Regarding pointless grinding…

As previously mentioned, Stupid Ranger and I are preparing for a cross-country move. As a result, I’ve been forced to burn a few of my precious, precious personal days to prepare our current home for sale. The last two days of my life have been consumed by pointless repetitive tasks.

As a result, I decided to write for a few moments regarding the process of doing pointless repetitive tasks in games as a means to build skill, earn rewards, and roleplay. In many video games I have played, this process is known as grinding.

I might be biased, but I hate this.

In my case, I am grinding not to gain experience but for a monetary reward and to advance the plot of my life. The nicer the house looks, the faster it will sell, hopefully for more money. In roleplaying games, I have played in several systems that rewarded grinding a certain task to build skills (like fletching, masonry, or forging) or to gain rewards (sweep the floor one thousand times and you get a pass to join the thieves guild).

The particular game I’m talking about here is a MUD that I used to play named Gemstone IV. I loved this MUD, however I fell quickly out of love with the fact that many of its systems are built on grinding a task and then resting while your experience absorbed (the time at which it would actually be applied to your experience total). As the years went on, they attempted to tweak their system to allow much more of a constant flow of experience and skill building, but it grew too much for me.

How to avoid this

In my games, I tend to do a few things when tempted to present my players with a long task to “build character”. Firstly, don’t do it. Make discrete tasks equal rewards whenever possible, doing a certain task one thousand times is just going to be annoying and tiresome to the vast majority of players. Secondly, if you must force your players to grind make it a skill challenge. That at least gives some interactivity and randomness to their success.

Finally, if you are bent on forcing them to do a task in a repetitive manner give them the opportunity to roleplay while they do it, or do a cinematic storytelling moment where you explain that your players spent the next two weeks sweeping the floor and on the other side they are tired, weary, and have their invite to the thieves guild.

If anyone has experienced a satisfying experience grinding a task, please share your experience with us in the comments. If you hate it, let’s hear from you too, I’d be happy to spearhead the International No More Grinding Society. Maybe if I gave that name more than three seconds of thought I could’ve made a cooler acronym.

Oh well, I’ve got painting to do. *sigh*