Telepath RPG: Servants of God… AIR release

Posted by Rampant Coyote on August 11, 2011

I wanted to pass along this tidbit from Craig Stern of Sinister Design:

I’ve released a major update to Telepath RPG: Servants of God. The newest version of the game is in AIR, which means that it runs on Windows, Mac and Linux alike using a single installer.

There are also a ton of improvements to the game, including:

    — The Crypt of the Poet King is now finished (and boy is it ever a nasty one).
    — Your character can now use drugs and (depending on your luck) get addicted, suffering prolonged withdrawal effects if he goes too long without a hit.
    — You can now swap out orbs between battles.
    — There’s new music in the game that plays during the battle preparation screen.
    — There are a ton of bug fixes.
    — The game engine now officially supports voiced dialog.
    — Did I mention that Mac and Linux owners can now play the game off their hard drives? Because they can. And it’s awesome.

I understand that as of last night there are some new bug fixes and general improvements since this announcement, as well. If you’ve pre-ordered, you have access. If not, you can correct it at the website. Enjoy!

In the meantime – I’m on the road today, so I will not be able to look at my email until later tonight. Ya’ll have fun!

Filed Under: Game Announcements - Comments: Comments are off for this article

The Worst RPGs of All Time?

Posted by Rampant Coyote on August 10, 2011

Matt Barton followed up his list of favorite CRPGs with a list of what he felt were worst CRPGs ever. He notes that this is not simply a qualitative pronouncement – undoubtedly there were some low-budget duds out there that were far worse (the CRPG Addict has played several of them). For the purpose of the his list, these had to be (relatively, for their time period) big-budget titles that received a reasonable amount of hype & marketing support to have been A-level games.

Matt’s List of the Top Ten Worst CRPGs

I really can’t comment on these too much, as I avoided most of them like the plague. I guess I’ve always been that guy who usually waits for the reviews to come out before buying a game. There are only a few games I’ve pre-ordered or bought on day 1. And in the case of all of these RPGs but one, after reading the reviews I avoided them.

The exception is Alpha Protocol. I picked it up cheap on Steam, and while I didn’t have the time to go too far in it, what I played was pretty cool. I understand that to truly appreciate it, you need to play the game twice with different play styles. From what I can tell, it’s a decent game, suffering mainly from perhaps over-hype so that “okay” was a crushing disappointment, or that some people ran into some truly horrifying bugs. I dunno. Disappointing and lackluster I’ll buy, but does it really belong on the list of worst RPGs?

I actually prefer a game that shoots for the moon and misses over a game that plays it safe with formula and succeeds flawlessly.  The latter would be… hmmm…. Final Fantasy XII, I think, which bored me to tears after about six hours.

My own least favorite CRPG of all time would have to be Super Columbine Massacre RPG! While I hope the game was never intended to be enjoyed, I still thought the author’s “point” was disingenuous, and was undermined by multiple design decisions even if they had been authentic.  I think he had a change of heart after it was released, and retroactively re-themed it to be a vehicle to encourage dialog. Regardless, I hate to rip on an indie effort that dares to tackle difficult subject matter.

Aside from that, there were a bunch of crappy old RPGs in the early 1980s, like – well, I’ve seen some pretty crappy old games, like Ultima: Escape from Mount Drash (which I never even heard of until a couple of years ago) and Dungeons of Magdarr. It hardly seems fair to dredge those up, either.

Filed Under: General - Comments: 23 Comments to Read

Guilty Pleasure RPGs

Posted by Rampant Coyote on August 9, 2011

Yesterday I talked about lists of favorites. It’s fun to talk about the classics, what made them classics, and how influential they were, and how they rate in comparison to each other.  Fans make arguments defending their favorite games, people reminisce a bit, and everyone involved in the discussion can learn a little more about some of the most popular titles.

Those are easy.

But do you have any favorites that were not so popular? Or, even better, do you have any favorites that were really not that good, not that popular, or just so off-beat that you seldom feel like bringing it up because you’ll be met with blank stares? Or do you love a game that’s completely not the kind of title you claim you prefer? Or where you were really not the target market, but you loved the game anyway?

Do you have any favorites that are guilty pleasures?

Since I am always determined to destroy whatever cred I have with gamers, I’ll start it off and admit to a few of my favorites here that will probably not make many people’s lists:

Cute Knight – Okay, this one shouldn’t be a shock to anybody who’s been around here for a while. I’ve made no secret of my enjoyment of this game. Take the “life sim” aspect of Princess Maker, and mix it with a fairly simple RPG where you are actually playing the young female protagonist, add a ton of possible endings with lots of replayability, and you have Cute Knight, an indie RPG that I lose man-points for admitting that I enjoy. And I’m not a former marine or anything with man-points to spare.

But in Cute Knight Deluxe, you can become a knight, an adventurer, a sorceress, marry a prince, end up as the Queen of Thieves or a dancing girl or… or settle for being a waitress or cleaning maid.  The game gives you three years to live your life, gain skills and expertise, and even adventure down in the depths of a dungeon below the town. Cute Knight Kingdom expanded upon this idea even further with multiple towns, dungeons, and storylines.  The games are cute – and fun – and compelling. And yes, a little girly. But dang it, a fun game is a fun game.

Vampire the Masquerade: Redemption: The second Vampire game, Bloodlines, gets all the attention. And in spite of the bugs, it was probably the better game. But its 2000 predecessor, Redemption, is a lesser-known favorite of mine.  It was in its own way just as ambitious as Bloodlines, supporting a “Storyteller” mode for multiplayer RPGs that beat Neverwinter Nights to the punch by a couple of years.

The game was excessively linear. The second half, set in the modern world, fell a little flat. The endings sucked (no pun intended). And the dialog could be wordy as hell. But I was okay with that. White Wolf’s signature game world came alive for me with the first two acts of the game, taking place in medieval Prague.  The setting – a mix of dark fantasy and real-world history – seemed very believable.  Playing your character initially as an ultimately doomed crusader and monster-hunter,  only to become the thing you once hunted — it was great stuff, long expositions and all.

Al-Qadim: The Genie’s Curse – I’d probably dislike this one if I were to play it now, but at the time, I had great fun with it. This action RPG was even more action and less RPG than a lot of the games we like to complain about today. I played it to completion, though I couldn’t tell you much about the story today. I found myself playing it in the spring of 1995, when my first job in the video games biz was leading to very long hours and very little time for a “deep” game.

The Genie’s Curse managed to give me my RPG fix with an entertaining story without a whole lot of time and brain commitment. There’s definitely a place for that kind of game.

Twilight: 2000 – In this DOS-based RPG, you led a tiny military team tasked with preserving what’s left of peace and civilization in an area of post-World War III Poland. A military warlord was gathering power to the north of you, though you were as often fighting random marauders or treating disease in a small town as dealing with his forces. Standing on its own, this game fails as an RPG on so many levels. Not the least of which was that, on two different computers and two completely different run-throughs, the game would crash just as I reached the climax of the game.  That tells you two things: #1 – the game was poorly tested before being shipped, and #2 – I somehow still liked it enough to play it all the way through to the bug-blocked endgame twice.

Maybe I liked it because I was a fan of the pen-and-paper RPG system. Maybe it was because I was a sim fan and I actually enjoyed the 3D sim / action tank battle sequences. Maybe it was the tactical battles that made up the heart of the game, with “random” encounters that would involve automatic weapons, grenades, and even armored vehicles. Maybe it was just the “realistic” post-apocalyptic setting. As far as I know, maybe it was the tedious non-combat missions. But I enjoyed the game, and would have loved to play the announced sequel.

So there you go: Four old RPG favorites of mine that will probably open me up to some mocking, but dang it if I didn’t really have fun playing them.

So how about you? Any guilty pleasures you want to ‘fess up about?

Filed Under: General - Comments: 23 Comments to Read

Picking Favorites

Posted by Rampant Coyote on August 8, 2011

Matt Barton, author of the excellent “Dungeons & Desktops” history book of computer RPGs and host of the “Matt Chat” Youtube video series, has posted his list of favorite computer RPGs:

Matt’s Top Ten CRPGs

I love lists like these. Not because Matt is an authority on the subject (though, having literally written the book on it, he really is), but because these kinds of lists spawn discussions. He covers his butt by way of explanation for what’s missing from the list – the Final Fantasies, the Ultimas, etc. – to avoid losing too much street cred I guess. That’s what happens when you admit to a list that may diverge from those of other fans.

But the point, I think, is to generate discussion. So hey, I’m gonna jump in.  Every game he lists would probably be on my list of top twenty or so CRPGs, with the possible exception of Nethack – I’ve played that one many times, but never gotten far enough in the learning curve to really fall in love with it.

I have until very recently divided my favorites into two lists: My favorite “mainstream” CRPGs, and my favorite indie CRPGs. But thanks to my more recent gaming habits (which more often than not involves “sampling” a lot of retro and indie titles rather than playing games to completion), I’m finding that A) the two lists are merging as some indie titles are proving to hold their own against historical and modern favorites, and B) The list is becoming highly unstable – not always by newer games, but by some old gems that I missed when first released, which prove (after getting acclimated to their clunky interfaces and retro graphics) extremely entertaining.

I’ve always listed Ultima VII: The Black Gate as my favorite CRPG, and Baldur’s Gate 2 as a close second. I’m not sure those two are at risk of being dethroned quite yet, and my list of top ten CRPGs probably would include Final Fantasy VII and Diablo 2 (but probably near the bottom), I’d have a tough time figuring out where everything else fits. I’ve tried to order my other favorites – new and old favorites, and new and old titles (not always corresponding), but I have trouble narrowing it all down. On the indie side, I’m pretty sure the indie game Knights of the Chalice has found its way to my top ten, and there’s a handful of other indie RPGs that have probably found their way to my top twenty. There are some old classics I didn’t really play until years after their release, which I’m somewhat embarrassed to admit missing the first time around. But Wizardry 8 is a prime example that probably belongs somewhere in my top ten list, though I’m not sure what it would bump. Unlike Matt, I would probably have Final Fantasy VII and Diablo 2 on my top ten list – I think – though they’d now be somewhere near the bottom, if they haven’t been bumped by newer discoveries.

What about you?  How would your list compare?

Filed Under: General - Comments: 23 Comments to Read

Sucking the RPG Genre Dry

Posted by Rampant Coyote on August 5, 2011

I still haven’t played the game, so I don’t feel qualified to comment. But maybe you can.

Mike Laidlaw explains changes to Dragon Age 2

I dunno, but it sounds telling to me how he takes pains to demonstrate how they aren’t trying to clone the gameplay in Devil May Cry: “There’s a LOT of territory between DA2 and DMC, and if we were truly headed in that direction, we would have made much larger changes. Cut party, remove crafting, one class, etc would all be changes that show a move to action game, but none of those happened.”

And then there’s this: “A lot of people on this forum had built up a grand conspiracy theory where we were deliberately stripping RPG out of Dragon Age because we are MEAN.  I’ve said it before, and I will say it again: we stripped some stuff out of DA becuase it was busted. Other stuff was simply a design choice, and some of it was circumstance.”

Wait, so he’s saying that they stripped out the RPG from DA2 for a lot of reasons, but being mean wasn’t one of them?

I need to get my brain around this crap. Again, it would help if I had a better point of reference. I never even finished DA1.

He then explains the need for accessibility, but protests that it does NOT mean making the game “dumbed down” or “consolized” – and then he states that he doesn’t even know what “consolized” means. I won’t take this as a literal admission of ignorance or stupidity on his part, but rather an attempt to blur the current and historical differences between PC and console games, and the aspects of PC gaming that make it special and unique. In other words, he’s fully behind the publisher dream of the PC being nothing more than just another target platform.

Okay, I am going to my mental happy place here for a moment. I’ll be right back after I’ve calmed down…

… Okay. I’m feeling more zen now. Am I deliberately (if subconsciously) misunderstanding his words here? Am I just seeing “spin control” instead of honest dialog? I don’t know.

But here’s what I do know. Or rather, what I understand, and can assume to be truth. Again, I’m talking generalities and trends here, not talking about any specific game:

It’s been (thankfully) demonstrated that RPGs can still make metric crap-tons of money. But they still reach a smaller market than the best-selling action games, and they are more expensive to make than action games. Which means their ROI (Return On Investment) is lower – they spend more to make less. So from a bean-counter perspective, it would be highly desireable to get a higher ROI by (A) Increasing the size of the market, (B) Decreasing the cost of making these games, or preferably (C) Both.

And if I were a big publisher / bean counter, I imagine I’d wonder, “Is it possible to do both of these while still retaining enough of the genre’s uniqueness to make it stand out from the ocean of me-too action games?” When trying to please the stockholders, especially after spending enough money to fund a third-world country for a year to buy a major RPG developer, this would be a question that an executive with hopes on keeping his job would have to try and answer.

And that is exactly what I think is happening, across the board. This entire dialog is basically Laidlaw trying to rationalize approach (C). They tried to make it more appealing to a wider audience. And they cut a lot of corners to get the game out more quickly and cheaply – with apparently disastrous results in some cases. And they are trying to see if they can do this without completely whittling away whatever makes RPGs “special” in the eyes of their market.

Call me what you want, but I take an issue with trying to condense a favorite genre into nothing more than a special spice to sprinkle onto an action game to improve it’s marketability.

And here’s a problem with the “mainstream” games biz in general: When you are a studio working for a big publisher, or a studio owned by a big publisher, your customer is the publisher. The “real” customers belong to the publisher, and they are the publisher’s problem, and indirectly a studio is still making games for the actual gamers. But make no mistake: If you are a game designer wishing to keep your job, your focus will be on making your real customer – the publisher – happy.

It doesn’t matter if your game will sell a trillion copies if your customer is unhappy and cancels the project before release. Unless your name is Wil Wright and you are working on The Sims and have enough political clout to ram it down your parent company’s throat. But that’s an extremely small group of people that can pull that off, and getting rarer all the time as game budgets rise higher and higher, and game developers become more and more disposable.

One more reason to support your friendly indies with direct sales, huh? 🙂

I have no problem with playing with the formula, which pushing the boundaries of what it means to be an RPG, or even with a company trying to find ways of broadening the market and reducing costs for making them. Hey, I’m all about trying to make RPGs on the cheap. Those are all good things. But as an RPG fan, I demand that it be done with a respect and passion for the genre, not by bean-counters or wannabe Spielbergs or action-game fans who hate the very aspects of RPGs that we love.

Tip of the ol’ great helm goes to Game Banshee for the above link.

Filed Under: Biz - Comments: 31 Comments to Read

Frayed Knights Update: Mappage!

Posted by Rampant Coyote on August 4, 2011

Time for another update on Frayed Knights: The Skull of S’makh-Daon, the tongue-in-cheek hardcore RPG coming soon from yours truly.

Back in the ooooold days, when CRPGs were sloppy kings of computer gaming, players were expected to make their own maps. Just like playing a tabletop D&D game, players would scribble notes and draw maps on pads of graph paper sitting next to the keyboard. Many puzzles were designed specifically to frustrate mapping attempts, with things like flipping tiles, dark tiles, teleport squares and “wrap-around” maps.

Pretty evil stuff, if you think about it. I dunno why I, personally, suffered through it and even sometimes enjoyed it. A masochist streak, maybe? Although I think part of it was that that the physical and intellectual act of making painstaking graph-paper maps – extending the game world into the real world on this side of the glass – increased our emotional investment in the game. And that, in return, increased our enjoyment.

At some point, these games started offering “auto-maps.” The very term was a reference to the assumption that by default the player was supposed to do the mapping, but that the game benevolently took over the task from the player. While a few players and journalists groused somewhat at this development, I don’t think I’ve ever met a player who truly regrets (or refuses to use) the “automap” in a game.  Maybe they exist, maybe it’s you, but I’m just saying I don’t know that I’ve ever met one.

Automaps were easy back in the days of gridded & tiled maps. The computer could just go through the tiles that the player has explored, show the presence of walls / doors / other features in or surrounding the tile, by looping through X / Y coordinates of the grid. After RPG worlds began sporting full 3D worlds with arbitrary sizes and alignments, it became a little more complicated to do in real-time. You can still do it, by tagging ground and floor &/or wall solids (and other objects) and running them through a special rendering pass. And it’s still not that simple, when you are trying to represent paths that go underneath each other. More tagging or limitations on level design can solve or prevent that problem, too.

Unfortunately, when working with an existing engine that doesn’t support it natively, it would involve a lot of extra work with both the engine and the tools to do that. Which is where I am with Frayed Knights: The Skull of S’makh-Daon. So I traded one time consuming task for another one.

My solution is hand-drawn maps (well, hand-drawn over top of what the tools can spit out for me) that get revealed slowly. Catering to my limited artistic abilities (not to mention limited time), I decided to fall back on what I felt I could do. Making the assumption that it’s probably Dirk making the maps, and that he possesses skills about equal to my own. On top of that, in another nod to the inspiration provided by old-school tabletop gaming, the style of maps are pretty similar to that which we gamers who grew up with the 1st edition Dungeon Masters Guide and modules written by Gary Gygax are used to.

They aren’t slick and polished, but as they are hand-made they do allow me to add some more helpful indicators on the map that might be missed by an automated process. In addition, some of the dungeons in Frayed Knights are very vertical. For these, I use side-view maps. These won’t help you navigate a single floor of the Tower of Almost Certain Doom very well, but the floors are small, and you can see where the stairs are (at least on one axis).

I’ve also played with the maps a little as well. Dirk gets bored easily, so he sometimes scribbles in the margins or in other blank spots on the map.  For your amusement.

Filed Under: Frayed Knights - Comments: 21 Comments to Read

Release Date: I Don’t Know

Posted by Rampant Coyote on August 3, 2011

Brian Mitsoda answers the frequently asked question about his upcoming game, Dead State: “When is the release date?”

He very carefully explains the answer, “I don’t know.”

I can only echo everything he says here.

I’ve been asked a few times about how you estimate time to complete a project. The answer is that you base it upon the time to complete similar projects in the past with the same or similar team. If you have a new team and a project that pushes some new territory, it’s really, really hard to estimate. You have to play it by ear and scope it as you go. And in DoubleBear’s case, that’s exactly where they are. They can do hand-waving and set up some internal milestones to help refine their estimates and scope, but that’s it.

And he’s dead-on about updates. I’ve been trying to keep people updated on Frayed Knights for a very long time.  While there have been some time periods where real life / the day job intruded and slowed things down, for the most part any lags often occur because 90% of game development is boring. At least to other people. Sure, I get all excited about refactoring some code that cleans up and optimizes how some inventory routine works, but that’s not something that non-coder gamers would have the slightest interest in.

I can say, however, that I’m about as anxious as any other gamer for the release of Dead State. Aside from my own game, this is the upcoming indie RPG that I’m most excited about.

Filed Under: Production - Comments: 7 Comments to Read

Diablo III: Lord of Bling?

Posted by Rampant Coyote on August 2, 2011

The Diablo III news at the beginning of this week caused quite a stir:

1. The game requires a constant Internet connection to play. Basically it is “online only,” no matter how you want to argue semantics.

2. Items in the auction house will be bought and sold for real-world money. With Blizzard taking a cut, of course.

3. Because of #1 and #2, mods will be completely prohibited.

Rock Paper Shotgun has a commentary with links to news sources.

I totally understand the nerdrage being leveled against these plans, though I don’t actually agree with it. In principle, I think, “Hey, great idea!” Seriously, I’ve had ideas about doing something like this myself for years now. And I think most players, if they can be rational about it for a minute, would agree. It’s a clever idea. If they like it, fine: they can try it out. If not, big deal: they can vote with their wallets and ignore it entirely.

Really, all this is is something of a half-way point in-between a simple multiplayer-capable game and an MMO.  Great! Let’s explore that. It could be cool! And it’s pretty much guaranteed to make Blizzard a ton of money. Battle.net will more than pay for itself through all this.

The real problem, IMHO, is the name. If the game bore a completely different name – published by Blizzard – it would probably be getting welcomed with open arms but a lot of concern over whether or not they were creating a competitor for World of Warcraft. If it was even called, “Diablo Online,” and marketed as a spin-off of the series, it would be a whole ‘nother story.  There’d still be some nerdrage, of course, but the fanboys would be doubling down on expressing their love. Instead, people are expecting a continuation of the type of experience they’ve come to expect. For some, this innovation will be an improvement, or at least a non-issue. But for others, it’s enough of a fundamental departure for the series to derail them. It’s a failure of the sequel to continue the legacy of the earlier titles.

It’s sorta like how I view the Matrix sequels and the Star Wars prequel trilogy. If they were stand-alone titles, without the legacy to live up to, that could stand or fall on their own, they’d have been… well, not good movies, but probably “okay” but forgettable popcorn flicks. Their biggest sin was dragging their predecessors down into mediocrity (or sub-mediocrity) with them.  And now it’s hard to go back and watch the original Star Wars trilogy and not see Darth Vader as some whiny stalker-boy creep instead of the total badass he is supposed to be.

This is the problem with what some view a fundamental shift in the Diablo experience. Though in this case, it’s not quite as stupid or as big of a shift as Final Fantasy XI being an MMO.

I will say my own interest in the game has waned somewhat in light of this announcement.  I’m sure I’d play it the same way I played the other two games. The Diablo games were always much more fun playing with friends, but that was an option only occasionally. Playing solo was almost always superior to playing with a pick-up group, for me. So if I grab it, I’ll probably play it solo or occasionally with close friends, and thus not feel the need to “keep up with the joneses” or thus be tempted by the real-money auction house.  So that’s not a big deal.

Being unable to play on those rare occasions I am without online connectivity? Or being unable to play it at all if, at some point down the road, Blizzard / Activision pulls the plug on support? It rubs me the wrong way, but in all honesty it’s also not a huge deal. But while small, it is enough of an issue that I may not bother getting the game. If I was still in the exclusively mainstream game world, facing a dearth of new RPG titles, I’d probably suck it up and get it anyway. I may do that as it is. But as an indie game fan, with a wealth of options and a giant backlog of titles to play, that may have been enough to drop its priority. Earlier, my default decision was to get this game on day one. I really only needed an excuse not to buy it. Blizzard may have provided me with one. We’ll see.

But this is really less of a statement about Diablo III than a statement of how much I’m enjoying the competition.

 

Filed Under: Biz, Mainstream Games, News - Comments: 24 Comments to Read

Gimme Details, Baby…

Posted by Rampant Coyote on August 1, 2011

I enjoyed Craig Stern’s article last week entitled, “Using Details to Craft a Coherent Game World.” Now, on a surface level, Craig sounds like he is mounts the lofty heights of Mount Obvious almost as badly as I do. Details make the world come alive? Gosh! But… if it’s so obvious, why do so many developers ignore ’em?

Craig brings up some nice specific examples that are often lacking, and suggests some ways developers – particularly indies, though this article isn’t indie-specific – can make their game worlds come alive. He includes puzzle design, which some readers may consider an odd choice, but I was thrilled to see it added. As Craig suggests, a puzzle well-integrated into the world can provide a good deal of exposition.

Departing from Craig’s actual article, I had a few additional thoughts while reading it:

These details don’t need to be front-and-center, requiring a page of exposition text or half-hour cut-scenes to explain. This is a sin committed not quite as often as the lack-of-detail, but it is in many ways worse. The mistake many designers – particularly new designers – make is in assuming that all this background detail that helps make sense of the world is needed up front. Especially at the beginning of the game – when what players really want to know is, “who am I supposed to be, and what am I supposed to be doing here?” Enduring opening exposition explaining that in the Third Epoch of the Reign of the Foo-Gods the Drizzle-Fobbers waged war upon the Unicycle Wizards of Gagadius is not only useless, it’s downright detrimental.

Background information should be in the background. In my first five minutes of gameplay, I want to know nothing more than what I’m doing there and what I can do to start having fun. The only details I’m really interested in are about what’s in it for me. Later, once I’m emotionally and intellectually invested in the world, I may find myself craving more information.

While not all of the details are spelled out to the player, the designer(s) should be very familiar with them. It can and should permeate the writing, the level design, tucked away in the background where it belongs. But as long as the designers are intimately familiar with the details, and are reasonably competent in their craft, the world will reflect that in its coherency.  And that foundational consistency and predictability will make players more comfortable in the world, and more apt to appreciate the story set before them. “Show, don’t tell” is still a key principle here. A series of articles on “Mega-dungeon” design illustrates how this attention to detail in level design is important even in pen-and-paper RPGs. Even without a word of explanation, these details make the world feel “right.”

If a detail is somehow important to the game / setting that the player must know, one rule of thumb (I’m discovering the hard way) is that it should be presented to the player three times in three different ways. Otherwise there’s a good chance that particular datum will be lost in the noise. Maybe it is mentioned once in a key conversation, hinted at in a monster encounter, and then suggested again by an unusual layout of a village. The point isn’t just repetition on the theme, but having the player experience it in different ways.

The main bad guy (if there is one) and his plot – and how it involves the player – should really be well fleshed out by the designer. This is perhaps the most important place where details matter.  Even in indie RPGs, we’ve really gotten past the point where a one-dimensional “Foozle” villain who is tormenting the world just for the sake of being evil is sufficient. Designers should really understand where the villain is coming from, what their goals are, and understand how the villains see themselves. THOSE details should be reflected in the plots and subplots the player finds him or herself embroiled within.

Above all, the designer should always be asking “why” and coming up with answers to that question in the game world context, even if not all of those answers are given to the player.  Why is the bad guy doing this? Why is this dungeon here? Why is the village still here when they are completely surrounded by powerful monsters that could probably wipe the whole place out before breakfast? Why are these monsters working together? Why are they working for the main villain? Why are there still armies of footmen soldiers when the world is full of wizards who can wipe them all out with a single fireball?

These sorts of answers are what makes worlds and stories compelling.

Filed Under: Design - Comments: 9 Comments to Read

Utah Indie Night – Summer 2011

Posted by Rampant Coyote on July 29, 2011

It’s amazing to think we’ve been doing this indie night thing for so many years. Six years, now, I guess?

Utah Indie Night was held this time at ITT Technical Institute in Murray. The attendance wasn’t our highest ever (maybe we should start advertising more, again?), but it was an excellent event.

First off, Tim Fowers of Gabob offered a presentation called “Turbulence Ahead: The Ups and Downs of Getting a Premium Flash Game to Success.” This was previously given at a casual gaming conference last year, and it was very informative and entertaining. One of the better presentations we’ve had. The presentation was mainly about their successful premium game, Now Boarding.  He also talked about their second game, Clockwords. The discussion was down to earth, frank, and detailed. Tim named names and gave us numbers. Some interesting things came to light:

#1 – They ended up going direct sales because things fell through with a publisher. In retrospect, going direct was the winning strategy.  While they still take sponsorships and so forth, the direct sales model worked. The game’s sales dropped off significantly after three months, but has proven to have a remarkably long tail.

In spite of some massive rage sent their way from people with “Entertainment Entitlement” (Many Flash gamers expect 100% free entertainment, all the time), the game has done well. Not limousines andcaviar well, but pay-the-rent and keep-the-lights-on well. Their experiments with dropping the price by a third yielded ZERO net change in sales. Once again, it’s demonstrated that with indie games, there’s a “sweet spot” below which a lower price does nothing but leave money on the table.

It’s a weird thing (and perhaps not much to brag about), but their big success against piracy was not their weak DRM scheme, but staying below the pirates’ radar.

His take-aways at the end of the presentation were:

• Create value, don’t chase money.
• Invest in a distinct and polished game
• When you innovate, you have to shove it down people’s throats. It takes a while for people to appreciate innovation.
• Hustle! Experiment. Be flexible with your business plan. Where possible, don’t rely upon only one way of making money with your game.
• Find good partners who work well together.
• Recurring income, even small, is good. Direct Revenue is key. Be “Ramen Profitable” in the words of Paul Graham.

He also had a lot to say about board game design, and encouraged designers to first work out their game designs in a board-game format and make sure they are fun in that format before committing them to code. His feeling was that it’s a great way to simplify and polish your ideas.

Following his presentation, I did what I usually do, which is talk to people. I ran into a couple of folks here who follow the blog, some former co-workers, and some folks I chat with on Twitter. Hi again, guys! Indie nights are a great way to network, swap ideas, and sometimes even exchange business. I wish I could have met and chatted at length with everybody, but while attendance wasn’t huge, it was still too big for that.

I did get to speak to Herb Flower at length about his awesomely huge indie MMO, Link Realms. They did some very cool stuff in this game – I really recommend checking it out.  We talked design, gameplay, and business at length.

I didn’t even see all the games this time. But the ones I did see were way cool. Chris tart had a fun little experimental game he’d thrown together that involved running across cars on a bullet train.  Curtis Mirci had a very amusing little action game that played with a couple of RPG tropes called March to the Moon that involved killing a horde of rats in the basement of a tavern (for level one), leveling up, and some laugh-out-loud crazy fight set-ups. While the game is far from complete or polished, it was clearly fun and entertaining even in the current build.

Paul Milham had a game that will never be generally available called “Rick Invaders.” It was an experiment in HTML 5 programming that looked pretty awesome, hitting 60 fps in a straightforward side-shooter that took revenge on his former boss on behalf of Paul and a bunch of his recently laid-off coworkers. Now THIS is how you take anger and rage over an unfair situation and put it to constructive use.

Anyway, the whole event was a lot of fun (as always), inspirational and informational. It’s really just too short. Greg Squire, founder of the event, is working to increase the number of times we meet from being quarterly to every other month. So long as that doesn’t reduce attendance, I’m game.

Filed Under: Utah Indie Game Night - Comments: 4 Comments to Read

Frayed Knights – Manual: Background

Posted by Rampant Coyote on July 28, 2011

Here’s another update on Frayed Knights: The Skull of S’makh-Daon. Today I’m posting a short section from the manual presenting the basic background / backstory. While much of this material is revisited in the game, making this purely optional reading, it’s hopefully an interesting set-up to explain the world and the adventurers in it. And pokes a little bit of fun at a few tropes, as well.  Those of you who have been reading these blog posts for a while – or played the pilot – should be familiar with a lot of this information. Either way, I hope you find it entertaining. Please post any comments with thoughts, errors, or questions.

The world of Frayed Knights is in many ways a typical fantasy world full of magic, monsters, mystery, and adventure.

Perhaps a little too typical.

In a world full of dungeons filled with gleaming treasure and ancient artifacts of power, adventuring is one of the most profitable (and risky) professions. Where there are rumors of adventure and rewards to be had, adventurers swarm in like heavily armed and armored flies. Competition can get fierce between adventuring parties. But sometimes the camaraderie can be equally fierce. Over time, they have formed a subculture with their own (loose) code of ethics, terminology, and legends. Their high mortality rate contributes to their lifestyle of living for the day.
Many townspeople resent the coming of adventurers – and for good reason.  They stir up trouble. They can be loud and boisterous, and dismissive of non-adventurers. They often pester townsfolk for things they call “quests.” However, some enterprising townspeople realize that adventurers come bearing plenty of silver, a hearty thirst, and downright stupidity for the price of anything that isn’t combat gear. A sudden influx of adventurers can turn a small village into a boom-town almost overnight.

The Wizard War
The Wizard War ended nearly three hundred years ago, but it is far from forgotten. The arch-lich Nepharides – an undead wizard of incredible power – gathered a force so powerful that he nearly conquered the entire world. Those cities he didn’t conquer he destroyed. He laid waste to those castles that followed the traditional design of being well-protected from the ground but nearly defenseless from the air, driving his enemies into deep underground fortresses hastily constructed by magic.

The war spanned over a generation. When it was over, little remained of the previous world’s civilizations and kingdoms but ruins. In the decades that followed, humankind and allied races have partly recovered, but it may be many more generations before they return to their former glory.

And what of Nepharides? Was he truly destroyed, forever? In spite of brave and confident talk that this is so, the secret terror is that one day he will return, an army in tow, and finish the task of destruction.

The Adventurer’s Guild
As the ranks of fortune hunters swelled, exploring the ancient ruins of past eras and fighting off the swelling ranks of evil creatures – some descended of those that served Nepharides in the war – some adventuring groups decided to band together in a spirit of cooperation. This group, led by legendary adventurer Argus Stormhammer, would share information, coordinate their adventures, trade equipment and treasure with each other, and keep tabs on each other to provide help or rescue when necessary. While this had been done informally in the past, the new “adventurers guild” quickly grew to become an international organization that gave a real advantage to its members. But even now, as then, the Guild is best known for who it excludes than who it includes. Membership doesn’t come easily, and only those who have proven their mettle on their own are allowed to join.

The Frayed Knights
One particular group of adventurers – referred to (behind their backs) as the “Frayed Knights” – has consistently failed to meet the quality profile recommended by the Adventurer’s Guild, and has had a run of rather embarrassing bad luck. To top it off, their previous priest recently suffered a nervous breakdown and retired from adventuring, forcing them to replace him with a beginner to the profession.

But things may finally be turning around for them. They have finally managed to secure an official quest from the Adventurer’s Guild. Success will mean a recommendation for membership, not to mention a tidy sum of silver. And so the unlikely heroes have answered the call, on a quest to obtain the cryptically-named Eyes of Pokmor Xang in an ancient, evil, thought-to-be-abandoned temple.

This is their shot at the big time. Failure is not an option.

And the temple is not abandoned.

Filed Under: Frayed Knights - Comments: 12 Comments to Read

A Terrifying Tale of Indie Game Development…

Posted by Rampant Coyote on July 27, 2011

… Wherein one developer frantically battles near-bankruptcy and changes game design repeatedly to avoid starvation, and eventually releases Amnesia: The Dark Descent to very impressive sales.

The Terrifying Tale of Amnesia (at The Escapist)

I gotta tell ya, this is a lot more riveting than the standardized-format post-mortems available in Game Developer magazine / Gamasutra. Though it does sound like the studio was at death’s door about every three months. Good thing Amnesia was a hit, huh?

Filed Under: Biz, Indie Evangelism - Comments: 4 Comments to Read

Humble Indie Bundle #3!

Posted by Rampant Coyote on July 26, 2011

Donate to charity and pay what you want for five indie games.

Cogs, Crayon Physics Deluxe, And Yet It Moves, VVVVVV, and Hammerfight are the games heading up this installment’s collection.

You’ve got a couple of weeks to grab ’em for whatever price you feel reasonable. The charities include the EFF and Child’s Play, both of which I can easily get behind.

Filed Under: Deals - Comments: Comments are off for this article

Hit Game Designer Speaks Out on Ever-Improving Graphics, Reduced Innovation

Posted by Rampant Coyote on

Here is a great quote from a game designer with several games (including a couple of hits) under his belt:

“I’m afraid that what I see in the future is a heckuva lot more mundane than what most people come up with. I think that imaging will become a lot more realistic; that’s been the trend all along.”

Yeah, visual quality is going up, but innovation is decreasing as games become more expensive. That’s just how things are these days…

Oh, wait. This quote was from (approximately) 1982:

Tim Skelly Interview, Circa 1982

I enjoyed reading this 30-year-old interview on several levels. It was interesting to hear about Skelly’s path to becoming a video game designer in the early days of the industry. And I enjoyed his insights into the art of game design when video games were still more of a novelty and “amusement machines.” And – well, Reactor and Star Castle are a couple of old favorites of mine, and Starhawk was perhaps THE game that started my addiction and changed my life, as lame of a shooting-gallery game as it was.  And I’m one of those weirdos who likes to learn more about the people who create my favorite works of entertainment.

It was a very different time. But while a lot of things change, it’s fascinating to see how much stays the same…

 

Filed Under: Interviews, Retro - Comments: 7 Comments to Read

The Twenty and the Seven

Posted by Rampant Coyote on July 25, 2011

The fun thing about opinion lists – no matter whose list it is – is that they immediately generate counter-opinions about their order, about what was included, and about what was excluded.

This weekend we had a couple of interesting lists circulate. The first is from Wired, entitled “7 Fantastical Indie RPGs Worth Playing.” This list is pretty much the best-selling indie RPGs on Steam mixed with the biggest cult classic darlings from one branch of the indie “scene,” with nothing in-between.  Not that I have a problem with any of the ones on the list, though I never warmed up to Charles Barkley’s Shut Up and Jam: Gaiden (the concept sounded cool, but the implementation left me saying, “WTF?”). But they missed a lot of extremely worthy titles that I personally feel could have bumped most of the others from the list.

But I’d have a pretty impossible time limiting myself to just seven.  Last year I wrote an article  about what I felt were the most “significant” indie RPGs and that large list had some gaping holes and questionable inclusions in it. So I can’t fault this article too much, but it does seem like the author did limited research on the subject. Did he only look at TIGSource and Steam for ideas?

The next list is RPG Pillars: 20 Games That Defined Role-Playing Games. This is a list of the most influential computer and console RPGs of all time. Maybe it’s just because there are more games on this list, but I have fewer problems with this one. They hit what I’d consider many of the “bases” – Rogue, Wizardry 1, Ultima,  Diablo, Dragon Warrior, Final Fantasy VII, Dungeon Master, Pool of Radiance, and Chrono Trigger. I’m pleased that they included Fallout on the list, though sadly I don’t think it was as influential as many of us wish it had been. And anybody who doesn’t think World of Warcraft was influential on modern RPG design is in a pretty acute case of denial.

What would I change? I’d probably swap out Knights of the Old Republic for Baldur’s Gate, though they at least mention the latter game. And I’d argue that the significance of Ultima comes from the later games in the series – mainly III – VII, which were far more influential (over time) than the first (official) Ultima.  While there are several personal favorites I prefer over what’s on the list, I’m not sure they’d be considered more “influential.” As awesome as I consider the Might & Magic series, I suspect most modern game designers are far more familiar with Pokemon than Might & Magic.

So if you were to make lists of the most “important” mainstream and indie RPGs, what would you include?

 

 

 

Filed Under: Retro - Comments: 14 Comments to Read

Frayed Knights – The Manual: Magic and Spells, Part Three

Posted by Rampant Coyote on July 22, 2011

Yesterday, I listed a couple dozen base spells from the Nature and Sorcery spell lines that are in Frayed Knights: The Skull of S’makh-Daon. Those are two lines that all players will be fairly familiar with by the end of the game. Today I’m sharing a dozen spells each from the Divine Magic and Dark Magic lines. These are optional lines that you the player can choose as early as the first time you level up a character – or at some point after that so long as you have a couple of character points saved up. But being able to cast the spells and being very effective at them are two different things.

Many players will only experience these spells on the receiving end. Enemy spellcasters will use them. Sometimes traps will use these spells (or even upgraded versions of these spells) as their payload. And there are some magical items usable by your party that mimic these spell effects.

All of the priest spell lines get the core healing spells, though they come at different levels and endurance costs. Divine casters get access to the spells earlier than Nature casters, who in turn get them earlier than Dark Magic casters. Besides earlier direct-healing, Divine Magic gets unique access to anti-undead spells, restoration magic, and some “buffs” that directly affect defense, accuracy, and armor. Dark Magic, by contrast, gets the most spells that do damage-over time and cripple opponents with direct attribute loss.  Nature magic emphasizes healing-over time and augmentation of attributes, though it’s a little more general than the other priest magic lines.

So here are a dozen sample spells from Divine and Dark Magic:

Divine Spells
——————————————————–

Name: Pause the Dead
Level: 1
Target: Enemy (Undead Only)
Attack Mod: 0
Rarity: Common
Endurance Cost Mod: 2
Spellstone Cost: None
Upgrades: Duration
Effect: Cause Status Effect – STUNNED: 1 to 2 points.
Description: Stuns an undead creature for a single round. Because not all undead are slow shufflers like zombies.

Name: Halt
Level: 2
Target: Enemy
Attack Mod: -2
Rarity: Common
Endurance Cost Mod: 5
Spellstone Cost: None
Upgrades: Duration
Effect: Cause Status Effect – STUNNED: 1 to 2 points.
Description: Stuns a target for a single round. Just long enough to say, ‘Neener, neener.’

Name: Resist Fire
Level: 3
Target: Friendly
Rarity: Common
Endurance Cost Mod: -1
Spellstone Cost: None
Duration: 10
Upgrades: Duration
Effect: Resist Fire Damage: 6 points.
Description: Protects target from fire damage for a time. Really major damage may get through.

Name: Wake Up!
Level: 3
Target: Friendly
Rarity: Common
Endurance Cost Mod: -2
Spellstone Cost: None
Duration: 1
Upgrades: Effect
Effect 1: Negate Status (STUNNED): 2 to 4 points.
Effect 2: Negate Status (ASLEEP): 2 to 4 points.
Description: Removes or reduces the stun and sleep status on a target friendly creature.

Name: Blessing
Level: 4
Target: Single Friendly
Rarity: Common
Endurance Cost Mod: 0
Spellstone Cost: Basic Spell-Stone
Duration: 4
Upgrades: Duration
Effect 1: Modify Might: 1 point.
Effect 2: Modify Reflexes:1 point.
Effect 3: Modify Luck: 2 points.
Description: Gives target character an edge in several abilities at once (Might, Reflexes, and Luck). Not a huge edge, and not for very long, but it could easily tip the odds in a difficult fight. And most importantly, it gives them good self-esteem.

Name: Shred the Dead
Level: 4
Target: Enemy
Attack Mod: 2
Rarity: Common
Endurance Cost Mod: -2
Spellstone Cost: None
Upgrades: Effect
Effect: Damage (Divine): 6 to 16 points.
Description: Does substantial damage to an undead enemy.

Name: Silence
Level: 6
Target: Enemy
Attack Mod: 0
Rarity: Common
Endurance Cost Mod: 0
Spellstone Cost: None
Upgrades: Effect
Effect: Cause Status Effect – SILENCED: 3 to 8 points.
Description: Used to get your opponents to finally quit talking. Not very handy, unless that talking is actually spellcasting, in which case it can be incredibly useful to shut them up.

Name: Break the Silence
Level: 6
Target: Single Friendly
Rarity: Common
Endurance Cost Mod: -2
Spellstone Cost: None
Duration: 4
Upgrades: Duration
Effect: Negate Status (SILENCED): 3 to 8 points.
Description: Ends or reduces the silence status on one character.

Name: Mass Restore Sight
Level: 8
Target: Party
Rarity: Common
Endurance Cost Mod: -2
Spellstone Cost: Basic Spell-Stone
Duration: 4
Upgrades: Duration
Effect: Negate Status (BLIND): 3 to 8 points.
Description: Restores sight to the recipients – or at least reduces the blindness duration. It still won’t help them see things your way, though.

Name: Mass Consequential Healing
Level: 10
Target: Friendly Group
Rarity: Common
Endurance Cost Mod: 6
Spellstone Cost: Advanced Spellstone
Upgrades: Effect
Effect: Healing: 8 to 20 points.
Description: This spell provides a fairly respectable amount of healing to take place on the target. Unfortunately, enemy combatants have been known to undo the effects of this spell in less time than it takes to cast it. (Divine Version)

Name: Mass Reap the Dead
Level: 11
Target: Enemy Group
Rarity: Rare
Endurance Cost Mod: -2
Spellstone Cost: Intermediate Spellstone
Upgrades: Effect
Effect: Damage (Divine): 8 to 18 points.
Description: Does substantial damage to all undead enemies.

Name: Massive Healing
Level: 11
Target: Single Friendly
Rarity: Common
Endurance Cost Mod: 6
Spellstone Cost: None
Upgrades: Effect
Effect: Healing: 15 to 31 points.
Description: Heals an incredible amount of damage. The target in need of this spell is likely either on death’s door, or has the constitution of a mammoth.

Dark Spells
——————————————————–

Name: Intimidate
Level: 1
Target: Enemy
Attack Mod: 0
Rarity: Common
Endurance Cost Mod: 0
Spellstone Cost: Basic Spell-Stone
Duration: 5
Upgrades: Effect
Effect: Modify Reflexes: -1 to -2 points.
Description: Shakes up an opponent just enough to throw them off their game (and lower their reflexes one to two points). Not a highly effective spell, but fun to make your targets flinch.

Name: Doom & Boom
Level: 2
Target: Enemy
Attack Mod: 0
Rarity: Rare
Endurance Cost Mod: 2
Spellstone Cost: None
Upgrades: Effect
Effect 1:Damage (Dark): 3 to 10 points.
Effect 2:Modify Luck: -1 to -2 points.
Description: Reduces the victims luck by a point or two. Then demonstrates this by smacking them upside the head with magical damage.

Name: Gobsmack
Level: 2
Target: Enemy
Attack Mod: 0
Rarity: Common
Endurance Cost Mod: 0
Spellstone Cost: None
Upgrades: Duration
Effect: Cause Status Effect – STAGGERED: 3 points.
Description: Knocks your opponent for a loop. They can still act, just not well, for a couple of turns

Name: Creeping Crud
Level: 4
Target: Enemy
Attack Mod: 0
Rarity: Rare
Endurance Cost Mod: 0
Spellstone Cost: Basic Spell-Stone
Duration: 6
Upgrades: Duration
Effect 1: Cause Status Effect – SICKENED: 3 to 8 points.
Effect 2: Damage Over Time (Disease): 3 to 4 points.
Description: Infects target with the symptoms of a really nasty disease. It’s short-lived but pretty disgusting.

Name: Pathetic Worm
Level: 4
Target: Enemy
Attack Mod: 0
Rarity: Rare
Endurance Cost Mod: 2
Spellstone Cost: None
Duration: 5
Upgrades: Duration
Effect: Modify Might: -2 to -3 points.
Description: Does some serious reduction to the target’s Might, and temporarily turns them into wusses.

Name: Flay
Level: 6
Target: Enemy
Attack Mod: 0
Rarity: Common
Endurance Cost Mod: 0
Spellstone Cost: None
Upgrades: Effect
Effect: Damage (Edge): 7 to 16 points.
Description: Imagine a dozen whips made with barbed wire striking the subject from all sides. Actually, you don’t need to imagine it, just cast this spell and see for yourself.

Name: Zot
Level: 7
Target: Enemy
Attack Mod: 0
Rarity: Common
Endurance Cost Mod: 0
Spellstone Cost: None
Duration: 5
Effect: Fool’s Luck: -3 to -4 points.
Description: A nasty spell in the evil priests’ bag of tricks, it curses the victim with bad luck for several crucial seconds.

Name: Stop Thy Foul Utterances
Level: 7
Target: Enemy
Attack Mod: 0
Rarity: Common
Endurance Cost Mod: 0
Spellstone Cost: None
Upgrades: Duration
Effect: Cause Status Effect – SILENCED: 4 to 12 points.
Description: Or S.T.F.U. for short. Silences one’s opponent.

Name: Village Idiot
Level: 8
Target: Enemy
Attack Mod: 2
Rarity: Common
Endurance Cost Mod: 0
Spellstone Cost: None
Duration: 5
Upgrades: Duration
Effect: Modify Brains: -5 to -6 points.
Description: Makes the target much, much more stupid.

Name: Curse of the Slug
Level: 9
Target: Enemy
Attack Mod: 2
Rarity: Common
Endurance Cost Mod: 0
Spellstone Cost: None
Duration: 5
Upgrades: Duration
Effect: Modify Reflexes: -5 to -6 points.
Description: Target becomes sluggish and dull, telegraphing actions and extremely slow to respond to actions.

Name: Netherscorch
Level: 11
Target: Enemy
Attack Mod: 0
Rarity: Common
Endurance Cost Mod: 0
Spellstone Cost: Advanced Spellstone
Upgrades: Effect
Effect: Damage (Fire): 14 to 38 points.
Description: Contrary to popular belief, the name of this spell is derived from the source of the flame rather than its intended target location. But it’s often employed to the latter effect anyway.

Name: Plague
Level: 12
Target: Enemy Group
Rarity: Rare
Endurance Cost Mod: 0
Spellstone Cost: Advanced Spellstone
Duration: 10
Upgrades: Duration
Effect 1:Damage Over Time (Disease): 7 points.
Effect 2: Cause Status (SICKENED): 10 points.
Description: This is a version of Wasting Disease that aflicts an entire party at once. A really vile spell. For villains. Or the ruthless kind of dark hero that’s so popular these days.

Filed Under: Frayed Knights - Comments: 16 Comments to Read



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