Making A Rogue-Friendly RPG Part 1: Rogues Get No Respect!
My favorite class type in RPGs is the Rogue. Call it what you will - the thief, the skill-monkey, the smuggler, whatever. While other players like bringing out characters with supreme martial skill or colossal arcane might to the table, I'm always drawn to the character that uses his wits, cunning, and obscure collection of unique skills to defeat his opposition.

I'm drawn to characters like the Stainless Steel Rat, Miles Vorkosigan, James Bond (in the older movies, or in the new Casino Royale), Robin Hood, Han Solo, Malcom Reynolds, Sherlock Holmes, d'Artagnan, and Indiana Jones. Or the principle characters of the BBC show "Hustle," or the old Mission: Impossible series.

Rogues, all of them. Or at least, they represent the kinds of story and action that a rogue-player would like to emulate in an RPG. Living by wits. Constantly trying to outsmart the opponent. Always thinking one step ahead. Avoiding the fair fight. Defeating the best-laid plans and traps, while entrapping your opponent in your own.

Why Game Designers Hate Rogues (Even If They Love Them)
Unfortunately, in RPGs (especially computer RPGs), designers don't seem to know what to do with the rogue. After all, they are all about designing and balancing rules... and rogues are typically all about breaking the rules (or at least eschewing the orthodox), which screws up a game designer's careful game balance, and often screwing up the best-laid GM plot railroads.

Rogues are troublesome by their very nature.

So most CRPGs that feature rogues just throw a few bones in the rogue's direction. Oh, here are a few traps to disable and some doors to unlock. Otherwise, the rogue is more of a lightweight fighter.

At least one game did it right. The "Thief" series (originally by Looking Glass) embraced the concept of "rogue-ness" (is that a word?). They dropped you into a series of missions where you were outnumbered, outgunned, incapable of sustaining a fair fight with the weakest of opponents, and where the smallest mistake would screw up the entire mission. And then they gave you access to skills and tools to navigate your own way through the game world on your own terms. It felt organic, unscripted. It felt like bring an actual rogue, making up your own rules to turn the odds in your favor. It was awesome.

I'm sure it's a little too much to expect for a more generalized RPG to capture the feel of being a rogue in the same way that a specialized game had done. I keep hoping. But it's so very much easier to deal with a straightforward "brute force" approach to handling the odds.

After all, with the brute-force approach, you can make sure that the player-characters have to be at least THIS TOUGH to defeat the dragon and take his treasure. But the rogue story is always different. It's always about the clever guy who bypasses the super-security systems, or sneaks past the dragon, and takes the treasure without engaging in the fair fight. No RPG scenario designer wants the player to bypass all the carefully laid storyline and chain of adventures, to just poison the "Big Bad" and win the game at level 1.

But that's what a rogue story is all about. It's about David defeating Goliath. Miles Vorkosigan is "just" a hyperactive handicapped washout, and ends up owning a major mercenary fleet and ending an interstellar war through a combination of happenstance and quick thinking. Bilbo Baggins, inexperienced hobbit, follows his instincts and folksy wisdom to save his dwarven companions (repeatedly), possess a major magical artifact and obtain the dragon's hoard. Even Star Wars is something of a rogue story, in which the planet-destroying Death Star is impervious to the strongest military force, but the rebels send tiny, insignificant fighters in through the shields to try and ... "defeat the giant."

You do that in literature and movies, and it's high adventure. You do that in a game, and its cheating or (in an MMO) a bannable exploit.

EverQuest Rogue?
When EverQuest launched in early 1999, I jumped aboard, quickly making a character in my favorite class. Unfortunately, through most of that year, the EverQuest rogue was about the most useless class ever devised. You could tell that the Sony team (them called Verant... formerly Red Eye or Red Orb or something like that) actually had - at some point in development - some kind of plan for the rogue. There were about five pickable locks in the entire world, which rogues would visit from far and wide in order to practice their skill. Just in case SOME DAY it might be useful. And traps! I think there were four detectable traps. They didn't DO anything, but they could be detected.

I think the dev team just ran out of time. Rogues couldn't hide and sneak around at the same time, they would frequently do backstabs for only 1 or 2 points of damage, and would immediately aggro any creature they backstabbed (even those little 1 or 2 hitpoint backstabs), resulting in no more backstabs, and usually an untimely death for the rogue. Oh, yeah --- and the pickpocket ability effectively stole from the final loot for the monster, thus stealing from your party. This basically made a rogue a detriment to any party, so we were the bottom-barrel-scrapings for pick-up groups.

Fortunately, the designers eventually got a clue, and rogues eventually became a pretty solid (if overly combat-heavy) class.

Dungeons & Dragons Online and the Nerf
Dungeons and Dragons online started out better. It has a pretty elaborate trap system in many dungeons. Just like you want a cleric along in an undead-heavy adventure (well, you want a cleric along with you at ANY time, really), you want a rogue along in a trap-heavy dungeon to eliminate the otherwise mandatory attrition caused by nasty blades slicing party members in two, or fountains spitting extra-caustic acid on everyone, or the spikes that suddenly thrust up from the floor to impale people. Nasty stuff. Which rogues live for. If you don't take a rogue with you, you may be able to dodge some of it, but you are just going to have to suck some of it up. Even better, having the rogue disarm traps often nets extra experience points - as does having him (or anyone else with a high Spot skill, but the rogue is most likely to have the highest) find secret doors --- which may also hide bonus treasure.

In general, it's a good game for rogues. Not "Thief" good, but still a fun game for rogues to do stuff nobody else can do. But then came our game Tuesday. Tuesday was a bad rogue night.

First off, there was an "upgrade" to the enhancement system. That is, it's an upgrade for most players. As a rogue who found himself completely incapable of replicating his previous effectiveness with the new system, it was A Nerf. The biggest offender was the skill enhancements. Apparently, when the designers decided that "human versitility" would be a worthy enhancement by giving bonuses to all of the player's skill rolls, they didn't have Human Rogues in mind. Apparently, a character with a LOT of skills who expects to use them all a LOT in combat gets a really huge benefit from that enhancement, whereas most classes might have only two or four skills that they use infrequently at best.

While I did get a little bit more of a range of abilities, it was a pretty clear downgrade. The party was over. Ah, well - I still had pretty maxed out Spot / Search / Disable skills, so I should still do okay. So I got used to being able to disable traps on any roll but a 1. I'd get over it.

No Rogues Allowed In This Dungeon!
Our first expedition of the night was an undead-heavy dungeon that we'd tried before, but cranked up to "Hard" difficulty. Now, I generally hate undead dungeons, because rogue sneak-attack skills are useless against undead. But it always gives the cleric a chance to shine. And sometimes there are traps I can disable.

This dungeon WAS full of traps. Tons. And I couldn't detect (let alone disable, in spite of repeated attempts to search for a control box) a single one. Even after it had gone off on me three times. Some of the traps were impossible to avoid, too. They'd shoot flame or poison or sonic blasts all over the person operating the lever to open the door, or opening up the chest --- every single time.

And either I was nerfed WAY more than I thought I had been, or the designer had seen fit to either make them undetectable and impossible to disarm (or cranked up the difficulty so high that no rogue of the appropriate level range could possibly detect the trap - which amounts to the same thing).

I can see the logic. Kind of. But I'll still call it lazy level design. In order to make this dungeon harder, the designer decided to use traps as a "wandering damage table." It's a simple way to force some attrition on the group to make the dungeon a little more challenging. The problem with this simple plan is, of course, the pesky rogue. The rogue can simply circumvent all that mandatory attrition at little or no risk. Practically automatically. So the dungeon which was of appropriate difficulty for a party with no rogues becomes MUCH easier with a rogue in the group.

The solution? Neutralize the rogue. Ignore his ability to find and disarm the traps. The designer pats himself on the back, checks off his task on the schedule, and moves on to his next job.

Cool. And while you are at it, while don't you make some dungeons where the clerics aren't allowed to heal, the wizards can't cast spells, and the fighters have to fight with both hands tied behind their back! That oughta be fun!

Well, okay, if that was the POINT of the dungeon, it might be fun. Or not - I remember that anti-magic level in Ultima Underworld. I think I quit the game for a month on that level. Ah, well. Anyway - if there's a really good reason for it, and sort of a special challenge situation, that's fine. But undetectable traps aren't unique to this dungeon - it was just more guilty than most. Like the Magical Monster Sensing Doors, it's just some arbitrary element because the dungeon is SUPPOSED to work this way to make it an appropriate challenge level to keep players from racing up to level 10 in a week. Which they can, anyway.

But they don't want rogues breaking the rules. They can't have unorthodox techniques used to bypass challenges!

And so rogues keep getting the short shrift in RPGs, particularly MMOs.

Making A More Rogue-Friendly Game
The complaint is not limited to CRPGs. I regularly see arguments in D20 threads about how useless or useful a rogue is in a game. It depends upon the game system, the game master (or scenario designer), and the player himself.

This entry is already too long (and I'm already half-asleep and not sure I'm making any sense), so I'll have to follow this up soon (tomorrow?) with some concrete advice on how exactly one might go about doing just this.

But the quick-and-dirty of it is the difference between being pro-active and reactive. Most CRPGs give the rogue a reactive role, almost exclusively. The rogues are dependent upon the designer to give them chances to use their special abilities. Effectively waiting for a ball to be deliberately hit their way. Which is why we get annoyed when, as in the example dungeon above, it LOOKS like we're getting some hit our way, but we're not allowed to catch them. It's frustrating.

Ideally, the rogue should be a pro-active role. The opportunities to use his skills should be constant --- but choosing exactly how to approach it and what skills to use should be the trick.

(Vaguely) related yammering:
* When Magic Becomes Mundane In RPGs
* RPG Design: Why Can't I Get Past The Stupid Door?
* Roleplaying and Roleplaying Games
* Designing an RPG Rule System
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Labels: Game Design, Roleplaying Games

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