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

Posted by Rampant Coyote on July 21, 2011

Here are more excerpts from the rough draft of the Frayed Knights manual. For this installment and the next one, I thought I’d share some actual spells. I’ve decided to only include a sampling here, to reduce viewer fatigue. 🙂  A dozen spells of each magic type.  Today, I thought I’d share the two magic types that the player is guaranteed to have during the game – sorcery, and nature magic.  Next time, I’ll share some spells from two types that players may choose to develop, or may simply find themselves on the receiving end: dark magic and divine magic.

I’ve tried to make Frayed Knights: The Skull of S’makh-Daon a pretty rich, deep game that will appeal to hardcore gamers yet (hopefully) not scare off new players too badly. My thought process throughout the design is to make certain the player has a rich palette of choices through all major activities. There should almost always be something more left in the player’s bag of tricks to try and turn a situation to his advantage – be it a standard action, feat, item selection, drama star power, or magic spells – be it from an activated item (like a potion) or traditional spellcasting. And really, magic is the single biggest source of those options.

I hope you find these interesting. Please note, as always, that these spells are still being balanced and fine-tuned. Almost daily. So none of this information should be considered final.

Spell Descriptions
The following are the spells available in the game, separated by category. And here’s what it all means:

Name: The name of the base spell.

Level: The spell level. A character must be of at least this level, and have an attribute score of this value or higher, to cast the spell.

Target: The type of target this spell effects. It may be one of the following –
SELF – The spell has no target, and only affects the caster, OR it affects the environment and party in a special way.
ENEMY: This spell affects the currently selected enemy in combat.
ENEMY GROUP: This spell affects the entire enemy group, and may hit several (or all) opponents.
FRIENDLY: This spell affects a single target from your own group. You must select the target in the casting menu before you cast the spell.
FRIENDLY GROUP: Every member of your group is affected by the spell, though the actual effects may vary by individual.

Some spells can only affect certain kinds of enemies – specifically (for The Skull of S’makh-Daon) undead.

Attack Modifier: For spells targeting enemies or enemy groups, this is the modifier that gets applied to accuracy (chance of hitting). The higher the value, the more likely the spell will hit its target.

Endurance Cost modifer: Spells have a standard endurance cost based on their level and the caster’s level. But some spells cost more or less endurance than standard – the Endurance Cost Modifer. This is applied before the spell cost is altered by other things, like spellcasting feats.

Duration: The number of turns this spell has an effect. Note that some effects are instantaneous and duration has no effect on these – specifically normal damage,healing, recapacitation, and cause status effect.

Rarity: Common spells are immediately known when the caster is able to cast spells of its level. But “rare” spells are unknown and cannot be cast until the caster learns them through some means – usually by scrolls or as quest rewards.

Spellstone Cost: This is the type of spellstone the caster must expend to cast this spell. The appropriate spellstone must be in the caster’s personal inventory (not the party inventory), and it is permanently expended when used. Base spells only require one spellstone, but higher-level upgrade feats (“Escalate Spells” or higher) require two spellstones.

Upgrades: “None” means the spell cannot be upgraded with a spell upgrade feat. “Effect” means the spell’s effects can be upgraded (where appropriate) by all five feats. “Duration” means the spell’s duration can be extended by using the feats.

Effect: A list of spell effects (as explained in the above section).

Description: A short text description of what the spell does.

 

Sorcerer Spells
——————————————————–

Name: Cheat Sheet
Level: 1
Target: Enemy
Attack Mod: 0
Rarity: Common
Endurance Cost Mod: -4
Spellstone Cost: None
Effect: Special
Description: A wonderful way to violate all kinds of privacy through magic. This spell maximizes the knowledge level of the target enemy for the purposes of the monster journal. You only need to cast this spell once per monster type – it immediately maxes out your knowledge of the creature.

Name: Blurry Form
Level: 2
Target: Friendly
Rarity: Common
Endurance Cost Mod: 0
Spellstone Cost: None
Duration: 6
Upgrades: Duration
Effect: Defense Mod: 2 points.
Description: This spell makes the target shimmer and become blurry in the air. Besides being a great party trick to convince people they’ve had too much to drink, it is also used to make the recipient harder to hit in combat.

Name: Demotivate
Level: 2
Target: Enemy
Attack Mod: 0
Rarity: Rare
Endurance Cost Mod: 3
Spellstone Cost: None
Effect: Cause Status Effect – STUNNED: 1 point.
Description: Target becomes highly uninterested in anything, including survival. Recreational use of this spell on self is not recommended.

Name: Invoke Snoring
Level: 2
Target: Enemy
Attack Mod: 0
Rarity: Common
Endurance Cost Mod: 4
Spellstone Cost: None
Effect: Cause Status Effect – ASLEEP: 2 to 3 points.
Description: Target sleeps. Probably not peacefully, since they are usually in the middle of a fight when this spell hits.

Name: Hustle
Level: 3
Target: Friendly
Rarity: Common
Endurance Cost Mod: 0
Spellstone Cost: None
Duration: 20
Upgrades: Duration
Effect: Haste: 2 points.
Description: Accelerates the target character’s speed by a small amount, giving them an extra action about once every five turns.

Name: Incendiary Crackleball
Level: 4
Target: Enemy Group
Rarity: Common
Endurance Cost Mod: 0
Spellstone Cost: Basic Spell-Stone
Upgrades: Effect
Effect: Damage (Fire): 3 to 12 points.
Description: This lower-level fireball variant sacrifices raw damaging power for a sparkling white-hot storm of incendiary submunitions. While it is unlikely to kill any but the weakest opponents outright, it will cause mild injury to a group of enemies. It also puts out a very awesome display of pyrotechnics.

Name: Nails to Chalkboard
Level: 4
Target: Enemy
Attack Mod: 0
Rarity: Rare
Endurance Cost Mod: 2
Spellstone Cost: None
Upgrades: Effect
Effect: Damage (Sonic): 4 to 14 points.
Description: The caster emits a focused screeching sound guaranteed to make the target’s hair (if any) stand on end. Probably causes some minor rupturing of the blood vessels, too.

Name: Blindness
Level: 5
Target: Enemy
Attack Mod: 0
Rarity: Common
Endurance Cost Mod: 0
Spellstone Cost: None
Upgrades: Duration
Effect: Cause Status Effect – BLIND: 3 to 8 points.
Description: If you keep casting this spell, your opponents will go blind.

Name: Mass Gas
Level: 6
Target: Enemy Group
Rarity: Common
Endurance Cost Mod: 0
Spellstone Cost: Basic Spell-Stone
Upgrades: Duration
Effect: Cause Status Effect – SICKENED: 5 points.
Description: Delivering the extremely toxic (but generally non-lethal) fumes of the legendary Giant Karathian Barking Tree Spider, which sickens a group of opponents for several turns.

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 turns.
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: Rest Stop
Level: 7
Target: Self
Rarity: Common
Endurance Cost Mod: 0
Spellstone Cost: None
Effect: Special
Description: This spell hides the entire party from all perception for several minutes. This otherwise incredible utility is unfortunately rendered less useful by the need for everyone to remain relatively motionless. However, it is perfect for allowing the entire party to rest up and take a breather in the field without risk of interruption by hostile enemies.

Name: Power Word: Defenestrate
Level: 10
Target: Enemy
Attack Mod: 4
Rarity: Common
Endurance Cost Mod: 0
Spellstone Cost: Intermediate Spellstone
Upgrades: Effect
Effect: Damage (Blunt): 13 to 35 points.
Description: Tosses opponent out a magically created window. Yes, we’re serious.

 

Nature Spells
——————————————————–
Name: Negligible Healing
Level: 1
Target: Friendly
Rarity: Common
Endurance Cost Mod: 2
Spellstone Cost: None
Upgrades: Effect
Effect: Healing: 4 to 10 points.
Description: This spell causes a cool heart-shaped lightshow around the target. Some minor healing effects have also been reported.

Name: Writhroots
Level: 2
Target: Enemy
Attack Mod: 0
Rarity: Common
Endurance Cost Mod: 0
Spellstone Cost: None
Duration: 4
Upgrades: Duration
Effect: Defense Mod: -2 points.
Description: This spell causes grasping, binding tendrils of plants to emerge and bind around a target. Besides being incredibly annoying, this also reduces the target’s ability to perform fancy footwork to protect him or herself from attacks.

Name: Life Trickle
Level: 3
Target: Single Friendly
Rarity: Common
Endurance Cost Mod: -2
Spellstone Cost: None
Duration: 8
Upgrades: Effect
Effect: Healing Over Time: 2 points.
Description: Gradually heals the subject by a small amount every turn.

Name: Treat Disease
Level: 3
Target: Friendly
Rarity: Common
Endurance Cost Mod: -2
Spellstone Cost: None
Duration: 8
Upgrades: Duration
Effect 1:Negate Status (SICKENED): 4 to 8 points.
Effect 2:Resist Disease Damage: 6 points.
Description: Removes or reduces the duration of the sickened status, and reduces the damage of disease.

Name: Snakebite
Level: 4
Target: Enemy
Attack Mod: 0
Rarity: Common
Endurance Cost Mod: 0
Spellstone Cost: None
Duration: 5
Upgrades: Effect
Effect 1:Damage Over Time (Poison): 2 points.
Effect 2:Modify Might: -1 to -2 points.
Description: Inflicts an enemy with snakebite venom, causing minor damage over time and a loss of abilities.

Name: Curse of Loose Bowels
Level: 5
Target: Enemy
Attack Mod: 0
Rarity: Rare
Endurance Cost Mod: 0
Spellstone Cost: None
Duration: 7
Effect 1:Modify Might: -1 to -3 points.
Effect 2:Modify Charm: -1 to -3 points.
Description: Don’t ask. Well, okay, the spell causes debilitating cramps in the abdominal region (and below), resulting in a loss of Charm and Might in the victim for the duration.

Name: Restore Sight
Level: 5
Target: Friendly
Rarity: Common
Endurance Cost Mod: -2
Spellstone Cost: None
Duration: 4
Upgrades: Duration
Effect: Negate Status (BLIND): 3 to 8 points.
Description: Restores sight to the recipient – or at least reduces the blindness duration. It still won’t help them see things your way, though.

Name: Mass Life Trickle
Level: 6
Target: Friendly Group
Rarity: Common
Endurance Cost Mod: 0
Spellstone Cost: Basic Spell-Stone
Duration: 8
Upgrades: Effect
Effect: Healing Over Time: 2 points.
Description: Gradually heals the entire party by a small amount every turn.

Name: Annoying Insect Swarm
Level: 7
Target: Enemy Group
Rarity: Rare
Endurance Cost Mod: 0
Spellstone Cost: Intermediate Spellstone
Duration: 5
Upgrades: Duration
Effect 1:Modify Charm: -2 points.
Effect 2:Modify Brains: -2 points.
Effect 3:Modify Reflexes: -2 points.
Description: Annoys an entire group with biting insects. Detracts from their reflexes, brains and charm. Great against caster-heavy groups! Or embarrassing family members!

Name: Debilitating Affliction
Level: 7
Target: Enemy
Attack Mod: 0
Rarity: Common
Endurance Cost Mod: 0
Spellstone Cost: Basic Spell-Stone
Duration: 8
Upgrades: Duration
Effect 1:Damage Over Time (Disease): 6 points.
Effect 2:Cause Status (Sickened): 8 points.
Description: Inflicts a nasty illness upon the target, which damages them and renders them feverish and weak.

Name: Monkey Totem
Level: 10
Target: Friendly
Rarity: Common
Endurance Cost Mod: 0
Spellstone Cost: None
Duration: 17
Upgrades: Effect
Effect: Modify Brains: 5 points.
Description: Makes your target smart and perceptive. Much more so than a monkey, we think, but the spell’s discoverer seemed to hold monkeys in great esteem. +5 to target Brains.

Name: Bloodboil
Level: 12
Target: Enemy
Attack Mod: 0
Rarity: Common
Endurance Cost Mod: 0
Spellstone Cost: Advanced Spellstone
Duration: 12
Upgrades: Effect
Effect: Damage Over Time (Fire): 6 points.
Description: Causing one’s blood to boil isn’t always hyperbole. When it really happens, it’s pretty dang destructive.

 

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

Posted by Rampant Coyote on July 20, 2011

The latest counts in Frayed Knights: The Skull of S’makh-Daon put the number of base spells in the game at just under 150. Yes, ONE HUNDRED FIFTY base spells. I guess there’s no kill like overkill – I’m a little stunned by the count myself. Plus, many of them can be upgraded with the spellcasting upgrade feats as well — and these upgraded versions can be used by enemies and traps as well.  That’s nearly six-hundred variants on top of all this.

I may have gone a little overboard on these.  But I think the testers can attest that the variety is a lot of fun.  And often, necessary.  The right spells – cast directly or through the use of a special item – can turn an overwhelming fight into an easily manageable one.

This week, I figured I’d post up most of the draft version of the Magic and Spells section of the Frayed Knights manual for your enjoyment and exploration. I don’t think I am going to list every base spell in the game here (See?!?!? I can be taught! Maybe there is such a thing as “too much”), but I’ll give you a nice sampling to give you a feel for things. Much of this information will be familiar to people who have followed this blog for a while, but hopefully you’ll find it interesting to see how things have evolved.

Here’s part one:

Magic and Spells

The Frayed Knights have two spellcasters in the party at the beginning of the game: Chloe (a sorceress) and Benjamin (a priest), but any character may gain the ability to cast spells. In addition, there are several items in the game usable by any character that mimic the effects of some spells, such as potions. Enemies may use spells and spell-like special abilities against your party. No matter how you slice it, spell usage is a major part of the game, so you are going to need to know how to use it effectively, and how to defend against it.

The Four Categories of Magic
Magic spells are broken into four categories: Sorcery, and the three priest categories: Divine Magic, Nature Magic, and Dark Magic. Characters with the appropriate feats can cast the spells from that category. There is a little bit of overlap (especially among heal spells), but otherwise the categories are pretty distinct.

Sorcery spells are fueled by the caster’s will exerting its influence over the forces of the cosmos, and are trickier to cast – especially in armor. Priest magic is less direct, requesting the spirits of nature or godlike elder beings to influence reality on the caster’s behalf. Priest magic isn’t inhibited as much by armor, but as the gods are somewhat jealous, and demand that their casters only use one category of priestly magic.

Monsters don’t follow the gods or philosophies of humans, and may use combinations of spells denied to human casters and their allies.

Casting Spells
<Section under construction>

Spell Requirements
In order to cast a spell, a character needs to meet the following requirements:

• The character must have the appropriate feat (or inherent class ability) to cast the spell.
• The character’s level must be equal to or greater than the spell level. In order to cast a level 5 spell, you must be at least level 5.
• The character must know the spell. See the section on “Learning Spells” below.
• The character’s spellcasting attribute (Brains for sorcery, Charm for priest spells) must be equal or greater than the spell level. In order to cast a level 5 spell, you must be at least level 5. There are some feats that allow you to cast spells slightly higher than your attribute level, as well.
• The character must have enough endurance to cast the spell. A spell’s endurance cost depends on its level relative to the caster’s level (it gets cheaper as you increase levels), its endurance cost modifier, and any character feats that reduce the cost of spellcasting.
• The character must have enough spellstones of the appropriate type to cast the spell, if the spell requires spellstones. See the “Spellstones” section below for more information.
• The spell must be appropriate to the circumstance: some spells are combat-only, a few can only be cast when the party is not in combat, and others can be cast at any time.

Those are a lot of conditions, right? Fortunately, the game takes care of all that for you. Only known spells of the appropriate level and condition are displayed in the selection menu. Spells you could normally cast but lack the spellstone or endurance requirements are grayed out but visible.

Learning New Spells
Most spells are commonly known among spellcasters. These common spells are known immediately by any caster qualified to cast them.

But there are also rare spells that must be discovered by casters to be added to their arsenal. This is often done by studying scrolls containing these rare spells. If a character uses a scroll containing a spell he or she qualifies for but doesn’t know already, you will be asked if you want them to learn the spell. This action consumes the scroll, but the spell will be permanently added to the character’s available spell list. Only one character can learn a spell through a scroll. If you want two characters to learn the spell, you will need two scrolls.

Another way to learn rare spells is to be taught – by a computer-controlled character or artifact. When your party is taught a spell, it is now permanently “known” by all party members – even if they cannot cast it yet. If they ever gain the skills and meet the requirements to cast that spell, it will be available in the spellcasting menu.

Spellstones
Most spells only cost endurance to cast, like any other ability. But many of the more powerful spells – particularly those that affect multiple targets at once – require spellstones. These are gem-like stones that contain small amounts of raw magical energy. They come in different types, with the more powerful (and expensive) ones fueling more powerful spells.

The spellstone is consumed by the spell when it is cast. Spellstones can be found as loot, but may also be purchased from some merchants. A caster must have the spellstone in their personal inventory to cast the spell. Base-level spells require only a single spellstone. Spells upgraded with the “Escalate Spells” or higher-powered upgrade feat require two spellstones to cast.

Spellstones may also used to power some magical devices. But only certain skilled artificers know the secrets to using them in this way. Which is a round-about way of saying there may be other uses of spellstones to be found in the game.

Spell Upgrades
A sorcerer or priest can get along quite fine with the standard sets of spells, particularly if they hunt around for those rare ones that aren’t taught in the schools.  In theory, that’s all you’d ever need. But in practice, magical effects aren’t evenly distributed across all spell levels. When your most powerful damaging spell at level 6 might be Deep Fat Fry, but you find yourself facing a creature immune or highly to fire spells, you may find your spell array lacking its usual wallop. Or you may find yourself in a long and drawn-out battle that may require you to re-cast your protective spells in the middle of things. Or you may find yourself in a sticky situation where conserving your energy isn’t nearly as important as getting the bad guy dead as fast as possible.

Those situations – and more – are what spell upgrades are for. There is a progression of five feats that any caster can obtain as he or she levels which spells to be cast at more powerful levels. There are five upgrade feat, which much be obtained in the following order: Augment Spell, Enhance Spell, Escalate Spell, Maximize Spell, and Overcharge Spell. Each upgrade increases the effective casting level of the target spell, along with a corresponding upgrade in effect or duration, endurance cost, and potentially spellstone cost. In general, an upgraded offensive spell might not be quite as efficient as a natural spell of the equivalent level, but it may prove more effective in the short term.

When you choose a spell from the spellcasting menu, the final screen will display upgrade choices (if any) for your chosen spell. By default, no upgrade will be selected. You can click the upgrade level buttons to see the impact on the spell’s endurance and spellstone cost (if any) before committing to casting. To see the upgrade’s actual impact on effect … well, you’ll just have to cast it and find out.

Hitting Enemies
Friendly spells automatically land on all targets. Spells targeting an enemy have a chance of missing, based upon a number of factors: The difference in levels between caster and target, the target’s luck score, the target’s feats, the targets inherent magic resistance, certain kinds of equipment, and so forth.

For spells that target an enemy group, each member of the group is targeted individually, and may miss several. In general, spells targeting an enemy group have a slightly lower accuracy than spells targeting a single opponent.

Duration-Based Effects
Multiple uses of a duration-based spell on a target do not have a cumulative effect – only the spell with the longest duration is maintained. The same is true of status effects – you can’t go “more blind” with multiple blindness attacks.

Spell Effects
Spells may have one or more effects. Some (like Cheat Sheet) are special cases with effects that are unique to the spell. Most spell effects are of the following types:

Damage: Does the given amount of direct damage. Damage has a subtype, which may be affected by vulnerabilities and  resistances (natural and temporary). Special case: For sonic damage, 1/4th of the damage is applied to a reduction in endurance, not hit points.

Damage Over Time: Does the given amount of damage immediately, and then repeats the damage each turn on the character’s action until the duration expires. Like Damage effects, this may be modified by resistances or vulnerabilities.

Healing: Heals target by the given number of points.

Healing Over Time: Heals target by the given number of points, and then repeats the healing each turn on the character’s action until the duration expires.

Cause Status Effect: Causes the given status effects. The points represents the duration of the effect, in turns. (Even if the spell itself has a duration, it does not re-apply the status effect each round).

Defense Modification: Raises or lowers the target’s defense by the given number of points.

Armor Modification: Raises or lowers the target’s armor rating by the given number of points.

Accuracy Modification: Raises or lowers the target’s accuracy by the given number of points.

Haste: Increases the target’s haste level by the given number of points. 1 point of haste gives the target one extra attack every ten turns. A haste of 2 would give the character an extra action every 5 rounds, a haste of 5 would give the target an extra action every other turn, etc.

Recapacitation: Restores a character from incapacitated status. Target will have only one hit point, one point of endurance, and will be at maximum exhaustion when restored, however.  Note that in Frayed Knights: The Skull of S’makh-Daon, the only spell with this effect is above the level cap, so it can only be used via magic items.

Negate Status: Reduces the duration of the given status effect by a number of turns.

Modify Attribute: Modifies the given attribute by the given amount.

Resist Damage: Resists damage of the given type by the given number of points.

 

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But… but… but… I Thought the PC Games Were Dead?!?!

Posted by Rampant Coyote on

Apparently not.

Zeboyd PC Sales Leave XBLIG In the Dust.

A short excerpt from a short article: “In less than a week on Steam, Zeboyd’s Cthulhu Saves The World and Breath Of Death VII have already made more than they did in over a year on Xbox Live Indie Games. Let me repeat that: More in under a week on PC than in over a year on Xbox.”

Yeah.  Dang it, now our little secret is out…

 

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What Modern Gamers Want…

Posted by Rampant Coyote on July 19, 2011

Cristoph Harmann, president of 2K games, recently tried to explain about the rebooting of the X-Com franchise as something nothing like X-Com: ” The problem was that turn-based strategy games were no longer the hottest thing on planet Earth. But this is not just a commercial thing – strategy games are just not contemporary.”

Well, that explains why the last two Civilization games were total flops. And why Galactic Civilizations II made Stardock go bankrupt. And why we never saw Persona 4 on these shores after Persona 3 was such a weird turn-based niche product on an obsolete platform that barely sold in Japan.

Oh, wait. Sorry. Wrong reality. A reality where these mainstream(ish) studio heads like Cristoph Harmann and Matthew Findley live.  They aren’t the only ones by a longshot. They are just the ones who aren’t afraid to publicly voice their opinions to the press in an attempt to woo “modern gamers” to their games by distancing themselves from the past. “We’re new, we’re hip, we know what you want,” they seem to be begging their audience.

It’s easy to heap a lot of nerdrage on these guys. I already have. Craig Stern of Sinister Design pretty much said what I’d say on the more recent matter.  As the mainstream devs keep circling closer around the toilet bowl a generic, unified genre, the indies are the ones out on the fringe making more interesting, unique (at least for this day and age) things. Please support ’em.

While these guys definitely piss me off as an old-school gamer, I have to reluctantly agree that they are right on one level. If you are in the business of game development – as opposed to purely hobbyist stuff – you are making a game for others. You are serving your customers. You need to provide them what they want – even if they don’t really know what it is they want themselves.

So that’s a good thing. Trying to serve a wider group of people – that’s not a bad thing, either.

But… and there’s always a but… there are some problems with this.

First off – implying that your past customers and fans were either foolish, unworthy, or no longer relevant is a crap move.  Trying to win over a larger audience by putting down a smaller one just plain sucks. And whether you intend to or not, pooping on the games they loved does just that. It’s basically saying, “Oh, you quaint provincial rubes who actually liked that stuff made by people who were before my time… I can’t believe you liked that crap, but I’m sure you’ll eventually come to realize that we’re right and you are wrong.”

Just a tip for PR guys. You know, for when you decide that you want to remake Sid Meier’s Civilization as a first-person shooter next.

Secondly – and perhaps more importantly, is this little note: Publishers don’t know what their customer wants.

They’ve got marketing data, sure. It may tell them who is buying their game. They can see how much of Game X is selling in comparison to Game Y. They may have conducted surveys. Some of the latest games that are connected to the Internet all the time provide a bunch of telemetry data telling them how long their game is being played, where players stopped to pick their nose or take a bathroom break, and all that critical knowledge that they are sure you don’t mind having them know about.

But really, all that data is a black box that tells them little about what’s going on inside the heads of 2 million players. It may give them some clues about player preferences with previous games. It may clue them into the level of success of their marketing campaigns. It may give them some great and valuable data about player choices given a particular set of circumstances. But it won’t tell them why. Not without a lot of work.

For a made-up example, maybe the telemetry tells them that players prefer to be on the red team in this game.  And more interestingly, the players with the highest scores tended to be on the red team. Ah-hah! the designers and marketers may infer. Players prefer the color red. Red implies dynamism, action, and violence. And obviously, the better players all gravitated to red, as they have the higher scores. This means that hardcore gamers – their core demographic and their opinion leaders – also prefer red.  Therefore, they decide, they must make games with more RED in them. The logos will be red. Maybe it will take place on Mars, the red planet. And there will be geysers of red blood. Bingo! And this becomes a dogma for the next five generations of games.

But the truth of the matter is that the red uniforms in the game were shaded very similarly to a lot of the repeated background textures, making them much harder for other players to see. This graphical flaw resulted in red team players tending to score more kills that blue team players. The players themselves rarely recognized that issue, but did recognize (if only subconsciously) that they did better when playing on the red team. Thus a situational graphical flaw becomes misinterpreted as a mandate from the customers.

On top of this, players themselves often don’t know what they want. I know I don’t. I’ve found myself sucked into games that I never thought I’d enjoy, and turned off by games that I expected to be favorites. I can express my preferences all day long. Like how I prefer turn-based combat in RPGs. Yep, that’s what I want. But you look at some of my favorite RPGs, and several of the top slots go to games that did not have turn-based combat. Baldur’s Gate 2, Ultima VII, Diablo 2, Ultima Underworld… Apparently I am lying to myself. Or my preference isn’t as strong as I think. Or something.

And even with the best telemetry, marketing research, focus testing, and surveys in the world, it’s really only decent at mapping out the known, not the unknown. Who would have predicted Minecraft‘s success? Certainly not its creator. And our entire industry was blindsided first by casual games, and then by social games. Why? Because they didn’t really understand what their potential customers really wanted. Thus they ceded the exploration of that frontier to independent companies, who in turn ate their lunch.

I read a lot of messages from fellow indies who are venturing into new styles of games, and the fear of the unknown is high. Will people like it? Will people buy it? Sometimes they do. Sometimes they don’t. Branching off from established game styles is tough even for indies – there’s a lot of safety even in mediocre but predictable sales.

And that’s really what it’s about – all this posturing by studio heads trying to establish themselves as kings of the mono-genre mountain. It’s about safety. They are trying to chart the optimal courses along well-established lands and seas in familiar territory. It’s in the name of the customer – or their best guesses as what the lowest-common-denominator customer might buy – but it’s really about trying to dominate the territory well within their comfort zone. It’s not about knowing what the customer wants, but knowing what they know the publisher can sell.  It’s about safety.

Which really brings me back to stating the same point as Craig Stern: “By abandoning the rich diversity of game genres they once called home, the big studios have all but handed them to us.” I am so glad I discovered indie games many years ago. If it weren’t for the indies (and the reciprocal impact that indies have had on mainstream), I think I would have grown *gasp* somewhat bored of gaming by now.

Because they really aren’t making very much of what this gamer wants anymore.

Filed Under: Biz - Comments: 12 Comments to Read

The Feature Creep Cycle

Posted by Rampant Coyote on July 18, 2011

So here’s the feature creep cycle, illustrated by user (including developer) requests:

1) Request – “Man, you really need this one little feature. It would totally take things over the top.”

Implementation time: 4 hours.

2) Request – “The new feature you added is awesome. But it’s got these bugs in it. And it looks kinda tacked-on. It needs some improvement.”

Implementation time: 3 days.

3) Request – “Wow, the new feature is so awesome, it makes the rest of the features that work with it look shabby and poorly designed by comparison.  You need to improve those as well to bring them up to the new standard, and make sure they are all fully integrated with the new feature.”

Implementation time: 3 weeks.

4) Go back to step 1.

The truth of the matter is that none of the requests are wrong. This is the iterative cycle that really, really improves a game and polishes it. Except that it can never get polished to its full potential awesomeness. There’s always one more feature, one more improvement.And they always sound like THE feature that will make the product and take it “over the top.”

With games, I’ve long said that sometimes “feature creep” is the best thing that can happen. I’m not a big design document fan. I think they serve a great purpose, especially for something as complex as a role-playing game, but in the past I feel the industry went overboard. I feel a design document serves as the original “paper prototype” to force vague ideas into tangible form; as a “to do list” for a game through early to mid development, and as something of a schematic to show how the pieces of a more complicated game all work together.  But many of the strengths and weaknesses of a design remain hidden until the game is off the paper and on the screen. It is only after it’s playable that some of the best ideas may be apparent.

So to that extent, those creeping features / scope are actually a very good thing. Taking a hardline approach against feature creep is foolish.

The problem is that these things can very easily destroy a project as well.  The above illustration, where a quick-and-dirty feature that added so much to the game was a quick half-day project that ballooned to taking almost an entire man-month is an example. A couple of those may be exactly what the game needed to turn it from a good game into a great game, or double sales. Too many, and the project descends into hell, gets impossibly muddled, blows its budget and may never ship.

Sometimes the killer features are best reserved for a sequel, expansion, or update.

Being able to know how and where to draw the line is a critical skill. I’m note sure I’m all that good at it. Maybe I should participate in more Game Jams to get better at it.

Filed Under: Game Development - Comments: 7 Comments to Read

Indie RPG News Round-Up: July 2011

Posted by Rampant Coyote on July 15, 2011

I note that as FK development heats up, I have fewer opportunities to peek out from my foxhole to see what else is coming. Thanks to readers for emailing me tips and news – keep ’em coming! Many of today’s items in the world of indie computer RPGs are simply reminders of what has already been posted here, but here’s a quick list of updates:

Magical Diary

It’s out now, for Windows, Mac, and Linux. Try it out if you haven’t already.  You can read my little “quick take” with the demo links here.

Depths of Peril

Yes, Depths of Peril – Soldak’s first game (and for some, their best, though I think I slightly prefer Din’s Curse).  If you haven’t gotten the game yet, you can grab the demo at the above link, which should already be patched. Otherwise, you can upgrade it by visiting the game’s Patch Page for the 1.018 update.  This is the first official patch since 1.015, so there are a lot of included updates, including graphics improvements and some balance tweaks.

Dungeons of Dredmor

It’s out, and on Steam, and even on sale from it’s ridiculously-l0w-price of $5. While I do lament the availability of non-Steam options (I would rather have given them my money directly), I didn’t want to wait to grab my copy until other options became available. Thus I fed the Valve monopoly. I sold my soul for the opportunity to whack Diggles. And so can you. More information here on Steam.

Cthulhu Saves the World / Breath of Death VII Double-Pack

$3. Actually, it’s 10% off of $2.99, so that is $2.69. Even if you are only remotely interested, this is a good deal. I have Cthulhu Saves the World on the X-Box (if I’d have known it would be out for PC, I would have waited. Heck, maybe I’ll just buy it again, at that price.)  These games are goofy little send-ups of the JRPG genre. They are actually competent if not particularly amazing JRPG style games on their own, but the humor is really the reason to get them. As a fan of Lovecraft’s stories, I love Cthulhu as a very reluctant hero in this game.  You can get more information on the Steam site.

There’s also an interesting article on GamePro about these games and Dungeons of Dredmor, and their successful release on Steam earlier this week.  A great quote about the difference between console indie gamers and their PC kin came from BoD VII / CStW developer Robert Boyd via Twitter:

“Gotta love the different reactions to our $3 price tag,” Boyd continued on Twitter. “PC = ‘$3?! That’s awesome! How do these guys make money?’ XBLIG = ‘$3?! What a rip off!'”

Maybe it is the maturity level of PC gamers – and I’m talking from a financial standpoint, not an emotional one.  But that’s a conversation for another post…

Darklight Dungeon Eternity

Jesse Zoeller sent me a link to his YouTube video of the latest alpha build of Darklight Dungeon Eternity – mainly showing off the principle elements in general, what’s available in town and in the UI, etc. It’s not an exciting trailer-type video, but it does give you an idea of what’s in store…

Age of Decadence

The latest word from the Iron Tower Studios folks is pretty exciting. The July update is up, and according to a recent tweet, they expect the demo to be out by November, with the full game coming six to twelve months later.

Frayed Knights

Beta is progressing quite well, though the difficulty level is proving daunting for a few testers. The big problems are becoming fewer and further between, though there remains plenty of small issues, areas needing polish, balance problems, and hard-to-reproduce bugs. This morning, Brian “Skavenhorde” Critser emailed me to announce he’s now the first person to beat the game (without cheating) TWICE, though his second play-through, with the higher difficulty, clocked in closer to 30 hours… even with him knowing where everything was, and skipping an optional dungeon where a game bug prevented entrance.

Telepath RPG: Servants of God

Craig Stern of Sinister Design reports that a new beta of Telepath RPG: Servants of God, with a MAJOR overhaul to optimize the entire game (not to mention streamlining further development considerably) is imminent.  Those who have pre-ordered and have access to the beta will be able to enjoy the update soon.  This looks like a game that should please those who love tactical RPGs, so I’m excited that progress has been able to make a decent lurch forward.

Planet Stronghold

It sounds like the turn-based, story-heavy, sci-fi RPG Planet Stronghold has enjoyed enough success to warrant an expansion (or add-on, as developer Celso Riva calls it on Twitter). I need to bug him for details – or get him to comment here for more.

UPDATE: I asked, and he delivered. From the comments:

“Planet Stronghold will have an expansion called “Warzone“, which I think will become more like a stand-alone game (I’m not sure yet, depends if I can work on a fun strategic gameplay). This because I plan to add a strategic map to the game where you can build/conquer sectors of the planet, and then fight as usual with normal JRPG battles like in the regular game.”

The Legend of Grimrock

(H/t to Craig Stern’s IndieRPGs.com for this one.) This is a first-person dungeon crawler Finnish indie team Almost Human. They’ve released a tiny teaser of the game in development, The Legend of Grimrock, already looking quite beautiful and exciting. And – dare I say it? – Old-School!

Fated Heaven, Chapter One

I haven’t played this JRPG-style game, so I can’t say much about it, other than that you can check it out here.

Timelapse Vertigo

Styg has posted an update in the RG forums of his sci-fi RPG in development, Timelapse Vertigo.

 

Okay, I know I’m missing some newsworthy items, but that’s where you come in. What’s been happening the last four to eight weeks in the world of indie computer RPGs?

 

 

Filed Under: News - Comments: 14 Comments to Read

EPIC PULP!

Posted by Rampant Coyote on July 14, 2011

The lengths I will go through to avoid having to write a new blog post, huh? Anyway, sorry about the down-time of the website today. Everything should be honky-dory now.

To make up for it, here’s a movie trailer that I personally am really looking forward to – if they don’t screw it up. Edgar Rice Burroughs “John Carter of Mars.”

I heard rumors about this a couple of years ago, and I’m glad to see it’s going to happen.

Filed Under: Movies - Comments: 3 Comments to Read

Frayed Knights Manual: Feats, Part 2

Posted by Rampant Coyote on July 13, 2011

(Link to Part 1)

That’s right, two Frayed Knights updates in a row! This time, I do a nice little dump from the manual-in-progress explaining the more interesting feats in Frayed Knights. Again, none of this is 100% final yet, even after release (let alone the sequels), but we’re getting pretty dang close.

One tester was asking about my comments on classes – which classes get which feats automatically, asking why I refer to classes instead of just the names of the characters. That’s a really good question, and I don’t know if I have a great answer, other than 1) Many enemies have character classes as well, and 2) The composition of the party won’t be quite as static in the subsequent games as they are in The Skull of S’makh-Daon, and I’m not planning on making massive changes to the manual between the games if I can at all help it.

Anyway, this concludes the section on feats. For those of you counting, this comes out to nearly 90 (or over 90, if you consider the attribute enhancements as individual feats) feats you can purchase to customize your characters.

One final note before I continue the section dump: Frayed Knights is also class-based. There are additional bonuses that characters receive purely by virtue of their class beyond those available in the feats. For example, there’s a different per-level bonus to hit points and endurance based on class; rogues get a natural bonus to disabling traps and picking locks; sorcerers and priests get a natural bonus to their chance of hitting with their respective spell lines, warriors get a natural attack and damage bonus, and so forth. Sounds like I should write up that part of the manual next, huh?

CATEGORY: Spellcasting
The following feats grant extra performance or options to a character’s spellcasting ability, or grants the character spellcasting ability. As a special note: the gods can get a little jealous. A character can only have one type of priestly magic ability. Once it is chosen, it cannot be changed.

Sorcery
Cost: 2 points
Description: Character can cast Sorcery spells.
Notes: Sorcerers automatically get this feat. The class would be something of a misnomer if they didn’t, don’t you think?

Nature Magic
Cost: 2 points
Description: Character can cast priestly magic of the Nature type.
Notes: Priests automatically get one magic type of Nature, Divine, or Dark.  A character with Nature Magic cannot take the Divine Magic or Dark Magic feats.

Divine Magic
Cost: 2 points
Description: Character can cast priestly magic of the Divine type.
Notes: Priests automatically get one magic type of Nature, Divine, or Dark.  A character with Divine Magic cannot take the Nature Magic or Dark Magic feats.

Dark Magic
Cost: 2 points
Description: Character can cast priestly magic of the Dark type.
Notes: Priests automatically get one magic type of Nature, Divine, or Dark.  A character with Dark Magic cannot take the Divine Magic or Nature Magic feats.

Arcane Runes
Cost: 1 point
Prerequisite: Any Spellcasting Ability
Description: Character can cast spells from scrolls, or learn new spells from scrolls. The spells must be ones that the character can currently cast, or will be able to cast within four levels.
Notes: Sorcerers automatically get this feat.

Wand Usage
Cost: 2 points
Prerequisite: Arcane Runes
Prerequisite 2: Any Spellcasting Ability
Description: Character can cast spells from wands. The spells must be ones that the character can currently cast given their current level.
Notes: Sorcerers automatically get this feat.

Spell Homing
Cost: 1 point
Prerequisite: Any Spellcasting Ability
Description: Single-target spells more likely to hit.

Spell Spread
Cost: 1 point
Prerequisite: Spell Homing
Description: Area-effect offensive spells are more likely to hit their targets as the spell spreads more evenly, filling in nooks and crannies.

Advanced Sorcery
Cost: 1 point
Prerequisite: Sorcery
Description: Increases the limit on maximum sorcery spell level to Brains +1.
Notes: Sorcerers automatically get this feat.

Expert Sorcery
Cost: 1 point
Prerequisite: Advanced Sorcery
Description: Increases the limit on maximum sorcery spell level to Brains +2.
Notes: Sorcerers automatically get this feat.

Advanced Priest
Cost: 1 point
Prerequisite: Any Priest Magic feat
Description: Increases the limit on maximum priest spell level to Charm +1.
Notes: Priests automatically get this feat.

Expert Priest
Cost: 1 point
Prerequisite: Advanced Priest
Description: Increases the limit on maximum priest spell level to Charm +1.
Notes: Priests automatically get this feat.

Loudmouth
Cost: 1 point
Prerequisite: Any Spellcasting Ability
Description: Silence has a shorter duration on this character.

Augment Spells
Cost: 1 point
Prerequisite: Any Spellcasting Ability
Description: Allows Level 1 Spell Upgrades (Beefy and Extended Spells).

Enhance Spells
Cost: 1 point
Prerequisite: Augment Spells
Description: Allows Level 2 Spell Upgrades (Massive and Durable Spells).

Escalate Spells
Cost: 1 point
Prerequisite: Enhance Spells
Description: Allows Level 3 Spell Upgrades (Awesome and Prolonged Spells).

Maximize Spells
Cost: 1 point
Prerequisite: Escalate Spells
Description: Allows Level 4 Spell Upgrades (Hellacious and Protracted Spells).

Overcharge Spells
Cost: 1 point
Prerequisite: Maximize Spells
Description: Allows Level 5 Spell Upgrades (Uber Spells).

CATEGORY: Enhancements
These feats grant passive improvements to the character’s normal abilities.  These are often situational bonuses – natural advantages the character receives under certain circumstances.

Lunge
Cost: 1 point
Description: Character can make extended-reach attack with medium melee weapons without penalty.

Ready For Action
Cost: 1 point
Description: Character receives a high initiative bonus on the first round of combat.

Spell-Slinging Stamina
Cost: 1 point
Description: Character loses less stamina from spellcasting
Notes: Sorcerers automatically get this feat.

Deft Fingers
Cost: 1 point
Description: Character is skilled at picking locks and disarming traps.

Point Blank Shot
Cost: 1 point
Description: Character can use a ranged weapon to attack targets at point-blank with no penalty.

Hangfire Reaction
Cost: 1 point
Description: Character is more likely to take reduced effect from a trap.

Effortless Casting
Cost: 1 point
Prerequisite: Spell-Slinging Stamina
Description: Spells require even less endurance to cast than with Spellslinging Stamina.

Quick Healer
Cost: 1 point
Description: Healing spells and potions are slightly more effective on this character than normal.

Spell Blocker
Cost: 1 point
Prerequisite: Any Spellcasting Ability
Description: Character receives a high defensive bonus for inbound offensive spells.

Improved Spell Blocker
Cost: 1 point
Prerequisite: Spell Blocker
Description: Character is very impressive with blocking enemy spells.

Group Spell Blocker
Cost: 1 point
Prerequisite: Spell Blocker
Description: Character’s spell-blocking ability affects the entire party.

Alert
Cost: 1 point
Description: Character recovers full faculties quickly. Stun and Sleep durations are reduced.

Quick Draw
Cost: 1 point
Description: Character enjoys a speed bonus when wielding thrown weapons.

Turtler
Cost: 1 point
Prerequisite: Guard
Description: Character is so well protected when defending that they can even blunt some of the damage they take if they are hit.

Awareness
Cost: 1 point
Description: Character is adept at searching for hidden objects and ambushes.

Rapid Recovery
Cost: 1 point
Description: Character recovers more quickly from fatigue from resting, and receives long-term exhaustion more slowly.

Energy Conservation
Cost: 1 point
Description: Character uses less endurance when performing active feats.

Monster Watcher
Cost: 1 point
Description: Monster journal updates with every successful encounter. Character gains combat bonus against familiar foes.

Goes the Distance
Cost: 1 point
Description: Character has significantly more endurance than normal (+10).

Hardy
Cost: 1 point
Description: Character is harder to kill (+5 hit points).

Extra Hardy
Cost: 1 point
Prerequisite: Hardy
Description: Character is harder to kill (+10 hit points total, including the bonus from Hardy).

Size Doesn’t Matter
Cost: 1 point
Description: Small weapons gain +1 Base Damage and +1 Accuracy when wielded by this character.
Notes: Rogues automatically get this feat.

Speedy
Cost: 1 point
Description: Character acts just a little faster than most, acting as if under 10% haste in combat.

Extra Speedy
Cost: 1 point
Prerequisite: Speedy
Description: Character’s actions are even faster, acting as if under 20% haste in combat.

Point Person
Cost: 1 point
Description: If this character is in the front rank, he or she has the chance of detecting a random encounter before it happens, allowing the party the choice of whether or not to engage.

Mechanical Aptitude
Cost: 1 point
Description: Character gains a +2 bonus to any lockpicking or trap disabling action when using a rogue tool.
Notes: Rogues automatically receive this feat.

CATEGORY: Skills
Skills are either new active abilities that can be accessed by the spellcasting / feats menu, or special abilities activated by other actions (like defending), or enhancements to other skill feats. Any active feat may have an endurance cost required to use it. Most active feats are combat-based, but Bind Wounds can take place in or out of combat, and Battle Dressing can only be used outside of combat. Both Bind Wounds and Battle Dressing will be used if the player chooses to auto-heal while resting.

Dual Wield
Cost: 2 points
Description: Character can fight with an offensive weapon in each hand – but at a penalty

Improved Dual Wield
Cost: 1 point
Prerequisite: Dual Wield
Description: Character can fight with two offensive weapons with minimal penalties.

Linebacker
Cost: 1 point
Description: A character with this feat offers some protection to those behind him or her. This protection goes up even more if the character is defending.

Bind Wounds
Cost: 1 point
Description: Character can heal self by a small amount, even in mid-combat.

Rank-Smack
Cost: 1 point
Prerequisite: Aggressive Attack
Description: Character can attack an entire rank at once with a bludgeon, blade, or axe.

Guard
Cost: 1 point
Description: Increases defense bonus when defending.

Crippling Strike
Cost: 1 point
Prerequisite: Slam
Description: A nasty attack that leaves the opponent briefly debilitated.

Fast Feet
Cost: 1 point
Description: This feat increases the chance of escape when fleeing combat.

Impale
Cost: 1 point
Prerequisite: Lunge
Description: With a spear weapon, character can sacrifice accuracy for significantly extra damage in an all-out thrust.

Slam
Cost: 1 point
Description: Character sacrifices significant damage on a melee attack in order to knock an opponent off-balance or even stun them.

Skewer
Cost: 1 point
Prerequisite: Impale
Description: With a spear weapon, character can sacrifice accuracy for a chance to hit both the primary target and a random target one rank behind.

Battle Dressing
Cost: 1 point
Prerequisite: Bind Wounds
Description: As Bind Wounds, but more effective and functions on the entire party. This is a non-combat action only, and takes 1 turn per party member.

Cautious Attack
Cost: 1 point
Description: Character can accept a lower chance of hitting in exchange for better defense. Not quite as good as defending, but close.

Aggressive Attack
Cost: 1 point
Description: Character can accept a reduced defensive value in exchange for a higher chance of hitting.

Fierce Attack
Cost: 1 point
Description: Character increases maximum potential damage in an attack, in exchanged for penalties to chance of hitting and defense.

Magic Guard
Cost: 1 point
Description: When character defends, he or she (or it) gains a defensive bonus against magical attacks as well.

Spell-Dodger
Cost: 1 point
Prerequisite: Magic Guard
Description: Character is more adept than usual at avoiding magical effects.when defending

Fade
Cost: 2 points
Description: Character can fade into the chaos of melee, sneaking into position to make a surprise attack with a substantial bonus to attack and damage against any opponent with no range penalties.
Notes: Rogues automatically have this feat.
It takes an action to “fade,” after which the character is harder to hit (+4 defense). Their faded condition lasts until the next combat action, whereupon they can make any kind of melee or missile attack against any enemy without a range penalty – they can circle around the enemy group for a surprise attack. They get a +4 bonus to hit, and a damage bonus based on their Luck attribute. If a character is damaged while faded, the faded condition is ended prematurely.

Auto-Fade
Cost: 2 points
Prerequisite: Fade
Description. The character begins each non-ambush combat in the faded state, for free.

Dirty Fighting
Cost: 2 points
Prerequisite: Fade
Description: Attacks made while this character is faded have a chance to stagger, blind, or even stun an opponent.

Filed Under: Frayed Knights - Comments: 22 Comments to Read

Frayed Knights Manual: Feats, Part 1

Posted by Rampant Coyote on July 12, 2011

(Link to Part 2)

Frayed Knights is a pretty big, detailed  game, and is gonna have a pretty substantial manual. My poor testers have been laboring without one, and have sometimes had trouble figuring out whether or not something is a bug with how certain things work. This means that, in addition to fixing lots of bugs, trying to get a new beta out every week-and-a-half or so, working 10-12 hour days on the day job, posting regular updates on this blog, and making sure my family knows that I still exist, I have to write the manual.

To hold on to what shreds of sanity I have remaining, I thought I’d combine a couple of tasks. Specifically, the blog and the manual. I know, reading manuals is not most people’s idea of fun (that’s why they’ve gone the way of the dodo in mainstream games), but for some RPG fans (like me) it can be part of the fun. If not, well, you can skim over it if you are interested, ignore the post entirely otherwise.

Today I thought I’d post part of the section on Feats.  The more boring part, actually – it’s all attribute enhancements and proficiency skills. Boring, but very valuable to have. The more fun and interesting feats will be in part two, which I will post later this week. I wish to stress that while we’re pretty close to the end,  none of this is 100% cast in stone. We might even add new feats or change things post-release, as far as I am concerned. But for now – this is how it is.

Enjoy, and please provide feedback or questions if you feel so inclined.

 

FEATS

In the world of Frayed Knights, adventurers typically fall into one of the four roles defined by the classes. But this doesn’t mean that they are all alike! You can customize your characters as they progress through the game to give them specializations, bonuses, additional skills, or even the abilities of another class. This is done by purchasing feats. Do you want Arianna to cast holy spells like a divine priestess? Do you want Chloe to be an expert archer?  Make Benjamin less vulnerable to spells? This is all possible through feats and attribute enhancements.

Each level (and possibly at other times, such as a quest reward) characters receive one or more character points which can be used to buy feats or attribute enhancements. You can choose to spend the points immediately, or you can save them. Most feats cost only a single character point, but some cost two points. Feats are only purchased once.

Most feats give you passive situational bonuses, or unlock access to use certain items. Four spellcasting feats – Sorcery, Nature Magic, Divine Magic, and Dark Magic – unlock access to spells, allowing any character to use magic (though not as well as the class for whom those spells come automatically). Some grant enhanced functionality to actions like defending in combat. And some grant entirely new actions – particularly special attacks – that can be accessed from the spellcasting and feats menu.

Many feats have prerequisites. You must already have the prerequisites in order to purchase any feat. If you don’t have the prerequisites (or don’t have enough points to purchase it), the feat won’t even appear in the available list. In addition, the priest spellcasting feats (Nature Magic, Divine Magic, and Dark Magic) are mutually exclusive, as the gods are jealous. A character can have only one of these feats.

Feats are broken into five categories – mainly for convenience when choosing a new feat to purchase. These are: Attribute Enhancements, Proficiencies, Spellcasting, Enhancements, and Skills.

CATEGORY: Attribute Enhancements

Might, Reflexes, Brains, Charm, and Luck
Cost: 1 or 2 points
Description: These are treated as feats for the purpose of buying them, but they are really more of a general option a player can spend his character points on at any time. You can increase any of the character’s five attributes (Might, Brains, Charm, Reflexes, and Luck) by +1.

If the attribute is less than ten, the cost is one point. For attributes currently at ten or above, the cost doubles. There is no maximum value to any attributes.

CATEGORY: Proficiencies
The following feats allows the character to equip certain types of armor and weapons, or gives them additional attack and damage bonuses for extra skill.

Light Armor
Cost: 1 point
Description: Character can wear light or medium armor.
Notes: Warriors, rogues, and priests automatically have this feat

Heavy Armor
Cost: 1 point
Prerequisite: Light Armor
Description: Character can wear heavy armor.
Notes: Warriors and priests automatically have this feat

Weapon Competence: Blades
Cost: 1 point
Description: Character can wield blade weapons (swords, daggers, etc.).
Notes: Warriors and rogues automatically have this feat

Weapon Competence: Bows
Cost: 1 point
Description: Character can wield bows and crossbows.
Notes: Warriors and rogues automatically have this feat.

Weapon Competence: Spears
Cost: 1 point
Description: Character can wield spears and pole arms.
Notes: Warriors and priests automatically have this feat

Weapon Competence: Bludgeons
Cost: 1 point
Description: Character can wield bludgeons (clubs, staffs, maces, etc).
Notes: All classes have this feat automatically.

Weapon Competence: Throwing
Cost: 1 point
Description: Character can wield thrown weapons.
Notes: All classes but sorcerers automatically have this feat.

Weapon Competence: Axes
Cost: 1 point
Description: Character can wield axes.
Notes: Warriors automatically have this feat.

Shield Competence
Cost: 1 point
Description: Character can use shields.
Notes: Warriors automatically have this feat.

Weapon Expertise: Blades
Cost: 1 point
Prerequisite: Weapon Competence: Blades
Description: Character gains +2 to attacks with blade weapons.

Weapon Expertise: Bows
Cost: 1 point
Prerequisite: Weapon Competence: Bows
Description: Character gains +2 to attacks with bows.

Weapon Expertise: Spears
Cost: 1 point
Prerequisite: Weapon Competence: Spears
Description: Character gains +2 to attacks with spears and pole arms.

Weapon Expertise: Bludgeons
Cost: 1 point
Prerequisite: Weapon Competence: Bludgeons
Description: Character gains +2 to attacks with bludgeoning weapons.

Weapon Expertise: Thrown
Cost: 1 point
Prerequisite: Weapon Competence: Throwing
Description: Character gains +2 to attacks with thrown weapons.

Weapon Expertise: Axes
Cost: 1 point
Prerequisite: Weapon Competence: Axes
Description: Character gains +2 to attacks with axes.

Shield Expertise
Cost: 1 point
Prerequisite: Shield Competence
Description: Character gains +2 defensive bonus when using a shield  (on top of the shield’s own defensive bonus).

Weapon Mastery: Blades
Cost: 1 point
Prerequisite: Weapon Expertise: Blades
Description: Character gains +2 to attacks with blade weapons (in addition to the Expertise bonus).

Weapon Mastery: Bows
Cost: 1 point
Prerequisite: Weapon Expertise: Bows
Description: Character gains +2 to attacks with bows (in addition to the Expertise bonus).

Weapon Mastery: Spears
Cost: 1 point
Prerequisite: Weapon Expertise: Spears
Description: Character gains +2 to attacks with spears and pole arms (in addition to the Expertise bonus).

Weapon Mastery: Bludgeons
Cost: 1 point
Prerequisite: Weapon Expertise: Bludgeons
Description: Character gains +2 to attacks with bludgeoning weapons (in addition to the Expertise bonus).

Weapon Mastery: Thrown
Cost: 1 point
Prerequisite: Weapon Expertise: Thrown
Description: Character gains +2 to attacks with thrown weapons (in addition to the Expertise bonus).

Weapon Mastery: Bludgeons
Cost: 1 point
Prerequisite: Weapon Expertise: Axes
Description: Character gains +2 to attacks with axes (in addition to the Expertise bonus).

Shield Mastery
Cost: 1 point
Prerequisite: Shield Expertise
Description: Character gains +2 defensive bonus when using a shield (in addition to the Expertise bonus).

 

Filed Under: Frayed Knights - Comments: 11 Comments to Read

Big Beta Update for Telepath RPG: Servants of God

Posted by Rampant Coyote on

Craig Stern of Sinister Design emailed me to say the following:

I just wanted to give you a heads-up: I’m prepping for a big update to Telepath RPG: Servants of God in the next few weeks. There will be new dungeons, new attacks, lots of bug fixes, and best of all, a single install file that works equally well on PC, Mac and Linux.

Here’s the post with the update:

http://sinisterdesign.net/?p=961

Those who have pre-ordered will be able to check it out pretty soon.  The big problem he’s been facing is that the game was literally just too big for the underlying game engine.  (I believe Sword & Sorcery: Underworld has had the same problem). He’s now broken it up into multiple chunks which should be pretty seamless to the user. Best of luck… I’m expecting to compete with him this year for indie RPG of the year.

Filed Under: Game Announcements - Comments: Read the First Comment

What Does “Old School RPG” Mean To You?

Posted by Rampant Coyote on July 11, 2011

I kinda tripped over this one working on the manual for Frayed Knights: The Skull of S’makh-Daon this weekend. Frayed Knights was inspired by favorite old-school RPGs, particularly games like the Wizardry, Ultima, and Bard’s Tale series. Oddly, when I first started I think I would have listed Wizardry VII: Crusaders of the Dark Savant was my biggest inspiration. It isn’t a game I actually ever played to completion (yet), nor my favorite of the series (that would be Wizardry 8). But I think I was entranced by the potential of the game even more than its actual implementation, and in many ways it epitomized this style of RPG for me. It represented a particular style of RPG at its height. Watching Demiath’s little video here still inspires me and gets me jonesing to pull up my most recent saved games and get playing it some more.

But as much as Wizardry VII acted as a representative for “old school RPG” for me, it’s hardly representative of even the games of its immediate era. It’s really hard for me to really put my finger on what characterizes an “old school RPG” because – seriously – the genre was a lot more diverse 20 years ago than it is today (unless you include indies, who are really bringing that back).

Let’s say you cut off “old school” at 15 years ago – approximately the halfway point of the life of the genre to this point. Now, as of today this would actually disqualify Fallout, Baldur’s Gate, and (by a hair) Diablo. What if we went a little further and just limited it to DOS-based games, eliminating the purely console games or the less popular games on other computer systems? Would there be any unifying characteristics that would set them apart from today’s games, besides purely technological ones?

I’m really not sure.  I played (and enjoyed) Al-Qadim: The Genie’s Curse back in 1994 or so, and that was way more “action” than RPG, D&D license or not.  As I’ve often mentioned, Ultima VII – still my favorite RPG – was almost ridiculously stats-light (and tactics-light) and story-heavy. The Elder Scrolls games are almost direct descendents of Ultima Underworld.  You have a genre that encompasses Rogue, Starflight, Dungeon Master, the AD&D “Gold Box” games, Beyond Zork (marginally), Darklands, Twilight: 2000 (with a 3D tank “simulator” mini-game), Princess Maker (it was released for DOS, after all), Journey, Hillsfar, Space Rogue, Betrayal at Krondor, and… well, you get the idea.

While some can argue about the “RPGness” of some of these titles (I still do), but the bottom line is that it’s a broad field. “Old school” is really either based on subjective preference, or in relation to certain features that were once popular but have since become pretty rare. Things like turn-based combat, or group-based adventures (somewhat distinguished from the player + companions approach found today). Big spell lists, and the need to return to a “home base” to rest up and prepare for the next fight comes to mind. These are hardly universal characteristics, but those are the kinds of things I think of when I think “old school RPG.”

Aside from low-res 2D graphics and ancient interfaces, what does “old school RPG” mean to you?  what features make you feel nostalgic? What game or games epitomize the “old school flavor” in your mind?

 

Filed Under: Retro - Comments: 20 Comments to Read

Reading the Magical Diary

Posted by Rampant Coyote on July 8, 2011

Last weekend, my family and I went to visit my in-laws. I brought my laptop. And a copy of Hanako Games’ new game, Magical Diary: Horse Hall. I spent an entire afternoon playing the game.  I don’t know why this surprised me – I really happily surrendered some “man points” and loved the Cute Knight games.  Magical Diary: Horse Hall is part Cute Knight, part visual novel, and part Harry Potter fan fiction.

Admit it, you have someone in your life who will secretly go “squee” hearing that combination. It might even be you.

The game takes place at a school for magical youth in the United States. You play a girl (sorry, no gender choice with this one, though Hanako hasn’t ruled it out as a possibility for a future installment should this become a series… yes, please) beginning her freshman year, a “wild seed” who is the first of her family to bear these special talents. Consequently, she has no concept of how magical society works.

Sound familiar? Well, it only makes sense, as it allows the player to discover the ins and outs of life as a young witch with their character.  However, the game takes pains to create a unique world of magical entities that only resembles the world of J. K. Rowling in some superficial ways.  A big part of the fun is exploring this world as your character. I don’t want to give away spoilers, but the game won me over in a big way when I found an opportunity to try out a new magical spell at a dance. “What would happen if…?” The results were not good, but were incredibly satisfying to me, personally.  It was a great story point.

The school isn’t just for young wizards and witches. It appears to be home to fairy-folk, a possible vampire (I didn’t really meet her in my original play-through), a demonic character, and possibly other youth not entirely from the mortal world. While they start out fanciful and cute, there can be serious repercussions for taking them too lightly. Magical Diary isn’t afraid to get a little dark. The world isn’t safe. And those who seem cute, nice, encouraging, and trustworthy might not be. There are unhappy things afoot, and sometimes you may only be involved on the periphery of them (though I expect in future play-throughs I may find myself in the middle of hem).

Another thing that really worked for me is the commentary on decisions. So often in RPGs you only get the option to do something obviously correct or obviously stupid or evil. In Magical Diary, most of the decisions were far more interesting than that, and a running commentary justified the decision very much the way I did in my own mind. Maybe I’m just on the same mental wavelength as the designer, but this addition really helped the game come alive for me. In fact, the main character appealed to me a lot for this very reason — she doesn’t jump to conclusions (or actions) that I disagreed with. The game leaves that up to the player. She overhears things, notes things, and files them away for future reference for the player to deal with.  This way, none of the actions seem forced.

Besides making decisions at various events (which can lead to completely different events down the road, from what I can see), much of the gameplay is about building your character through your choices of activities. Unlike other schools, going to class is completely optional and you take the classes at your own pace. Each week you make out a schedule of what you will do – attend a magical class in one of the several types of magic (hopefully raising your skill in those types of magic, and allowing you to learn new spells), attend gym (increasing your “Strong” score), study (increasing your “Smart” score), or just resting. Resting is important – all other activities raise your stress level, and your performance degrades as stress increases. Certain activities, decisions, and equipment (which you can buy in a special shop in the mall) can modify your other attributes – including the “Cute” and “Weird” scores. While “Cute” and “Weird” have no advantage to you in the tests, they seem to be used to determine which events happen to your character – and what relationships become available.

And speaking of tests – these occur about once a month in game-time. This is about right – much more frequent, and they might get tedious, but as it was I was looking forward to them. You are tested by being locked in a dungeon, and need to use your spells and skills to overcome the challenges to escape. At any point you can give up and fail the test – a single failure won’t hurt you much. The fun part is that there is no single way to pass the challenges. You need to take advantage of what spells you know to find a solution. You must be careful as well, as you have only limited spell points to power your efforts.

As far as replayability, I hope Georgina doesn’t mind if I share what she emailed me about the subject: “The dungeon puzzles themselves will stay the same on subsequent playthroughs, although if you build different skillsets you will need to look for different solutions to them. Most of the variation in multiple playthroughs comes from character interaction – who you choose to romance/befriend, how well you do at it, whether or not you win the class election, whether or not you get involved in the secret society, and so on.”

The only thing I really found missing in this game is a limitation in the visual novel approach: It is very demanding content-wise on the developer, and it does limit the degree in which I could explore the game. You can’t introduce yourself to characters until your story presents the opportunity to do so.  You don’t get enough opportunities to experiment with your spells until it’s time to take the tests.

I’m planning on putting the game up in the Rampant Games store over the weekend, but if you can’t wait to check it out for yourself (or have a friend try it out), here’s a link to the demo:

Magical Diary (Windows Version)

Magical Diary (Mac Version)

Magical Diary (Linux Version)

And here’s the trailer video if you haven’t seen it already:

Filed Under: Game Announcements, Impressions - Comments: 9 Comments to Read

Roll a D20 to Hit: Using Dice-And-Paper Rules in a Computer RPG.

Posted by Rampant Coyote on July 7, 2011

In his email to me, Craig Stern referred to his article called “The Battle System I Wish RPGs Would Quit Using” as flame-bait. He argues that the old Dungeons & Dragons rules model has long outlived its usefulness. Left at that, he’s probably in good company – even Dungeons & Dragons itself has moved pretty far from its starting point.  (And yeah, dude, THAC0 – “To Hit Armor Class Zero” – has been dead and buried for well over a decade…)

Virtues of a Good RPG System

He points out the reasons he isn’t happy with a D&D-style game system. All of his points are valid ones. If I could turn his negatives into positives, here are the virtues that a CRPG system should possess:

• Streamlined – A good CRPG system should be elegant and well-organized, not ad-hoc as the old D&D systems were.
• Player Understanding – the resulting effect of the (hopefully streamlined) rules should be easy for the player to deduce. The exact formulas don’t need to be comprehended in their entirety, but the player should have a feel for what happens if you tweak the variables.
• Not Too Random – Too much randomness and it becomes a game of luck, not skill.
• Not dependent upon the mercy and creativity of a living human game master

Historical Virtues of the D&D System in CRPGs

I agree with all of these points in principle.  I do take some exception to the contention that the D&D rules were somehow the antithesis of these principles, however. Let’s go back to why D&D style rules were used in the first place…

1) Player Familiarity. Most CRPG players in the 70’s and 80’s played D&D. They understood about rolling stats on 3D6 and understood the 3-18 range pretty intuitively.  They understood that a +1 to hit meat about a 5% better chance of hitting something. They knew what a cleric did, and what a fighter did. While it was still critical to RTFM, the familiar rules system was as important a baseline for RPG fans as WASD controls is first-person shooters are today.

2) Simplicity. The original D&D system – the “White Box” era that most early RPGs were based on – was actually pretty dang simple. Actually, in many ways it was too simple, and the rules didn’t foster the kind of emergent complexity Craig talks about. It spawned a thousand home-brew rules sets, of which the best ideas were incorporated (if often poorly) into Advanced Dungeons & Dragons years later.

3) Designer Familiarity. Let’s face it, it’s far easier to build on existing, well-known foundation than it is to come up with a new system from scratch. This is no less true today – why do you think the stores are overwhelmed with games that adhere to the same basic gameplay? The D&D rules were known to designers – both in its strengths and weaknesses – and almost as importantly, it had been tested and known to work. Not perfectly, maybe not even well, but tens of thousands (eventually, even millions) of gamers had put it through its paces.

Sloppy? Moi?

So those are historical reasons for using the D&D system. But let’s take a look at some of his other criticisms:

Is D&D sloppy and inscrutable? Maybe, but compared to what? Many RPGs I’ve played, with custom combat systems, are even more inscrutable, and aren’t transparent enough for me to judge whether or not they are sloppy. Maybe I know that when my strength goes up by X, my damage with my current weapon goes up by Y.  But really, while I like seeing how numbers change, I don’t track relationships and I don’t really understand the relationships between values. This is especially true with action-RPGs, where I may not even be sure that a particular stat does anything. In fact, I think it was Ultima VII where the Dexterity score literally wasn’t implemented to do anything in-game. But they left it in for the role-players.

It’s only because of the visibility into the D&D system – or ability to deduce similar operations in other CRPG rules systems – that we can perceive any sloppiness in the system. And then there’s the question of what really IS sloppy. You can argue that an exception-based ruleset is sloppy, but I think it’s the exceptions that make the game interesting. If every magical attack does exactly 5 points of damage per spell level, there are few interesting decisions to be made there. But if this one spell actually does more damage than that, and breaks the consistency of the system – well, that’s interesting.  Assuming that the extra power comes at a cost, I’d not call that sloppiness. I’d call it an interesting decision.

Chess has some significant exceptions to otherwise simple, straightforward rules as well. What about the pawn’s first move allowing 2 squares of movement instead of one? And the en passant rule needed to make that work? Pawns in general are pretty unusual compared to the other pieces. And castling? Those do seem, to me, to be departures from what was otherwise a very simple, streamlined set of rules. But I think they make the game much more interesting.

Sure, there’s a point in any rules system where too many exceptions could become a convoluted mess.  But most implementations in the past of D&D-style rules variants into CRPGs were fairly basic. I don’t know that many got too carried away. If anything, most really tried to simplify the D&D rules system (and add their own variations) rather than going overboard with the complexity.

Randomness  (In Moderation) Is Good

Now onto the biggest subject: Randomness. Craig’s game doesn’t have randomness in combat resolution. There are many games that do not. They can be a lot of fun.

But for me, a lot of the fun (and skill) in RPGs comes from manipulating the system to get luck on your side. And the chance of failure – no matter how carefully you’ve tried to work the odds – keeps things exciting, and demands risk management. Sure, you may be 90% likely to kill the dragon before it gets the chance to attack again… but what happens if you don’t? Can you survive another onslaught of its fiery breath? Is it better to plan accordingly, sacrifice your chance of a quick kill to reduce your vulnerability?

Doing this does require an understanding of the rules – one of those virtues listed above. Should the player use up a valuable spell point to cast bless at the beginning of the fight, or save it for a critical heal spell later in the fight? In a fully deterministic game, you may be able to predict the exact results in advance (if the AI is also predictable). In a game with randomness, you are playing the odds.  For me, the latter feels more “realistic” and less like a board game – we never understand all the variables going into a situation. A major reason I quit playing the Hero rules system in our dice-and-paper sessions in favor of 3rd Edition D&D was that the bell curve for Hero made things a little too deterministic for all but a narrow range of values. It got boring.

My most memorable and exciting game moments in RPGs are often when our group succeeded – or failed – via longshot odds. Like the time the party rogue managed to get really lucky on the first shot with an arrow of undead slaying against a powerful vampire wizard. Or when the monk, cornered by a large monster and unlikely to survive another round against it, shouted for the magic user to go ahead and fireball them both, because “he could take it.” A 20% chance of failure bit him, as well as a surprisingly high roll on 7d6 for fireball damage that took him down to exactly -10 hit points. Or there was the time when a series of brash decisions led me to the point where my survival depended on a 50/50 dice roll to see if I could jump to hyperspace out before the incoming missiles hit.

Sure, the failures due to random chance suck. But the awareness of the chance of failure is what makes success much more entertaining.

That doesn’t invalidate the point about D&D being too random. Some randomness is good. Pure randomness is bad. But the exact threshold of “some” is a fuzzy, subjective thing. Is D&D too random for CRPGs? Possibly. For some players, I think so. But I played a little Icewind Dale recently – using the Baldur’s Gate combat system that remains one of the most authentic implementations of the Advanced Dungeons & Dragons 2nd edition rules. In one fight, I found myself getting my butt kicked repeatedly until I buckled down and quit depending upon luck. I paused the game, cast the buffs, applied movement and positioning to my advantage, focused on range and line of sight issues, and otherwise got nice and tactical. Suddenly a combat that I couldn’t win without losing half my party became quite manageable. While I didn’t have perfect control over the situation – the randomness forced me to change plans in mid-battle – the impossible fight became merely challenging.

I think anybody who has played Knights of the Chalice to completion will be well-prepared to make a persuasive argument about the skill necessary in this game based on the core ruleset powering 3rd edition Dungeons & Dragons.  Is luck a major factor? Definitely. But so are the skill demands.

Is this rules style too random? I think for my own tastes, the D&D rules are probably a little too random. I think most gamers wouldn’t mind if the curve was bent a little closer to average. But I don’t see it being a big problem.

Optimal? No. Functional? Yes.

Craig’s concern seems to be that modern designers are throwing out the baby with the bathwater, eschewing not only a less-than-perfect older system that was fairly ubiquitous in RPG design 20 years ago, but throwing out turn-based gameplay and everything else associated with slinging the ol’ 20-sider around. One could argue that virtually nobody is actually using the older D&D ruleset he’s complaining about now — Eschalon, Knights of the Chalice, and some roguelikes are the only ones that even come close in recent years, to my knowledge. And no “official” D&D computer games are going to use anything other than 4th edition rules going forward, which IMO don’t have much in common with the older system anyway.

I don’t think the D&D system – especially older editions – are perfect for CRPGs, either. I would definitely encourage game designers to experiment and come up with fully original rules systems if they feel so inclined. But if all else fails, I think starting with a variant of a familiar rules system – even old-school D&D – isn’t a bad way to go.

 

UPDATE: Craig has a follow-up to his own post now up: “12 Ways to Improve Turn-Based RPG Combat Systems.”

Filed Under: Design, Dice & Paper - Comments: 12 Comments to Read

The Empire Strikes Back: The Silent Film

Posted by Rampant Coyote on July 6, 2011

The pivotal scene of The Empire Strikes Back filtered to resemble a 1920s-era film, complete with silent titles and an excellent piano score:

 

I wonder if the prequel trilogy would be good as silent films. Having Jar-Jar silent could only improve things…

Filed Under: Movies - Comments: 2 Comments to Read

Quick Take: Sylia

Posted by Rampant Coyote on

I think at this point it’s pretty safe to say that I’m a somewhat veteran, hardcore computer RPG fan.  Console RPGs, too, to a lesser degree. I guess having played them for longer than some game reviewers have actually been alive might give me a little bit of cred. I’m nowhere near the most veteran, experienced, hard-core players. The CRPG Addict has demonstrated that you can exceed my “decades” of experience in a little over a year of hardcore playing. And he probably had me beat to start with. That’s cool.

I try not to go overboard, but from time to time you’ll catch me grousing about RPGs getting “dumbed down.” This is me being selfish, because I want games written for me. Me: the hard-core, old-school, veteran RPG fan who wants games challenging his existing skills and fearlessness at comparing stats and evaluating deep game rules. Well, okay, maybe ‘fearlessness’ isn’t the right term. Less fearfulness? I still just wing it sometimes. But anyway, where was I? Oh, yeah. Advanced, hard-core RPGs. Mmmmm good. Gimme more games like Eschalon, or Knights of the Chalice, or Din’s Curse, or Spiderweb’s games, or…

Well, you get the idea.

The thing is – I want games like that because they’ve become something of a vanishing breed. But you know what will accelerate their vanishing, and make them completely extinct? Their customer base dries up. And how will that happen? That’ll happen if our ranks aren’t filled with new members. New members who perhaps never played the original Fallout, and for whom the names “Ultima” and “Bard’s Tale” are somewhat meaningless. We need gamers who have fond memories of more recent RPGs – RPGs that aren’t just action games in disguise (though those are cool, too).

That’s why I like talking about folks like Aldorlea Games and Amaranth Games. Most of their games have that distinctive 16-bit era console jRPG flavor – mainly due to the use of the RPG Maker game engine / toolkit. I don’t pretend that the people who play Laxius Force today are going to have a ton of crossover potential to more hardcore, western-style RPGs, or vice versa. But there is some intersection in current and future audiences (hey, that would include, like, me…) and I’m thrilled to see new audiences introduced to turn-based, traditional RPG fun.

All this is a build-up to me noting one of Aldorlea’s latest games, Sylia. Having been swamped with day-job-ness, Frayed Knights development, and a backlog of other indie games (many in-development) that I’ve promised to take a look at, this one took a while for me to get around to. It starts out with an amusing bang, then lags a little bit, and for me is starting to pick up again after a couple of hours.

I’ve had a really tough time trying to figure out how to talk about this game without giving away a pretty significant spoiler. I guess I’ll say this: This is a game I’d probably consider a ‘beginner’ level RPG probably geared towards younger players. And girls. It’s cute. It’s amusing. It features a large cast of playable characters, and up to around 40 hours of gameplay. The introduction hooked me immediately with its twist on traditional RPG and high fantasy tropes. It’s about a group of adventurers trying to repel an alien invasion led by a rather amusing sorceress.

If you want to check it out, here’s the link to Sylia.

Now I’ll show you a video, and after that I’ll talk a couple of spoiler-ific details.

Okay, if you are still here, here’s the twist that makes this game interesting:

It starts with a group of veteran adventurers beginning their final assault on the alien forces and their mastermind, an evil (but amusing) sorceress. The adventurers banter back and forth, speak of their previous defeat by her, and basically do this whole in medias res thing as they go to what seems to be the climax of the game. At this point, I assumed that the game would be some major flashback to how they got there. Give you a taste of awesome might at the beginning, and then start over.

Well, it does that, but not in the way I anticipated. The heroes defeat the sorceress in a battle, but then she pulls a fast one and finishes her evil plan – which turns every human in the world into stone. Including the heroes.

So now you find yourself playing a couple of domestic animals – a cat and a dog – who must gather together a force of unlikely animals  to break the curse and free the people from their petrified forms. And defeat the sorceress before she and her alien minions drain the planet of all of its energy and minerals.  So you get to lead a bunch of talking animals around with some pretty interesting special abilities.

One of the most interesting special abilities is the ability to call an enemy creature to join your side. Not just for a single battle, but indefinitely. I managed to turn a bear to my side early in the game, which was effective for many levels.  They don’t level up with the rest of their party, so their value drops over time, but it’s a pretty cool thing to pull off.

Another interesting variant (so far) is that most “items” in the game are food items. Food items act as healing / skill point restoration items, as well as conferring other bonuses to party members. The trick here is that the food items are not equal for all party members.  The food has to match the animal. Some animals will utterly refuse to eat certain kinds of food (the rooster won’t eat meat, for example), while in other cases it seems like a food item will be more advantageous to one animal over another.

The game also doesn’t take the frequent jRPG approach of making sure all encounters within a region are relatively equal in terms of difficulty. While the world does seem to be broken up into some “range bands” of effective monster difficulty, there are definitely harder monsters (usually stationary, and almost always avoidable) lurking in one area that are significantly tougher than their neighbors. I like this because it teaches players that not everything in one stage of the game will fall to brute force immediately. Sometimes you have to avoid an encounter and come back later.

Its an amusing little game.  I look forward to playing some more of it as I find time, but I wanted to pass it along. While it’s not my usual fare, I’d recommend checking it out, especially if you are looking for an introductory kind of game for yourself or a friend or family member. As usual, there’s a free demo to try it out before you buy it.

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

Difficulty Levels and RPGs

Posted by Rampant Coyote on July 5, 2011

Should RPGs have difficulty levels?

My knee-jerk response is to say, “Of course!” I generally prefer games with difficulty levels. Especially action-RPGs. Especially for an action-RPG like The Witcher 2, which apparently really wants you to play with a gamepad, when I really want to play with a keyboard and mouse. I have a gamepad. When I get back to playing The Witcher 2, I may use it – much to my annoyance – because “Easy” difficulty was far too easy.

So I’m definitely not opposed to difficulty levels. If done well. But for me, traditional RPGs (and this includes action-RPGs) have inherent difficulty levels built-in. I’ve enjoyed them for years. It’s called “leveling up,” among other things.

Is this encounter too hard? If you are hardcore, you can power your way through it, trying different tactics, and keep going. Or you can wuss out (I often do), get an extra level or two under your belt, get a better suit of armor, buy or quest for that Helmet of Brain Protection to protect you from the encounter’s Brain Burn attack, plus an extra few potions of extra healing, and now the encounter (and everything beyond it) is quite a bit easier. So long as this doesn’t involve hours and hours of senseless grinding, we’re good.

So I don’t necessarily ding an RPG for lack of difficulty levels. In fact, sometime I don’t quite understand them. I mean, in an action game, there is something about bragging rights for winning at highest difficulty. Or at least there used to be. Nowadays it’s all multiplayer action and the single-player game isn’t much more than a demo and training for online play. And I do appreciate being able to “downshift” a game that’s repeatedly kicking my butt to the point of frustration. But most of the time, I don’t see the point. The monsters get more hit points? Maybe you fight more monsters? Big whoop.

In Din’s Curse, it’s more appropriate. You can customize a lot of factors to make the game suitable for your level of challenge. But since the game is never-ending, it’s really about how quickly you want to progress in levels and equipment versus difficulty. There’s even a permadeath option for an extra challenge. It works well.

I also like the options available in Eschalon: Book 2. Choosing the more challenging options – like pre-determined loot (so you can’t just quit and reload until you get loot that you like when you open a chest), or choosing to make food and drink a requirement – comes with benefits. But because of the benefits, it’s unclear that these are really “difficulty levels” so much as different play style options. You can choose a more “advanced” game or a simpler game, but the former is only really more difficult than the latter in that the player must deal with a more complex rules set (or can’t depend on save-scumming).

So am I just weird in wanting more out of a difficulty level in an RPG than just a harder game?

Filed Under: Design - Comments: 16 Comments to Read



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