RPG Design: Legends & Levels & Low Fantasy
Indie RPG Maker Gareth Fouche has an article about yet another way in which RPGs typically diverge from their source material. In this case, he tells the story of Perseus and Medusa, as retold in an RPG.

Blog of War: Legendary

In the first part, Perseus just shrugs off Medusa's petrifying gaze - the very legendary ability she is known for. 'Cause he can make his saving throw.

This is hardly the sole example of this kind of problem. I remember reading an article by a doctor who also happened to be a gamer on the subject of poisons, and how - Rasputin nothwithstanding - the whole saving throw to avoid the effects was a pretty far out there from anything resembling realism. And we already had the discussion about hit points and leveling recently.

And really, the original concept of the saving throw (as I understand it) was an abstraction to incorporate all kinds of elements - including blind luck - to avoid an effect. I always imagined that Piers Anthonys story of Bink in A Spell for Chameleon was inspired by a game of D&D. In the book, Bink's magical power is actually a very subtle yet powerful counter-magic which prevented him from coming to true harm via magic. Magical effects didn't actually fail when targeting him - instead, he was the beneficiary of amazing coincidence.

Likewise, Perseus fighting Medusa in D&D would not and should not be able to gaze directly at her and shrug off her petrifying gaze effect - rather, the saving throw represents his ability to avoid her gaze, maybe catching a glimpse of her shadow or hearing her very quiet breath an instant before he'd otherwise look up and get caught in her stony stare. The saving throw represents a thousand other factors and precautions that a veteran hero would take into consideration in a deadly battle that a tyro would not. So maybe in Bullfinch's version of the story, Perseus really does end up making three saving throws in a row against Medusa's gaze attack... but what really happened isn't so dramatic. It's just that the hero didn't make a critical error, while those who came before him had.

But in actual gameplay, players treat it as an immunity. A randomly ocurring immunity. We interpret it much as Gareth does. It's simpler, more dramatic, feeds the player's ego better, and requires less creativity. The dragon breathes its fearsome fire, and the player character just stands there and sucks it up for half-damage. Or something.

So the answer would seem to be to decrease the level of abstraction. This can add a great deal of tedium to a pen-and-paper game, but the numbers can be crunched instantly in a computer game. The problem is providing the feedback to the player. Sure, you can take into consideration what the character had for breakfast that morning, a learning experience from their childhood, the prevailing winds, and a million other factors into calculating the precise result that... uh, the hero didn't get turned to stone this round.

Alternately, you can take none of those factors into effect, and make it a purely deterministic effect based on the player's actions - which is what Gareth seems to be suggesting here. Now, I typically associate deterministic pass / fail aspects as artifacts of adventure games and action games rather than RPGs. Though I also love mashing genres together and shattering their boundaries, so this isn't a huge deal to me.

Gareth also brings up the whole concept of the "bigger, badder" monster showing up after the legendary uber-monster has been defeated or fails to be a challenge anymore. This is a problem that has kinda-sorta been with us since Beowulf, and certainly since they first started making sequels to books and movies, and is even more acute in role-playing games. You always have to escalate the stakes and the challenge. Role-playing games are peculiar in that you may have to escalate before the fact.

Several of Gareth's articles and approaches to fantasy seem to boil down to one consistent factor that he seems to be going after with Scars of War: Low Fantasy. As one of my favorite fantasy series growing up was Conan, I'm quite happy with that, especially as most RPGs seem to be fighting over "high fantasy" turf.

What I find fascinating, as a designer and long-time afficianado of not only RPGs but the actual design mechanics at their core, is how all of Gareth's public discussions over his design consistently reinforce this theme. He has a particular story to tell and worldview he wishes to simulate. Rather than just choose genericized off-the-shelf systems to form the underlying mechanics of the world, he seems to be carefully customizing each part to best serve his vision of the game.

I guess when you are making an indie game, you can afford to think of other things than just how to wow your audience with your graphics and technical artistry. It's kind of funny imagining how this sort of design would go over with a major publisher. "What? You mean you want less cool special effects for spells and stuff and and you will only want these uber-cool monsters our artists spent weeks of time making, rigging, and animating to only appear rarely? Are you crazy? How are we gonna sell this thing?"

Labels: Game Design, Indie Evangelism, Roleplaying Games

- posted by The Rampant Coyote @ 6:04 AM (Permalink)