Fantastical Thoughts On RPG Game Mechanics

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Author	Topic: Fantastical Thoughts On RPG Game Mechanics
The Crimson Coyote Warrior Member # 8036	written Saturday, November 3 2007 02:33 Profile #50 Do you think Jeff is interested in starting a new RPG universe around realism over Fantasy? I did have a wicked sick idea for a Si-fi TRPG but do not have the Know how or the facilities to make it more than just a game that I tried to make with %d/10D games with my friends who have little interest to being with of such things. (geeze they are usless at RPG games, they call there toons **ed up names like Peta Chenie and try to play a Pedofile toon :( and there toons fate usually ends up being bashed to death by Town drunks, and large quantities of household vermin because they refuse to adventure, and rather act like some lvl 1 noob from Goldshire in Warcraft) [ Saturday, November 03, 2007 02:34: Message edited by: The Crimson Coyote ] -------------------- Put your heart into all you do, even when it seems your are diving head first to your demise, for your heart knows the right path to a true victory! Posts: 67 \| Registered: Tuesday, February 6 2007 08:00**
Or else o'erleap. Law Bringer Member # 335	written Saturday, November 3 2007 09:53 Profile Homepage #51 quote: Originally written by The Crimson Coyote: Do you think Jeff is interested in starting a new RPG universe around realism over Fantasy? Probably not. Realism isn't what he does, isn't what he knows his market wants, and probably isn't what any major market wants. —Alorael, who has to add that even if Jeff were interested in realism, he neither solicits nor accepts ideas from fans. It's bad legal practice. It also takes away one of the best parts of being your own designer, programmer, and so on: having a final product that's all yours. Posts: 14579 \| Registered: Saturday, December 1 2001 08:00
SevenMass Warrior Member # 7032	written Sunday, November 4 2007 08:14 Profile #52 I've said it before, (though maybe not on these boards) and things haven't change since: Real life is overrated! And game designers know it! -------------------- _ _ _____________________________ _ _ Power to (the) Mas(ses) Posts: 102 \| Registered: Friday, April 14 2006 07:00
kkarski Apprentice Member # 10304	written Sunday, November 4 2007 17:10 Profile #53 @Synergy: While your ideas are interesting, they are nigh-on-impossible to implement in a cRPG. The lethality factor which, as you stated, would require careful planning of every step from a player, would turn out to be an irritating save-load nightmare. Making a game where it is too easy to die renders all the planning useless at some point - you can't take everything into consideration and just imagine how frustrated you would be if your great plan would turn green just because a giant hurled a rock at you, lethally, instead of charging you in melee as you predicted. Then you would reload and create another plan which would work, taking the rock-hurling giant into consideration this time. If it happens a couple of times during gameplay, OK. But if the world would have such a degree of realism, it would be a horribly common case. My point is, even with excellent planning, in a game like that there always will be a chance that you'll die, even if you have an excellent party pitting against two goblins, a stroke of bad luck and your PC lies dead. There are a couple of FPS shooters on the market (quite popular) in which you die from a single enemy shot. My friend plays it often on the net, and from what I've seen the majority of his gameplay is waiting for respawning instead of having fun shooting at other people. And you should've heard him swearing when he plays, my ears bleed at the very thought :D The same would apply to a realistic cRPG. Unless the game would have a suitably toned down difficulty, it would be only swearing, reloading and trying again. I don't see how the game could give the player information based on which he could sufficiently (having a good chance of winning without reloading) prepare for the battle. Besides, if it would, where's the realism? It's exactly the same - in Avernum, you don't die easily but still you can if you act recklessly. The same would happen in a game where you can die from one arrow shot but you always know where the archer will be. Like someone before said, what you want is a PnP RPG. There you have countless possibilities in which you can resolve a battle; you can make feints, try to outwit your enemy or deceive him, you can set up a successful ambush because there is nothing to limit you, just your imagination. In a cRPG on the other hand, there are many limits - the AI has it's limits, the game engine and system has it's limits. And with these limits in mind, requiring careful planning of every battle from a player would be like making him to play chess every time he faces enemies. Posts: 24 \| Registered: Thursday, September 6 2007 07:00
Synergy Shaper Member # 6292	written Sunday, November 4 2007 19:32 Profile #54 I don't think I'm being understood. If you choose wisely, use your head and make appropriate provisions for situations, you are likely to be successful. The game I describe is more about thinking and pre-planning many situations instead of just blundering around and killing most of what you come across. I wouldn't want to play a game in which I felt like despite doing the smartest things I could to survive, that I was likely to die just on some random factor. I'm talking about taking a lot more randomness out of games, not adding it in. -S- -------------------- A4 Items • A4 Singleton • G4 Items • G4 Forging • G4 Infiltrator • NR Items • The Lonely Celt Posts: 2009 \| Registered: Monday, September 12 2005 07:00
Slarty Raven v. Writing Desk Member # 261	written Sunday, November 4 2007 20:01 Profile Homepage #55 So basically, you are saying you don't want to play an RPG, you want to play a text adventure; albeit one that replaces the typical esoteric puzzles with a lot of repetition of tasks. -------------------- Slarty vs. Desk • Desk vs. Slarty • Timeline of Ermarian • G4 Strategy Central "Making poorly-sourced claims is not the same as determining something." Posts: 3560 \| Registered: Wednesday, November 7 2001 08:00
Synergy Shaper Member # 6292	written Sunday, November 4 2007 21:21 Profile #56 Umm. No. And did you word it that discouragingly on purpose? I'm not having much fun with this dialog. 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. Maybe I do want the complexity of a deeper story with more complex characters and realities/options of real life...but I want them in the interface of an RPG like a SW game. -S- -------------------- A4 Items • A4 Singleton • G4 Items • G4 Forging • G4 Infiltrator • NR Items • The Lonely Celt Posts: 2009 \| Registered: Monday, September 12 2005 07:00
Or else o'erleap. Law Bringer Member # 335	written Sunday, November 4 2007 21:59 Profile Homepage #57 Wait, you want less randomness? Then you really don't want realistic combat, or at the very least you don't want much in the way of combat. Combat is inherently random, and should in fact be far more so than RPGs paint them. —Alorael, who can see Slarty's point. What you want isn't really an RPG any more, except that you have a character or characters with stats. What you really have is a puzzle-solving game in which you are presented with a situation and you have certain characters with certain equipment and stats with which to somehow resolve the situation to your advantage. That would actually be a fine mechanic for a game, but it wouldn't be recognizably an RPG. You could dress it up as one with pseudo-medieval swords and armor and some magic, but it's still not an RPG. Posts: 14579 \| Registered: Saturday, December 1 2001 08:00
Student of Trinity Electric Sheep One Member # 3431	written Sunday, November 4 2007 22:12 Profile #58 Somewhere between reflex naysaying, and blanket invocation of dreamer's license, there could be a useful discussion of what might actually be possible in a CRPG, if we abandoned some of the genre's staple conceits. So: one could definitely do something bad along Synergy's lines, but even a game dominated by realistic tactical problems that required many save-loads to solve might still be salvageable. For instance, a classic in infantry tactical training is an old pre-WWI short story entitled The Defence of Duffer's Drift, by one E.D. Swinton. A young British platoon commander dreams that he has to hold a position against canny Boer attackers. His defence fails, but each night he gets to repeat the dream differently until, after learning a lot, he succeeds. The story is quite absorbing, and something like it might well be realizable in a game. But a game of standard length could only consist of a few such battles. And the modern classic text adventure Varicella (scroll down past the straitjacket picture), by Adam Cadre, requires so many save-loads to win that I coined the term 'iterature' (as far as I know) just for it. The thing about both these successful implementations of the save-loaded tactical puzzle is that they use much more restrictive media than the usual CRPG. In a story the reader has no input, and in a text adventure it is sharply limited (though Cadre is perhaps the genre's greatest master at concealing the limitations, giving an illusion of total freedom). Now one can also make a CRPG in which the player's actions are tightly constrained. Indeed CRPG's are inevitably very constrained in any case, because everything that happens is supposed to be represented graphically, and the graphics can only handle a rather narrow range of events. You can't seize a tapestry off the wall and smother a monster with it, in any CRPG I've ever heard of. But somehow the constraints inherent in CRPGs, and the constraints needed to make a tactical puzzle decently solvable without having to channel the designer's spirit, don't seem to me to be very compatible. Why don't they seem compatible? I'm not sure and I'd like to know better, because this might point a way to combining them after all. Or at least I would learn something more about how games and puzzles work, which I also find interesting. -------------------- We're not doing cool. We're doing pretty. Posts: 3335 \| Registered: Thursday, September 4 2003 07:00
Randomizer Law Bringer Member # 6785	written Sunday, November 4 2007 23:02 Profile #59 The biggest constraint is that the game designer has to be at least as creative as the player so the game can allow for many possible actions. Tabletop gaming has the ability for the gamemaster to change to new circumstances while a computer can only accept the inputs that were programmed into it. Back when only text games were available, a player was given or had to figure out the words that the game would accept as valid input for actions. Adventure was known for having some strange actions that were needed to get through the Colassal Cavern. To get what Synergy wants, there has to be a list of actions that players can use beyond the straight hack and slash. Posts: 4643 \| Registered: Friday, February 10 2006 08:00
kkarski Apprentice Member # 10304	written Monday, November 5 2007 01:38 Profile #60 The thing that can be easily introduced to almost every RPG and would make it a bit closer to what Synergy wants (and what I want too) would be to cut down profits gained from combat. I remember playing a usermade NWN module in which killing enemies gave you very little XP, and as such the module encouraged you to look for other options than combat - it was profitable for the player to try using stealth, or searching for another route, or using diplomacy if possible. It would also enlarge the "Role" in "RPG". When you have several possibilites and all of them give you the same benefits, the powergamer that always skulks inside won't tempt you, and you can try to make decisions like your character would - an evil fighter would make a roar and charge the enemies, a stealthy rogue would slip past them or assasinate their leader, a mage could make some sort of diversion with his illusions etc. etc. [ Monday, November 05, 2007 01:40: Message edited by: kkarski ] Posts: 24 \| Registered: Thursday, September 6 2007 07:00
Thuryl ...b10010b... Member # 869	written Monday, November 5 2007 02:22 Profile Homepage #61 quote: Originally written by kkarski: The thing that can be easily introduced to almost every RPG and would make it a bit closer to what Synergy wants (and what I want too) would be to cut down profits gained from combat. (...) When you have several possibilites and all of them give you the same benefits, the powergamer that always skulks inside won't tempt you, and you can try to make decisions like your character would - an evil fighter would make a roar and charge the enemies, a stealthy rogue would slip past them or assasinate their leader, a mage could make some sort of diversion with his illusions etc. etc. While not exactly a traditional RPG, Deus Ex does something like this: you're generally rewarded with stat boosts for advancing the plot, regardless of how you do it. Most of the good ideas to come out of this thread have already been implemented in some form in one game or another. Can one game implement them all at once and still be playable? I'm not sure. -------------------- The Empire Always Loses: This Time For Sure! Posts: 9973 \| Registered: Saturday, March 30 2002 08:00
Student of Trinity Electric Sheep One Member # 3431	written Monday, November 5 2007 03:24 Profile #62 It's worth pointing out that text adventures have come a long way since the Collossal Cave era. Knowing what to do, but having to struggle to find the right words to get the game to do it, is nowadays considered a major flaw which good games are expected to avoid entirely. The constraints in the best modern text adventures are much more subtle, but still inexorable. A good modern game will give sensible responses to all kinds of attempted actions with the tapestry on the wall. But unless the designer deliberately makes the tapestry part of a possible solution to some puzzle, these responses just won't go anywhere. The tapestry is not really implemented as an object with fixed properties, so it can't be picked up and put to unforeseen use later in the game. Text adventures are primarily stories, rather than simulations. This means that it would actually be very bad for a text adventure to allow you to do all kinds of detailed things with every random object mentioned in the text. That would swamp the game with infuriating red herrings. Simulation games, among which only flight simulators really spring to mind, are only supposed to simulate. Everything which is included in the game in any way is supposed to be fully manipulable. The fact that it can require hours of learning just to be able to take off and land is not considered a flaw. RPGs are somewhere in between. There's a finite sandbox of rules and items, within which something like simulation is expected. Outside this, it's fine to have no implementation at all. You simply can't interact with the tapestry sprite; you don't even get a generic 'that isn't interesting' message. (As a visual analog to the deft diversions of modern text adventures, though, I think of the wonderful Pajama Sam kids' games, in which a lot of things in every frame can be clicked to produce silly vignettes.) For some reason this sandboxed simulation concept is accepted for hack-and-slash combat. Perhaps that idea wouldn't seem nearly so obvious without forty-odd years of tradition dating back to tabletop wargames with lead figures. So is there any other kind of thing or situation, besides hacking, that might be amenable to sandboxed simulation? -------------------- We're not doing cool. We're doing pretty. Posts: 3335 \| Registered: Thursday, September 4 2003 07:00
Thuryl ...b10010b... Member # 869	written Monday, November 5 2007 03:49 Profile Homepage #63 quote: Originally written by Student of Trinity: So is there any other kind of thing or situation, besides hacking, that might be amenable to sandboxed simulation? The trouble is that the more elements of a game are allowed to run according to their own internal logic, the more chances there are for that logic to conflict. Ultima VII had a well-known flaw allowing the player to bypass a number of scripted plot events by stacking up items and using them as a stepladder to climb over walls instead of going the way the game expected you to. See also: pretty much everything to do with the Elder Scrolls games. For example, early implementations of Oblivion's NPC AI system had an unfortunate tendency to cause NPCs, acting freely according to their own goals, to murder plot-important characters: the AI had to be made significantly less capable (i.e. less intelligent) in order to prevent this. In the philosophy of science, this kind of problem is called a "system accident". The greater the number of interacting variables in a system, the greater the risk that the system is prone to unpredictable negative interactions -- and you often can't remove the potential for unpredictable interactions without defeating the purpose of the system. [ Monday, November 05, 2007 03:50: Message edited by: Thuryl ] -------------------- The Empire Always Loses: This Time For Sure! Posts: 9973 \| Registered: Saturday, March 30 2002 08:00
Student of Trinity Electric Sheep One Member # 3431	written Monday, November 5 2007 04:09 Profile #64 Automatic safeguards against such things are what I mean by sandboxing. It's still all too easy in a hack-and-slash combat game for some unanticipated combination of tactics to break the game, by making it possible to do > X damage to monster Y. But the number of combinations is finite, and a reasonable amount of beta testing can catch a reasonable proportion of such problems. It's when you don't dig in the sandbox, such as by simulating even such a simple real-world activity as moving objects and climbing on them, that you get bizarre loopholes that nobody anticipates. Evidently sandboxing itself is quite non-trivial. There will probably always be a chance that it might break down unexpectedly and badly. But lives aren't at stake here, and as long as we can keep the catastrophes rare enough, we might get a few good new games. One thing that these examples do illustrate is that sandboxing is not trivially extensible. I mean, stacking and climbing would be a perfect sandbox if an entire game was built around them: a few simple rules and items. But attach this as a module to a larger game, with lots of walls that are supposed to be obstacles in a complicated plot, and the sandbox is broken. -------------------- We're not doing cool. We're doing pretty. Posts: 3335 \| Registered: Thursday, September 4 2003 07:00
Thuryl ...b10010b... Member # 869	written Monday, November 5 2007 04:47 Profile Homepage #65 That, I think, is the core of the problem. The more perfectly you separate different aspects of the game into components that don't interact with one another, the greater the extent to which you're not really making one game any more: you're making several different games bundled together. -------------------- The Empire Always Loses: This Time For Sure! Posts: 9973 \| Registered: Saturday, March 30 2002 08:00
Student of Trinity Electric Sheep One Member # 3431	written Monday, November 5 2007 04:57 Profile #66 Well, we don't have to create life here. D&D-style combat is a pretty robust and well-understood sandbox module. We could try adding one more modest chunk of things to it, and then round up the few fringe elements of hell that broke loose. With luck maybe we could gradually invent chess, as I suggested before. After all, they did it with Starcraft. Or we could accept to have several separate sandbox simulation games, and bundle them together in a story that ran on rails, text-adventure-style, with relatively few branchings, camouflaged to look freer than it is. -------------------- We're not doing cool. We're doing pretty. Posts: 3335 \| Registered: Thursday, September 4 2003 07:00
Thuryl ...b10010b... Member # 869	written Monday, November 5 2007 05:22 Profile Homepage #67 quote: Originally written by Student of Trinity: Or we could accept to have several separate sandbox simulation games, and bundle them together in a story that ran on rails, text-adventure-style, with relatively few branchings, camouflaged to look freer than it is. The main question I would have about this is one of development resources: given X person-hours of time available, is it best to spend X hours on developing one game, to spend X/5 hours on developing five separate games, each with less depth and polish, or perhaps to spend X/2 hours on one big game and then X/10 on each of five little games? There are certainly RPGs that are rich in minigames, but minigames tend to be simplistic so as not to draw too much development time away from the main game, and they also tend to be optional -- and when their role in the game is too great, they tend to draw complaints. This presents an especial problem when the skills required to complete one game are radically different from the skills required to complete another: try to appeal to every kind of gamer at once and you're likely to end up falling between two stools. On a related note, I sure hope Spore doesn't suck. [ Monday, November 05, 2007 05:29: Message edited by: Thuryl ] -------------------- The Empire Always Loses: This Time For Sure! Posts: 9973 \| Registered: Saturday, March 30 2002 08:00
Student of Trinity Electric Sheep One Member # 3431	written Monday, November 5 2007 09:46 Profile #68 Probably this just isn't near creative enough, but in theoretical physics we always like to squeeze as much juice as possible out of trivial generalizations, before facing the need for real work. So I've been thinking of a game with D&D-style combat, plus a disguised clone of D&D-style combat. Some quantity other than health, which is nevertheless represented with something analogous to hit points; some class of items or attributes other than weapons and spells, which can lower the non-health-hit-points of adversaries; etc. There could be minor tweaks to the combat-clone system, but the main difference would just be in what it is supposed to represent. So for instance I could imagine a game in which characters have both physical and spiritual health. When your spiritual health drops to zero, you lose the ability to perceive and act 'on the spirit plane'. Various talismans and rituals might offer offense or defense against spiritual adversaries. There would be a whole parallel game system of spiritual stuff. The default could be that the spiritual and physical games do not interact at all, but tailor-made plot items could relate them in specifically controlled ways. Some vital piece of information might be accessible only spiritually; some physical defenses might protect a powerful spiritual talisman. If the system ever began to seem workable, one could gradually turn on more linkage. -------------------- We're not doing cool. We're doing pretty. Posts: 3335 \| Registered: Thursday, September 4 2003 07:00
Or else o'erleap. Law Bringer Member # 335	written Monday, November 5 2007 11:14 Profile Homepage #69 It's perfectly feasible to do that. The complexities come in when your two separate systems interact frequently, as in the aforementioned walls, plot, and stackable objects in Ultima. Also, two identical systems with different window dressing are unlikely to actually provide twice the interest. It's an interesting gimmick, but it's not enough to grab any new market. —Alorael, who thinks the best way to get something like this working is probably to set it up in a MMO environment without any ruinable plot. Tweak until everything works reaosnably, regardless of how little game reality coincides with normal reality, then take the system and turn it into a single player game. But who would spend that much time on it? (And who turns cash cow MMOs into non-MMOs?) Posts: 14579 \| Registered: Saturday, December 1 2001 08:00
Slarty Raven v. Writing Desk Member # 261	written Monday, November 5 2007 11:20 Profile Homepage #70 You know those guns-for-food exchange programs? I'm going to start a cash-cow-for-cave-cow exchange program. -------------------- Slarty vs. Desk • Desk vs. Slarty • Timeline of Ermarian • G4 Strategy Central "Making poorly-sourced claims is not the same as determining something." Posts: 3560 \| Registered: Wednesday, November 7 2001 08:00
Student of Trinity Electric Sheep One Member # 3431	written Monday, November 5 2007 11:37 Profile #71 Careful lest the old fashioned bullets-for-food exchange program become a better analogy. -------------------- We're not doing cool. We're doing pretty. Posts: 3335 \| Registered: Thursday, September 4 2003 07:00
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
Synergy Shaper Member # 6292	written Tuesday, November 6 2007 11:20 Profile #73 Interesting interpretation. Actually, not. -S- -------------------- A4 Items • A4 Singleton • G4 Items • G4 Forging • G4 Infiltrator • NR Items • The Lonely Celt Posts: 2009 \| Registered: Monday, September 12 2005 07:00
Randomizer Law Bringer Member # 6785	written Tuesday, November 6 2007 13:51 Profile #74 quote: 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. 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. Posts: 4643 \| Registered: Friday, February 10 2006 08:00