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Fantastical Thoughts On RPG Game Mechanics in Avernum 4
Xplo Eristotle
Apprentice
Member # 122
 written Tuesday, November 6 2007 23:45 Profile #75
quote:
Originally written by Randomizer:

Play Hackmaster which was based on original 1st and 2nd edition D&D. Plenty of called shots and other tactical combat. Too bad Hasbro isn't renewing the license for the game.
I'd rather play GURPS for tactical combat. Thanks for the suggestion, though.
Posts: 8 | Registered: Sunday, October 7 2001 07:00
Fantastical Thoughts On RPG Game Mechanics in Avernum 4
Xplo Eristotle
Apprentice
Member # 122
 written Tuesday, November 6 2007 09:17 Profile #72
quote:
Originally written by Stop. Back. Delete. Excise.:

What you actually want is a pencil and paper tabletop roleplaying game. Implementing those on a computer with no human on the other end is rather hard without robust AI.
Agreed on both points.

quote:
Originally written by Dintiradan:

A Game of Thrones, a d20 game based off of George R. R. Martin's books. Among other things, it has (warning, d20 specific rules follow):

* Almost no magic (Martin's books are low magic, and the RPG has magic used at GM's discretion).

* The above implies no healing. PCs can get the Heal skill (which is expensive for most classes), that allows a PC to slow blood loss on the battlefield, and stop it out of it. HP gain requires bed rest.

* All PCs have a Shock value, initially based of their Constitution. If PCs are dealt more damage than their Shock value, they have to make a Fortitude save based on the damage dealt or be stunned. Additionally, they get blood loss damage every round equal to the amount that the damage exceeds the Shock value.

* Called shot rules, most of which traded accuracy for extra damage, crippling effects, or automatic criticals. Also, there were sniping rules; get a circumstance bonus to your shot if you wait a round and aim.

The verdict: way too much accounting for a tabletop RPG. Combat was slowed to a crawl, and player death was too high a price to pay given the time it took to roll up a new character in AGoF's more complicated system. AGoF also had a greater focus on skills than D&D, but this also lead to the lowest common denominator problem - it doesn't matter how sneaky your Hunter and Knave are, the Knight and Man-At-Arms are still clanking around enough to spoil the needed ambush on those wildlings. Sure, you can split up the party, but even without the higher risk of fatality, party splitting is one of the greatest cause of player boredom.
The verdict according to who?

D&D has moved in this direction itself. Particularly, character generation takes longer, especially if you're making higher than 1st level characters, and increased focus on skills makes it easy for a party to be hampered because one of its members doesn't have some important skill. (There's an entire potential discussion here about skills in RPGs that I won't get into now.) There are no rules for aiming (I guess it's assumed to take up part of a shooter's round) or called shots, but I've never seen a D&D group that didn't want to make a called shot from time to time.. and the move to more tactical combat has brought other complications, like flanking and attacks of opportunity. I'm told that epic-level combats are a nightmare to run thanks to a sprawling list of abilities and counterabilities that make determining who can do what to who an act of considerable research; so much for quick combat!

The only objections I see here are the low magic (which appeals to a limited market - mainly simulationists and historical reenactors) and the limited healing, which as I pointed out before threatens to grind a combat-heavy game to a screeching halt. It's not such a problem for games that are heavily sociopolitical, but again, this limits the market.. especially when you consider that D&D players lean more toward hack and slash gaming.

Of course, all of this is said in the context of tabletop RPGs. Video games are under much tighter (and different) constraints, as has been noted elsethread.

quote:
Originally written by Synergy:

I'm not having much fun with this dialog.
Probably because it's above your level.

quote:
I just wanted to explore some ideas. I titled the thread "Fantastical Thoughts" — not what is likely to happen, be possible, or desirable by anyone who actually makes games. This is my fantasy.
This is your wankery. You had some ideas about game design which have been had by other people 25 years ago, but because you didn't know any better, you thought they were fresh and original and decided to blab about them to the world so that everyone could be excited and amazed by your amazing ideas. Then you proceeded to pre-emptively insult anyone who didn't give you the validation you wanted by calling them "savage" or "unimaginative" (making it all the more hilarious that you found the gall to lecture me about communication style). Now you're crying because we've ruined your wank with the cold shower of reality.

Next time you mean to discuss something that everyone else understands better than you do, it would be well for you to recognize your place instead of complaining that everyone else is discussing it wrong.
Posts: 8 | Registered: Sunday, October 7 2001 07:00
Fantastical Thoughts On RPG Game Mechanics in Avernum 4
Xplo Eristotle
Apprentice
Member # 122
 written Tuesday, October 30 2007 09:20 Profile #31
quote:
Originally written by Synergy:

Xplo — there's a reason I haven't been addressing your commentary.
And, if you had actually said what it was, we might have made some kind of progress here. Instead, you spent the rest of your post texturbating. As a result, we can only guess why you've ignored my objections and requests for clarification.. and they still remain unanswered.

If this is your usual mode of communication with anyone who contradicts you, it's no wonder why your other debate threads (as someone called them) devolve into flaming.
Posts: 8 | Registered: Sunday, October 7 2001 07:00
Fantastical Thoughts On RPG Game Mechanics in Avernum 4
Xplo Eristotle
Apprentice
Member # 122
 written Monday, October 29 2007 22:17 Profile #20
Ah, yes. Damn those horrible, generic shooter games of yore. Pong, Frogger, Pac-Man, Donkey Kong.. I don't know what was worse, the fact that they were all about savage, mindless, unending killing, or the fact that they were all the same.

:P

In all seriousness, though... Your observations of the gaming and movie industries seem either laughably ignorant, grossly biased, or indicative of a lack of good taste in entertainment; to say the least, they are unfair generalizations, and not particularly deep either. Your "proposal" for a new kind of game is both self-contradictory and vague: you say you want a game with detailed, realistic tactical combat, but at the same time, you evidently regard combat as a barbaric form of dramatic conflict and would prefer to avoid it in favor of nonviolent solutions. As a demonstration of the viability and feasibility of your ideas, you offer us some imaginary RPG that exists only in your head, which you are neither able to create nor describe in much detail.. and, I feel, implied that anyone who doesn't share your vision is guilty of lacking courage, originality, or sophistication.

I apologize for not contributing more positively to this discussion, but I'm not in the habit of propping up other people's idealism in the face of legitimate criticism; what's more, you seem to have ignored as irrelevant my response to what little substance your posts contained, which leaves me in doubt that I could say anything here that would not be a waste of my time.
Posts: 8 | Registered: Sunday, October 7 2001 07:00
Fantastical Thoughts On RPG Game Mechanics in Avernum 4
Xplo Eristotle
Apprentice
Member # 122
 written Friday, October 26 2007 22:08 Profile #15
Synergy...

It's really rather pointless for you to rhapsodize here about how humans are sheep and pat yourself on the back for thinking "out of the box"; that's just wankery, and irrelevant to the subject of game design. Let me assure you that your ideas are neither new or untried. I had a lot of the same ideas over a decade ago when I got tired of D&D, and I was not the first.

With that said, your ideas are not without merit, nor have the trials wholly failed. It's a subject worth discussing.. but there's no point discussing it with someone who won't listen to anyone else because he's convinced he's right. So far, you haven't proven your point, nor have you given any indication that it can actually be proven; in fact, you said yourself that you can't do it, which isn't very convincing.

So, if you've got anything besides accusations of unoriginality and vague promises that it would be "really cool, honest!", then trot it out. If not, that's fine; I'll be on my way.

(Regarding my posting frequency: imagine my surprise when I tried to register an account and the system told me I already existed. ;) )
Posts: 8 | Registered: Sunday, October 7 2001 07:00
Fantastical Thoughts On RPG Game Mechanics in Avernum 4
Xplo Eristotle
Apprentice
Member # 122
 written Friday, October 26 2007 09:07 Profile #13
There's a reason why those fights in movies go on and on and on: it's because people like it that way. No one wants the big brawl to come down to one guy knocking the other out in a matter of seconds.. or the gunfight ending before anyone has to reload.. or the knight to charge in, dodge one blast of flame, and stab the dragon in the heart. They want long, varied, and exciting action sequences, starring superhumans. Reality is cheap; we want our stories to be legendary.

This is the "reality" that RPGs usually try to present. Massively-inflated HP and attacks that can never do enough damage to kill significant foes in one shot are the most traditional way to do this. (Just ask D&D.) Otherwise, you would have to make it so that attacks almost never hit at all, or do any real damage.. and how fun would that be? ("You attack and miss. You miss again. Your attack hits your foe's armor and bounces off. You miss again. You nick your foe on the arm! You miss again. Your foe dodges." Et cetera.) And if the PCs are going to be the heroes who complete all the quests, kill all the monsters, and survive all the various incredible dangers they're faced with, then they need to be superhuman to survive it. What's more, they need to have all the "plot immunity" they have in movies and stories.. so they almost never get crippled or lose an eye or jam their gun, and if they do, it's only in a situation where it doesn't spell their doom. RPGs don't really have authors who decide everything that happens; they have a lot of random die rolls to see who gets hurt and who doesn't and how much, so the only way to give PCs the same plot immunity is to make sure that crippling injuries and accidents like that never happen by chance.

The healing is easy enough to explain: people who get in fights are bound to get hurt. Hurt is no way to go adventuring, especially when injuries can weaken and cripple, so hurt people are generally out of action until they're not hurt anymore. Without magical healing, that out-of-action period can last weeks or months, and spending weeks or months not doing anything is Not Fun.

The kind of realistic game you're talking about pretty much ensures that PCs will die eventually - usually sooner rather than later - and that the kinds of things heroic characters do are simply impossible. Sorry, the tribe of goblins kills you from above, in the dark. Sorry, the dragon rips a tree out of the ground and crushes you with it. Sorry, you had no better chance to resist the witch's curse than any of the other poor schlubs who came before you. Sorry, you caught acute pneumonia and died a slow, painful death of dehydration and organ failure in the wilderness a thousand miles from the only peace and comfort you ever knew. So you end up changing something.. either your characters take on perfectly ordinary tasks, like not getting mugged, changing a flat tire, and arguing with Human Resources because you didn't get your vacation time.. or else you back the scope off a bit and make something more like a tactical wargame, where life is cheap, character generation is fast and faceless, and no one is necessarily expected to survive until the end.

That said, if you play tabletop RPGs and want a game that can be a lot more realistic, look at GURPS. (It has a reputation for needing a degree in math before you can play it, but undeservedly so.) If not, then there aren't any CRPG options that I know of.
Posts: 8 | Registered: Sunday, October 7 2001 07:00