Friday, August 31, 2007

Party Design (and language use)

A few weeks of work, classes starting (not an issue for me except that I'm working at a college bookstore), and a major fight with a friend, and I've gotten behind. It should be coming soon though.

A thing I've been pondering much as of lately is what rules to put in place for party design and character creation. I posted on this earlier, saying that I was strongly considering making some kind of mechanism which would support or encourage party specialization. I don't know, I've been questioning lately whether or not that's something I actually want. The main thing that detracts me from that is, well, I worry that it will make the game too complicated. That and I worry about frustrating players ("What? What do you mean I can't have both a healer and a necromancer in the same party?"). I guess what I'm really going for is, as my friend Mike said, "80% of the bang for 20% of the buck."

Originally, each character was very carefully crafted and individualized. The downside: each character took about 1/2 the time it took to make a D&D character, and took a lot of thought and creativity. Multiply this by 5 or 7, and you see the problem. So, for my first playtest, every character had 1 ability in each world, and that was that. It worked great, but was more simple than I wanted it. That and, well, some abilities were better than others. So, next came the class/template* based system I've been using. Each character gains two ability points, and can use it to buy either two 1-point abilities, or one 2-point ability. However, which abilities they have access to is determined by their class/template. In test games, I've only had 3 or 4 classes available in each world, but have said players could have as much of each as they wanted.

So as I've said, I keep pondering if I should just stick with that system, or if there's more out there. I don't want to take on the attitude of "if it's not broke, don't fix it" (I mean, shoot, if everyone did that, I wouldn't be typing this on a laptop, and I guess wouldn't have a blog to begin with). I've debated having different "divisions," such as nature or holy, where a character can only take from their division or allied divisions. I've also considered that multiple divisions are fine, but that they lower the general's leadership (and thus fewer actions per turn). I've also considered that instead of making hard and fast divisions, I should divide the abilities up into groups or types (magic, melee, summoning, etc), and say that each player can take 3 groups for free, but every additional one costs them something (either a general's ability, or leadership).

And again, I'm still debating whether this will make the game more or less fun. My original goal really was to have highly customizable parties. I mean, I remember looking through my local gaming store at the miniatures, and seeing so many cool ones. I felt like if a player wants to have a party made of a drow, a giant, and 3 raptors, she should be allowed to, since really that would look pretty friggin' cool. I really didn't want classes at the beginning, but it feels like if I don't put some kind of limitation in, that everything would just be too big and too complicated, and to some degree intractable. And then I started to worry that if I give total freedom, then everyone will have the same basic party (a typical rpg style one of everything party). There was a book I once read that had a funny line about freedom, and how more options can sometimes mean less freedom, because there gets to be 1 optimal choice that you have to take (while, with fewer options, there is not necessarily an optimal choice). So, I worry about that, but at the same time I worry about frustrating players by telling them what they can and can't do. These are the choices we make, and I guess this is why they pay us the big bucks as game designers.

Oh well, I guess that's all I have to say (except for my * comment about classes, which I think is longer than my original post). Thanks again for listening, and have a good day.

Simon

*An interesting thing I've been thinking about, this other gamer on The Forge (by the name of Whitson John Kirk III) sent me a copy of this book he's been working on about the different design patterns and mechanism that popular and successful RPGs have used. An example is, well, say you want your characters to advance as time progresses. What can you do? You could use a class system (a la D&D 2nd edition), a class tree system (a la D&D 3.0), a skill system, a skill tree system, or a template system (I think that's most of what he mentioned, though I might be forgetting something). A rather intriguing thing he talked about at the beginning was the use of language. He basically started the book by standardizing the language he'd been using. As an example, take "Hit Points" (basically, a number that records how much damage you've taken. As long as your hit points are above 0, you're alive, if they are 0 or less, you're dead or otherwise out, usually with no real penalties in between. Most games have "Hit Points," although some games (Warhammer) have "Wounds," some (Heroes Quest) have "Body Points," and I'm sure I've heard other names (body points, toughness points, etc). They all refer to the same abstract concept, but use different terms (kind of like how when you travel overseas, "corn" becomes "maize" and "pants" become "trousers").

The issue gets more confusing when the same term can mean different things. For example, D&D 3.5 has "feats," "skills," and "abilities." My game has "abilities," though to be honest, they are probably more like D&D's "feats" than it's "abilities," and it's what the author might have called "gifts" (if I understood him correctly).

Anyway, to get back to the point I had originally wanted to make, my issue comes in when I describe how I group my abilities. You know, the thing that you select, that doesn't directly affect your character, but just puts a label on her (such as "wizard" or "liche"), and limits what abilities she can take. Originally, I didn't want to feel too much like D&D, so I called them "archetypes." I then got to thinking that, really, the confusion that it causes is not worth the extra drop of originality, and TSR isn't the only game with "classes," so maybe I should just go with that (since everyone knows what a "class" is). However, after reading the book, I now wonder if "template" is the right term. By his definition, "class" should be used when it's "you are a wizard, that means you get the following abilities at the beginning, and every advancement you follow a set path of gaining new abilities, without any way of deviating." This is defiantly not what I'm going for. So I don't know, there are so many terms I could use here: type, archetype, profession, template, class, training. I'm sure there's more, I guess it's just a trade-off between how creative I want to be and how confusing people will be willing to put up with.

It's funny; this makes me think back to discussions in school. It's either all the math or all the philosophy classes I took, but I've grown to dislike having conversations that throw around ill-defined terms. For example, "education" is one, that everyone can agree they want our kid to have more of it, but know one seems to have a real idea of what an "education" is. Is a kid educated if he could tell you when the War of 1812 happened? Is he educated if he can manipulate imaginary numbers and matrices? Is the ability to be a clear writer important? Would a kid be more or less "educated" if she walked out of high school without a fact in her head, but the ability to learn (a concept I didn't fully come to understand until college), or the ability to think critically? Is education about encouraging creativity, or about self-discovery? Is education about passion, and about cultivating a child's desire to learn? With all the talk about standardized testing, it feels like the answer to all but the first two questions is "no." So many other concepts get thrown around the same way, they are like energy, that everyone knows it exists, and thinks they know what they're talking about, but when you ask someone to put it on a plate for you, it doesn't seem to be there. Intelligence, Freedom, Altruism, Democracy, Race, these are just a few terms that I can remember having discussions about recently, where I'm not sure if everyone could really agree on what we were talking about. Language is funny like that. I guess that's the nice thing about math, that everything in math is quite clearly defined, and if it isn't it's usually because there's a controversy about how to define the term.

Tuesday, August 21, 2007

To comment on a previous post...

I should say, in respones to my "...shit" post, that I really shouldn't bad mouth the peace corps. I was in a really really bad mood when I posted that. I do know they care about us. I do know that they are crazy about taking care of us and keeping us safe. Shoot, my nurse reminded me of my mother in how much she worried about me. And I do think they are a good organization, and they do do good things. I guess my only bitterness about the peace corps came from, well, they are a branch of the US government, and as such has not gotten away from the all encompassing bureaucracy. Once you get to your site and get away from it, everything is just grand.

Although, really, if I thought they were a bad organization I wouldn't try so hard to get back in. Honestly, I've thought about joining other similar NGOs, and have worried slightly that the health care won't be as good.

Anyways, the posts are going well, and the game is coming along. I don't know, because of a small personal crisis things might be delayed a bit more, but hopefully things will come out soon.

Friday, August 17, 2007

Update

So, I haven't had one of these in a while. I wanted to update you all on what's going on.

I had hoped to make my first real Beta test open a week or so ago, and then I had a few, I don't know, bits of inspiration (how is inspiration measured anyways?), and decided to put it off until I implemented them. The main one was the acting independent thing, although I added a lot of rules for linking the worlds more. So, hopefully now I'll be able to put them up soon. I figured I'd post a question to The Forge and BGDF.com, just to bring up a little buzz (although, in both of them they were questions I had genuinely been pondering for a while, I guess it's just a good coincidence I can shoot them off now), make any edits I can from their comments, do last minute touch ups, and then send it off.

And I had a new idea for campaign mode. Something simple. Basically, your group needs to survive N games. That's all. However, whenever your character dies in battle, she may die overall (and thus you want to surrender early if you think it might be a bloodbath). However, you can only lose X games before you are completely destroyed (and thus, you don't wan to surrender unless you have to). I figure these put things in a good balance, and make an interesting negative impact loop: if you have lost (X-1) games, then your party really should be willing to fight to the death. Because of this, other parties will be less likely to want to really go for the win, since it would mean probably heavy casualties themselves.

I don't know, I guess I'm not sure what else is worth posting. If I think of something I'll let you know. Take care all!

Simon

“Imitation is suicide.” – Emerson

Friday, August 3, 2007

...shit

*post has been altered since original posting on August 3rd*

So, I just heard back from the Peace Corps. My appeal was rejected. I don't know if this means it's over, but I don't know if I have it in me to keep fighting.

I feel strangely free. I mean, it sucks, really, but in some ways it feels better to be rejected than still in Limbo. Still, it's hard not to be upset.

Wednesday, August 1, 2007

A thought...

So, something occurred to me recently, what would happen if I made it so that acting in one world did not prevent you from acting in the other? I mean, it made a lot of sense when you could only be awake in one world at a time, but now that you can be up in both, it seems a lot more silly. Why not make it that each character can act in each world? Doing this would remove, well, the advantage I disliked about rushing. I mean, you can still rush, but at this point you can rush in both worlds. If you rush in one world and hold back in the other, it's not because that's what you need to do to rush, it's because you might gain a strategic advantage in doing that.

Problem is if I do that, I'll need to come up with other, better ways of connecting the two. I have put some of the ideas of my last post into my next version (a big enough change that I'm calling it version 3.0). So, I think i'll test those rules out with friends, and see what they're like.

Oh, and I typed up all of my abilities, and I to 14 pages, and then another 4 for spells (that'll need to be extended, but a good start). So, yay, variety! Now I just need to figure out a convenient way of putting them together for character construction...