Frayed Knights: Solving the Saved-Game Problem?
More data-dumping on Frayed Knights, the humorous indie role-playing game in development here at Rampant Games. This week, I discuss two very experimental game mechanics. Both have the potential to ruin the game, and I won't know until late playtesting whether they work or not.

Joy.

What Do Those Stars Mean?
A lot of people have asked what those stars at the top of the screen in the (VERY WORK-IN-PROGRESS) screenshots are supposed to do.

Some folks have put part of it together, based on comments I've made here. Since I worked on their implementation this week, I thought I'd pass along the deal with 'em. These are "drama stars", and they are my attempt to solve (at least partially) the "save game" problem.

How Drama Stars Work
Drama stars accumulate points over time as you do "dramatically interesting" things - in other words, taking risks. When you try a dangerous dialog choices, battle monsters, or engage strangers in conversation, those earn you drama points. In fact, when Bad Things happen --- like one of your party members is incapacitated in some way --- you get bonus drama points.

Those stars fill up over time. They start empty, and then fill up to become bronze stars. Once all three stars are bronze, continued points gradually changes them to silver. Once you have three silver stars, more points make them gold. Eventually, they cap out at three gold.

What Use Are They?
These drama stars can be spent to directly change the progress of the game. To modify the (melo-)drama! In some ways, the effects are kind of like spells, but they effect the way the story plays out. For example, you can use the "Only A Flesh Wound!" effect which immediately restores all incapacitated characters to action (read "resurrection"), and heals everyone to partial health.

Wow! Major ability, huh? And given to the player all the time. Well, whenever he can manage to accumulate enough drama points.

Isn't That Overpowered?
Here's the kicker - drama points are not saved with the saved game file. You can SAVE the game during normal "exploration" mode whenever and wherever you want. But whenever you load the game, you start at zero drama points. Drama points are per session only.

Huh? What? Why?

I'm treating them as an alternative to restoring a saved game. Let's say the Frayed Knights battle the Big Bad Evil Guy, and two of your characters are incapacitated (nope, not dead... only mostly dead) by the end of the fight. You COULD just load the saved game from before the battle started, and re-play it again... and again... and again... until you are satisfied with the results. This is how people play RPGs much of the time, after all.

OR - you could keep the results, and find that you have just enough drama points to determine that it was "Only a Flesh Wound" and said party members recover. In fact, with enough drama points, you could use this ability in the middle of combat, too (probably). Imagine the look on the Lich-King's face when two heroes he thought he'd dispatched manage to "pull through" and rejoin the combat!

Does This Solve The Save-Game Problem?
So those drama stars are there to motivate the player to stick it out through some bad decisions and bad luck in hopes of them experiencing a more interesting (and more dramatic?) story, rather than re-loading the game every time there's a setback. With luck, the player might even seek out some trouble and setbacks just to build up the drama point total.

Does it solve the save-game problem? Well, no, not completely. But I think it's preferable to some of the horrible solutions out there like only being able to save the game at specific save-points. The trick is presenting it as it is - an alternative to reloading a saved game. Otherwise, players will see it as an entitlement and the failure to restore the drama-point status as a "bug" that they will complain bitterly about.

What Happens When You Die With Drama Points?
There are, unfortunately, some corner cases I haven't fully resolved yet. Like dying with active drama points. Now we're treading into some waters where I really don't know my depth. And I don't know how well things will work in practice. I'll have to try things out and see how well they work.

Normally, if your party is all incapacitated, then your party is "dead." Ideally, I want the death menu to be kind of fun and funny, too. With the characters complaining of the unfairness of it all while waiting for the player to make her choice. Anyway, if you have enough drama points to resurrect your entire party, then that should be an option.

And what happens to your drama points if you re-load the game after a total party wipeout? Well, I haven't decided, entirely. But I might make an exception to the reload rule here. Getting at least partial stars back after something like that might take away some of the sting of death, doncha think? So long as that doesn't cause people to try and suicide the party prior to loading the game all the time.

We'll see how it all works.

Long-Term Fatigue
I don't like it in games when whatever juice that fuels spellcasting is a highly restricted resource, turning your spell-lobbing master of reality into a weakling in a bathrobe with a knife after only a few fireballs. Your fighter can swing his sword all day long. Why can't a magic user do the same?

So I decided that fighters and spellcasters will both use the same "power source" - endurance. Something which might be in scarce supply in long, drawn-out combats, but otherwise you won't find yourself entering combat with your casters completely unable to do anything useful.

One issue I found myself facing was that with endurance as an easily-renewable resource, which in turn can be used (by the party healer, Benjamin) to replenish health, this pretty much destroyed any concept of resource management between combats. There's no concept of holding back during an easier combat, because you always start with full resources at the beginning of every combat. This would mean, essentially, no easier "speed bump" battles.

I wasn't satisfied with this. I've played a dice-and-paper RPG with that mechanic (the Hero system... Champions, Fantasy Hero, etc.), and the result was that anything less than a full-on life-or-death battle was boring. But constantly getting into those kinds of fights can be really tiring. The pace never changes. And there resource-management challenges don't exist. It makes for much more one-dimensional gameplay.

Unfortunately, I found my preliminary design for Frayed Knights suffering from that same malady. So I created a new mechanic, called "Fatigue," a factor which slowly erodes the party's maximum endurance level from combat to combat. Spellcasting can erode it even more quickly. Certain feats slow it's accumulation. Certain spells or magic items may temporarily eliminate its effects, and a set of drama-star powers may reduce or eliminate fatigue.

Fatigue can have some additional effects as it increases, though it will cap at a certain point. So you'll never have the Frayed Knights utterly powerless in the face of fatigue. Just very reduced in strength.

Fatigue Downside
This introduces another problem: having to quit in the middle of the assault and go back to town to rest and buy mana potions is also lame, as is taking a nap in the middle of the dungeon. After all that talk about drama stars trying to increase the tension and drama of the game, do I really want to introduce a mechanic that encourages the player to halt the action?

Truth be told, I don't know. What I do know is that the resource management elements of most RPGs can be the source of a lot of challenge and fun gameplay (and, admittedly, some frustration).

What's On Deck?
I managed to complete most of the tasks from last week. The holdout is the inventory system. I guess I could say I've started on it, but I've not gotten too far yet.

So this week, my goal is to get inventory management and interfaces working. And maybe start a little bit of work on the conversation system.

So... Whadayathink? I mean, these aren't Peter Molyneaux "Scar Systems" or anything... but hopefully these will add an interesting element to the game.


(Vaguely) related going and going and going...
* Ye Olde Saved Game Debate
* RPG Design: The "Brute Force" Problem
* Frayed Knights: The First Five Minutes Walkthrough
* Frayed Knights: Getting Around in the World

Inform Me Of My Impending Failure On the Forum!

Labels: Frayed Knights, Game Design

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