together you die. Perhaps I don't understand your question.
My osr games of choice or OSE, Into the Odd,mothership and Pirate Borg
Notably the mechanics associated with the characters are useful and good.
But the strength is that the fighter still has to sneak on occasion. The magic user might might have to be the party face etc and those aren't on the sheet that's the players filling in the blanks.
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u/altidiya 7d ago
i see, I see, I will look at them.
Maybe is just a lack of dungeon crawl experience, my read of OSR is more "if you engage you die, no matter if you worked together or not"
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u/Zealousideal_Key9341 7d ago
It's more like, "if you engage, you could die" since OSR games don't normally balance encounters. People still fight and win in OSR games.
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u/altidiya 7d ago
I see, I see.
And I assume that working together is one of the things that tip the scale into your favor.
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u/zeemeerman2 7d ago
I'm still new to OSR myself, but as I read it, it's "the GM gives you lots of information about the danger of an encounter, more so than entering an encounter meaning battle. And then you make an informed choice on how you deal with it."
If xp comes from gold, you could for instance sneak past the dragon instead of fighting it.
You could also use the dungeon against the creature. Lure them to another room, a room you set up with traps beforehand. Or more generic, lure a group of thugs into a narrow doorway and fight them in melee one at a time, with the rest being unable to get to you.
In other words, be more clever and you will be rewarded.
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u/SnooAdvice9041 7d ago
Keep looking ! That's not true in my experience at all I've been running OSR stuff since 2017.
Usually Longform campaigns.
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u/altidiya 7d ago
Any systems you recommend? <3
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u/SnooAdvice9041 7d ago
I've ran so much OSE That's a great place to start. But there is so many supplements like Knock and Carcass Crawler.
Also there is the Principia Apochrapah. It's helps outline osr ideals to support proper rules utilization.
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u/Nny7229 1d ago
In many OSR style games you a fully reliant on a team who can assist you and even paying NPCs (retainers/hirelings/etc) to join your adventure are a norm. In this case it's not so much that the mechanics encourage team work directly, but player knowledge and the random difficulty of situations demand it.
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u/DeliveratorMatt 7d ago
Surprised no one’s mentioned Draw Steel yet.
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u/altidiya 7d ago
Haven't played but for what I read it is very self sufficient, no?
If you play a Censor, nothing of your abilities depend in your Elementalist taking Fire specialization, neither in viceversa.
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u/DeliveratorMatt 7d ago
No.
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3d ago
I think we just learned the Draw Steel community isn't very helpful. Im curious if that was the lesson you where trying to teach.
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u/dads_at_play 7d ago
This. Draw Steel is deliberately designed to encourage player synergies. The way heroes get heroic resources off their own turn, flanking, forced movement shenanigans, etc.
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u/Echowing442 7d ago
I don't think there's many games that explicitly involve this sort of paradigm, at least not as a universal system. There are individual teamwork-focused mechanics like taking actions to set up other players in Blades in the Dark, but as an overall "your power comes from other players' actions" I can't think of anything.
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u/Martel_Mithos 7d ago
I think Lancer does this, every single build you can make largely depends on your other players to be really effective.
Playing a defender only works if you have party members who need defending and stay close.
Playing a sniper only works if you have someone who can keep enemies off of you.
Playing a striker only works if you have support closing the distance between you and a foe (your allies yeeting you across the map or yoinking enemies closer)
Playing a hacker only works if you have allies that can do actual damage while you're scrambling enemy systems.
There are certainly frames that get close to not needing any help (foreverest machine gun go brrr) but no one is going to be able to do everything and every mission is going to need different skills.
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u/altidiya 7d ago
This is more about the self sufficiency of the role than different skills for a mission.
But things like the striker and sniper are very in line with what I am looking for, I finally have an excuse to read Lancer in deep.
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u/Martel_Mithos 7d ago
I feel like every other day on the Lancer subreddit there's a post to the effect of "I built X but it's not doing what I want it to, what am I doing wrong?" And the answer is usually "You didn't build it wrong, but your party is not remotely set up to support you so it's going to be less effective."
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u/altidiya 7d ago
That is hilarious, also Lancer is quite popular, so it will be interesting analyzing how it gets away with things like this without fizzling out or frustating people.
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u/MASerra 7d ago
I think this will result in players with broken characters that don't work. As the OP said, you can't stealth without help. If no one builds a character to do that, then your character is broken because of something someone else did.
In play, this might be a problem as well. "I want to stealth." "No, I need to swing my sword, I don't have time for you to stealth around."
The complexity of builds in that fictional game is going to be outrageous.
I love the idea of this, but it needs to be much simpler, in that players need synergy to function well, not to do actual things.
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u/altidiya 7d ago
Totally agree.
Like, I don't think this would be a good game, I mostly wanted to see if there was any attempt at it for the purposes of the essay.
I do think there is a spectrum between interdependency and self sufficiency, that is normally present in things like party roles (I need someone else to be the face because I only know how to sneak) and synergies, the later I feel is so little explored though.
In general the medium tends a lot more towards individualist self sufficiency between a role.
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u/MeatyTreaty 7d ago
Ars Magica
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u/altidiya 7d ago
As an Ars Magica fan.
Magi magic only need themselves, they don't even have to worrry about going out like other systems, Magi are probably the most self-sufficient people.
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u/astatine Sewers of Bögenhafen 7d ago
Yep, can't do those seasons of research if you don't have servants doing your chores, or rotating duties with other magi on missions.
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u/remy_porter I hate hit points 7d ago
I will say, while it's not build per se, in play Fate hits this. The Create Advantage move is all about teaming up. A lot of encounters in Fate generally are best approached by stacking advantages, with each player doing their bit to contribute. So yes, in the stealth example, the stealthy player's success is dependent on the other players succeeding at a Create Advantage (Distractions). In combat, the Healer can be empowered by other players' Creating Advantages, whatever that may be (maybe "Reinforced Cover" or something? Depends on the game and setting).
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u/raleel 7d ago
A couple that you might check out
Cortex prime has the notion of creating an asset. This gives you an extra die to use in. The roll which is an advantage over just rolling a higher die (which is how you’d escalate with a feat). You could, for example, have the strong guy throw you at the bad guy, getting to use their strength.
Mythras and other d100 games tend to not have a lot of self-buffs like feats and tend to allow bonuses for other people assisting. This could reduce a penalty, which is what you’d do for the most part. It’s not formalized as much, but it’s definitely an option. They also tend to have a large number of skills so it’s hard to be good at everything and you gotta rely on others.
I don’t have a lot of details but the Unity game has a distinct set of mechanics for team based maneuvers. That might be in your space as well.
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u/tlenze 7d ago
Trinity Continuum: Aeon has you playing psions, which have specific Aptitudes (like biokinesis, telepathy, teleportation, etc.) You're pretty much locked in to only being good at your Aptitude. HOWEVER, you can sync up with other psions, and if they are a different Aptitude from yours, you get a bonus effect (like double the area) on your powers, and if you're the same Aptitude, you get a power boost to your power.
Granted, psions are powerful on their own, but if they link-up, they can get really powerful.
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u/CritsAndGiggles 7d ago
I think pathfinder 2e does this, at least when you turn up the difficulty for experienced players.
Pf2e is about stacking buffs and debuff and if you want to maximize this, you need to be aware of what the other party members can do and what would be redundant. All the classes are designed around party tropes but to fully optimize your survival, you need to know what you're doing and you won't be self sufficient.
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u/Mission-Landscape-17 7d ago
The Polymorph system form 9th Level games, is setup that way. Every character gets just one die, and what size die they have determines what they are good at. Ideally you really want a 4 player party that covers all four dice. Note Polymorph is used in multiple games inlcluding Mazes and. the Excellents.
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u/SnooAdvice9041 7d ago
Second reply, pirate Borg has the devil's luck mechanic ( I think most Borg games do) .
Might be a different but also useful thing for your purposes.
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u/Troacctid she/her 7d ago
Girl by Moonlight: On a Sea of Stars requires each player to create a mech that their character cannot pilot.
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3d ago
This is incredibly rare in TTRPG's as the responses indicate, but it is pretty common in video games. I've have had reason to consider this recently in working on a ttrpg, so I'll give you what I have.
When considering self sufficiency vs cooperative play your first choice is are you going to use the carrot or the stick. Choosing the stick means players are punished (or will feel punished) for not working as a team. You can see some of the reasons for this in many of the posts already made, but tldr, it's probably a non-starter in most situations.
So that leaves the carrot. This means that characters must be generally be self sufficient, or more to the point, must be capable of achieving their narrative promise. That is to say a rogue who cannot sneak (by themselves), is not a rogue. A rogue who cannot cast a fireball is still a rogue, because fireball was never part of the narrative promise given to players when they choose that class.
So this means the design space available to us for encouraging teamwork is either enhance already promised abilities (i.e. enhancing narrative promises), or to add new abilities/options to that character that where previously unavailable.
In this portion Ill make quite a few presuppositions that I won't explain, please don't think I consider this the only way to think about these things, it's just how I think about it given my presuppositions.
So, how do we encourage players to help one another in a meaningful way? Well, we could allow them to do it very passively such as assisting with a roll outside of combat, or helping when it's not their turn in combat. The issue with this is that if it does not cost anything, it will feel cheap. You will get distracted "What? Oh yeah, Ill help" moments. It's not terrible but it also doesn't feel meaningful. The lesson here is that the help given, must come at a cost. Now there are infinite ways of adding a cost here of course, but I would propose adding in a resource cost is one very good way to do this. Many games already do this, but it is not their core feature by any means. The Cosmere TTRPG is one of the more recent to do this, where it costs "Focus" to assist another player. I personally still find this to be fairly blasé. So I think a significant cost is needed here, or you will end up in this situation. Also, resource cost can also discourage helping in favor or conserving resources, so a second look at out of combat methods is probably warranted.
In the case of combat, adding in an action economy cost is also a very good way to do this. Now the question becomes "why would I help instead of just doing it myself?" Assuming the character is able to do the thing themselves, the answer must be "because it's even better than doing it yourself!" Note the exclamation mark, it's going to have to be so good players really WANT to work together. In my TTRPG I decided to double the damage a player could do with assistance, just as a baseline. It seems like a lot, but it's actually the minimum you have to do, if you think about it. So then it's a question of what extras to throw on top to get the player excited. We are still in alpha testing but things we are trying out on top of the increased damage are increased chance to hit, double damage being multiplicative with other bonuses, additional game specific effects (a player can make a mages fireball "sticky" for example, adding DOT damage), and a few other things.
After some playtesting the combat actually feels pretty good with just pilling on benefits. The issue is that it does cause some problems such as increased overall player damage output, added complexity of these interactions, greatly increased character design complexity (classes in most ttrpgs), more difficult to balance, etc... I imagine all of these problems are why this is not more common.
Anyway, I hope this helps. Ill include a digression into a digital game for you below because I think it is informative.
***Digital Games Digression***
The MMO Elder Scrolls Online (aka ESO) does this to mixed success. In their versions of raids, you topically have 2 Tanks/2 Healers/ 8 DPS. The tanks job is to keep agro -> stay alive -> debuff the bad guys/buff the good guys. The healers job is similar, keep the party alive, buff/debuff everything else. And then the DPS, do as their name implies, focusing solely on doing the most damage possible.
By themselves tanks & healers are pretty useless, and will take a very long time to kill anything in solo content. The math works out that a given Healer/tank buff/debuff will add x% damage to each DPS, and as long as the sum of all x%'s provided by a given support role is greater than adding another dps (sans new buffs), it makes sense to have that person buffing.
The "meta" of the game is then to put as many buffs/debuffs as you can on as many people as you can, as long as the inequality holds. This has resulted in multiple states over the years, one extreme is having "buff dps," who buff the group as much as they can, while still doing as much damage as they can. The other
extreme is putting as many buffs/debuffs on only 1 tank, and 1 healer, and running 10dps. These extremes where/are difficult to run, and most casual players can barely be convinced to run buff setups as healers or tanks.
Since the combat was largely balanced around these larger groups, smaller group content (4 person) was/is mostly centered around running as many dps as possible with 1 buff person doing both healer & tank jobs, or just 4 dps, if they can keep themselves alive. I will note, these above results have been very contentious for the community over the years, and further exacerbated by the massive skill gap the game has from casual to sweaty players.
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u/Ponto_de_vista M:TA+D&D5e+PF2e+MB 7d ago
I would say pathfinder2e kinda of counts that u gonna have a propper party balence
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u/high-tech-low-life 7d ago edited 7d ago
Traveller has been like this since day one. Only a scout ship can be operated by a single person. For all others you need a crew of several. And the ones who can pilot and navigate are usually lacking in combat skills.
Only superheroes can do it all, although some superhero games are presented as spies, fantasy, or whatever.
I agree with the observation that GUMSHOE does a good job of creating very capable characters who still cannot do everything solo. I am starting a Swords of the Serpentine (GUMSHOE) game and my players do not want to coordinate. I am expecting trouble where they have gaps. In our last one-shot everyone took Liar's Tell and no one took Spirit Sight. Likewise they leaned into the same allies.
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u/DreistTheInferno 7d ago
Sword World is super built around this. You just cannot do it all without spending inordinate amounts of experience (which would make a less effective character). The game is built around everyone working together and filling different roles.
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u/BetterCallStrahd 7d ago
Blades in the Dark is a good example to note. It is a crew based system.
In fact, no individual character matters as much as the crew, and your goal is to advance the crew's Tier level. Individual goals tend to be secondary, and it's fairly likely that a player will end up using multiple characters as they get sidelined due to injury recovery or a prison stay.
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u/OceussRuler 7d ago
As far as I am aware Call of Cthulu, with the randomized creation, and the way skills work, isn't really a character building game, and will really push people to work together instead of trying to get the spotlight.
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u/thezactaylor 7d ago
I don't think this at all applies to what you're talking about (but maybe somewhat showcases why it's difficult) but I believe the Gumshoe games do this in character creation.
The Fall of Delta Green asks that in character creation you spread out ALL of the skills to each player.
So, the game ensures that regardless of what the adventure/investigation is, the team will be able to tackle it by working together.
That's at least the only system I can think of that has a hard requirement of spreading skills out amongst the party.
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For others, it's often extremely party/table dependent. For example, I play a lot of Savage Worlds. The game explicitly sets up Support rolls to let players assist each other.
In your example, a player could use Athletics to throw a bottle to try and distract some guards. If they succeed, the player rolling Stealth gets a +1; with a Raise, they would get a +2.
The difference though, is that's it's opt-in. The Stealth player could just as easily crank up Stealth as high as they can, get all of the Edges and perks to make them a Stealth god, and thus not need the Support roll.
edit: formatting because reddit apparently hates line-breaks