Module-Based RPG Adventure Design in CRPGs

Posted by Rampant Coyote on December 30, 2011

Gonna take a short break in my discussion of skill-based vs. class-based RPG design systems to talk about something of an “ah-hah” moment I had recently.

This isn’t something new or surprising to anybody, but I thought it was an interesting parallel. I’ve found myself enjoying Skyrim a bit more than I enjoyed Oblivion, and I think it is no doubt due to the much more cohesive adventures, Fallout 3 style, rather than the more random dungeons of the previous titles. Though there seems to be a bit of the latter there, too.  A nice mix.

The different quests have radically different flavors, probably due to the different designers who created them. Most stand alone, though some do tie in to the overall plot thread.  This has kind of been the style since Baldur’s Gate, which to me marked the first of the narrative-heavy sub-quest designs in CRPGs, although it was still pretty much an evolutionary rather than revolutionary step with that game.

But the organizing of these adventure “modules” into one game reminded me of something else… which some of you old dice-and-paper gamers have probably already figured out by the way I’ve worded it. Once upon a time in the early days of the dice-and-paper RPG era, a company called Judges’ Guild had the bright idea of creating packaged adventure “modules” for game masters for Dungeons & Dragons. At first, TSR was happy to give them free license to do so, because the point of the system was to let players and game masters create their own adventures.  However, the idea of canned adventures – which a game master could pick and choose from and customize and fit within their own campaign – filled a need.

I took a little bit of that “feel” and apply it to Frayed Knights. Each “dungeon” had a different flavor and mostly stands on its own, though they are not quite as narrative heavy as Bioware’s games or the most recent Bethesda offerings. And of course, I was the only designer (although the physical environments were made by three different people),  so there’s probably a bit more of a cohesive feel in the adventure design. Or not, as I found my own techniques and style evolving and changing as I played.

Anyway, going back to the pen-and-paper module idea… they were all (mainly) stand-alone adventures, though many “series” of modules were designed to link together into larger campaign (but could easily me adapted to work as a stand-alone adventure). A game master’s campaign using modules from different authors would keep players on their toes, as each module might have a different feel. In fact, two play-throughs of the same module run by two different dungeon masters could have radically different feel from each other.

Fallout 3, New Vegas, and Skyrim really have a feel of being a “grab-bag” of semi-isolated adventures to choose from. Again, this is hardly unique… we were being sent out on random sub-quests since at least the days of Akilabeth: World of Doom (AKA “Ultima 0“).  The only real difference is the scale of both the surrounding narrative / quest structure, and the extremes of the optional nature of such quests. The latter was a hallmark of the earliest Elder Scrolls games, where players might only be vaguely aware of some kind of structured quest series leading to any kind of “conclusion.” Hey, I worked hard to “win” Daggerfall, dang it, and I remember how hard and seemingly useless it was to try and follow the storyline. It felt like an afterthought for both the designers and players, though the bizarro alternate-dimension dungeons of the endgame were pretty cool back in the day. I remember running and fighting alone a giant sword surrounded by a starfield skybox….

Once upon a time, there was a text-based CRPG game system called, I think, Eamon, in which you could have the same character play multiple modules. And of course, we’ve had other RPGs follow suit with user-created modules, from Bard’s Tale Construction Set (could you carry characters over from one adventure to another in that one), the Forgotten Realms Unlimited Adventures, and the Neverwinter Nights series.

My minor little “ah-hah” was just rediscovering that feeling I’d had playing pen-and-paper campaigns using modules (as both player and game-master) and noting that similarity. I don’t know if designers at Bethesda actively recognized that link from RPG heritage as they were making the game, or if it was just driven by necessity to come full-circle. Whichever the case, it’s interesting to think that they are really just carrying on the pen-and-paper tradition in their own way.

 

Filed Under: Design - Comments: 4 Comments to Read

RPG Design: Staying Classy

Posted by Rampant Coyote on December 29, 2011

Okay, after a little bit of basic background on class vs. skill based RPG systems yesterday, I’m going to talk about some of the advantages, disadvantages, and general design features of class-based RPGs.

Once upon a time, after I discovered the joy that was skill-based systems, I was really down on class-based design. Skill-based systems were so much more organic and realistic and flexible – why would anybody want to play a class-based game ever again?

I came around. I still marginally prefer skill-based games (or hybrids), but I’ve come to really appreciate class-based systems – both as a designer and a player.

Simplicity and Ease of Introduction: Class-based games break different styles of gameplay into simplified roles that are easier for newcomers (to that particular game system, or to RPGs in general). Particularly during initial character creation, it can be really hard to predict what skills or styles of play will be viable, and a smaller palette of roles can ease the guesswork a bit.

Enforces Specialization / Role Cohesion: Class-based games can make sure characters are really good at a few things rather than mediocre in a lot of areas. This is desirable in party-based games, especially in multiplayer games where it’s good to have each player feel like they are unique in some way, or at least “the best” at one or two things. It encourages cooperation and keeps any one player from hogging the limelight.

Restricted Content: This is both an advantage and limitation. If characters are missing certain classes and the key skills associated with the class, as a designer you may be forced to choose between denying access to the content, or watering down the specialization. A classic example of this is the rogue / thief class. In old-school D&D, at early levels, if you needed someone to climb a sheer wall, sneakily spy on the enemy, or unlock a door, the thief was your guy. If you had no thief in the party, you might be out of luck entirely (in a CRPG, this would mean being locked out of some content). However, at later levels in D&D, spellcasters had access to spells (levitate and fly, scrying, and door-opening spells) that rendered the thief’s specialization almost useless. This was partially rectified in 1st edition Advanced D&D by giving the high-level thief the oft-forgotten ability to cast spells from scrolls, further watering down specialization but at least giving the thief something useful to do now that his specializations had been trumped.

Unbalanced Content: Some content may be far too difficult or far too easy depending upon which classes are absent or available. An example would be the original Bard’s Tale, as far as I remember it correctly: If you had a bard in the party and the horn from the default starting party, surviving to level three or four was relatively possible. Without a bard and the magical horn, the early stages of the game were absolutely brutal. Another example is the cleric class in D&D (up through 3rd edition, not including Pathfinder) and undead encounters. The difference between an encounter being trivially simple and brutally devastating might be the presence of a cleric. One can argue (and I often do) that this simply means the class abilities are imbalanced with such an all-or-nothing difference in the experience, but the point of the specialization really is to make the character truly shine in particular circumstances, not to just provide a marginal advantage. It’s a fine line…

The “Ding“: By “ding” I’m referring to that wonderful chime sound that became synonymous with leveling up in EverQuest back in the day, and entered popular vernacular amongst gamers even when playing pen-and-paper systems. Gaining a new level which both increases power and grants access to new abilities is unrealistic, complicated, time consuming, and potentially imbalancing if it occurs in the middle of an adventure. But as a player, it’s also tremendously fun and empowering. That sudden stairstep of new power feels a lot more exciting than gradual increases in most skill-based systems.

Less Useful Skills Get Play: In skill-based systems, those skills of marginal utility will often be ignored entirely by players. By bundling these abilities with more critical ones in a class-based system, the designer can make sure that content utilizing those skills will be more likely to be enjoyed.

No “Bad Builds”: By making sure the limited number of classes (and any specializations within the classes) are fully playable through the entire game (or game system), the designer can make sure players won’t find themselves stuck with a character who cannot succeed in later stage – a common problem in skill-based systems.

Class Imbalance: This is really more of a problem in multiplayer games, especially in massively multiplayer games where there is competition between players for “slots” within parties.  It’s impossible – and even undesirable – to make classes “perfectly” balanced and equally useful in all circumstances. And even if it was possible, perceptions of imbalance would remain.

Restricted Customization: Pure class-based systems, like the earliest versions of D&D, tend to be so strict in class definition that every character of a particular class act almost identically, which gets pretty boring and frustrating to players who find that no class easily matches their character concept. Some hybridization and a greater difference in attribute bonuses and subclasses / multi-class additions can ease this a bit.

Easier to Design Around: In CRPGs (and pen-and-paper “modules” not customized around specific players and characters), the same abstraction of roles that makes the game easier for new players to get around is just as valuable for designers and developers. Content, AI behaviors, NPC dialogs – these can all be easier when you can create it for a limited palette of character types.

Class Explosion and Inflation: This is more of a problem with pen-and-paper RPGs when publishers are trying to entice players to buy more books, but also relates to CRPGs based on these systems, or CRPG expansions / DLC. Adding a new class that fits a particular niche or blends two other classes together becomes an easy (and brain-dead) way to add player content to the game. This became particularly bad in the D&D 3.x era, when almost every book featured new core or prestige classes that were often nothing more than a variant combination of game mechanics with some kind of tacked-on class description. Since publishers (and developers) really want to sell expansions, there was always a temptation to inflate the power level of these classes so that they were slightly more powerful than the original classes. After all, who’d bother playing a new class (or buying an expansion that activates that class) that is weaker than the originals, right?

Anyway, I’m sure I’m missing a bunch of other features / consequences / advantages / disadvantages here for class-based systems, but this should cover all of the basics and a bit more besides. I’ll cover more in a later article about skill-based systems… and many of the advantages of one system will be disadvantages of the other, and vice versa. So I’ve left things like skill-combo exploits for the next article.

Filed Under: Design - Comments: 2 Comments to Read

RPG Design: Do You Wanna Have Skillz or Have Some Class?

Posted by Rampant Coyote on December 28, 2011

There are two very broad approaches in RPG character rules systems: Class-based and skill-based.

Class-based systems define characters by their class – some sort of role or archetype, and improvements to the character are usually determined by one’s level within the class (though equipment usually plays a role as well). The most famous example of this is the earlier editions of Dungeons & Dragons. You had very few choices as you leveled, as your character’s abilities were largely dictated by a combination of your randomly-rolled attributes and your original class and race choice (in some editions, that choice was actually combined – a non-human race WAS your class).  Diablo had a pretty strong class-based system, and most jRPG or jRPG-style games have pretty strict class-based design. For an indie example, I’d point to the Aveyond series (or most RPG-maker games) or Din’s Curse as an example.

On the opposite side of the spectrum is the skill-based approach. In a skill-based game system, your character progresses by individually increasing or acquiring each different skill and ability individually, without a predetermined class framework to guide or limit the choices. Oftentimes, there isn’t even a concept of “level” – the improvements are bought directly with experience points. I think my first skill-based RPG was the pen-and-paper RPG Top Secret, also by D&D-maker TSR. Though my favorite over the years was Champions, later to become the generic “Hero System” RPG. The Fallout series are solid skill-based RPGs, and Skyrim, the latest of the Elder Scrolls games, has moved almost entirely to the skill-based camp. A recent indie example would be Hanako Games’ Magical Diary, where you literally plan your character’s development on a week-by-week basis.

I should note that there are some exceptions to this spectrum, such as games that might be loosely termed RPGs where a character’s abilities are governed solely by level and their equipment. When a character can be so easily redefined by donning a different suit of armor, I’m not sure if I’d really call it much of an RPG, personally. But I’ll leave it open here to suggest that the class / skill axis isn’t all there is.

Then you have the hybrids. Most class-based games (the good ones, anyway, IMO) do offer some flexibility and plenty of choice in the evolution of your character. And those who make skill-based games learned long ago that offering some kind of simplified template – such as a class – can really help inexperienced players who would otherwise be bombarded with choices they don’t fully understand. Exemplifying the latter principle is the Eschalon series, which is really a skill-based system but has you choose a class at the start of the game which serves no purpose that I can see other than providing you with simple, default starting skills.

The older Elder Scrolls games were also weak-class hybrids. Class dictated which skills progressed the easiest, and which counted towards level progression. You were free to create your own “class” if you wished, which really just gave a name to whichever custom collection of favored skills you wanted to combine.

The loose implementations of the Vampire: The Masquerade system in the two CRPGs that drew from the system are, in my opinion, pretty evenly split in terms of class or skill focus. Much of the character dynamics are purely in skill-based territory, but some very key elements of the game are based upon the character’s clan. Vampire the Masquerade: Bloodlines did a fantastic job of making much of the game truly different for some clan choices, particularly the Malkavian or Nosferatu clans.

D&D 3.x – used in the Neverwinter Nights series, The Temple of Elemental Evil, Icewind Dale 2, etc., is a strong class-based hybrid. While there are plenty of skills (mainly non-combat based) and a common pool of feats that theoretically any character of any class can acquire, and one’s “class” is pretty flexible where class choice can change from level to level, most of the more significant upgrades and choices are dictated by class. While it’s possible for a wizard to pick a bunch of fighter-type abilities, it’s almost always a very poor choice. I’m really looking forward to any games (including the announced MMO) using the Pathfinder system, which is the spiritual sequel to third generation Dungeons & Dragons.

My own Frayed Knights: The Skull of S’makh-Daon is a hybrid. While I like to think of it being a middle-of-the-road hybrid, it errs on the side of class-based, particularly in the lower levels available in the first game.

In a later articles, I’ll discuss some of the pros and cons of the different styles of systems. I just wanted to make sure this introductory article was up to be a reference for anyone unfamiliar with the game styles.  However, a very simple rule-of-thumb is this: Class-based games tend to be better for “party-based” gameplay, such as your average MMO, or single-player games where you are usually running a group of characters, such as Dragon Age. This is due to its simplicity of character upgrades (what’s fun to micro-manage for a single character can be tedious to do for all four to six characters), and to provide specialization for more interesting group dynamics. Heavily skill-based systems are generally better for games that only let you play a single character (or character + henchman), as your lone character will be called upon to be more of a generalist in most games.

Filed Under: Design - Comments: 4 Comments to Read

Game Design: Good, Bad, and Great

Posted by Rampant Coyote on December 27, 2011

For you game designers or those interested in game design out there, here is an intriguing post by Raph Koster:

Good Design, Bad Design, and Great Design

As always, this is not like a recipe book for great game design. Most of these comparisons are actually pretty subjective, or at least subject to a large amount of mileage variance between users (and developers). But like everything of this kind, it’s better to have fuzzy-wuzzy ideals and intentions to guide your actions than to have none at all.

Filed Under: Design - Comments: Read the First Comment

Dragons, Dungeons, and Skyrim

Posted by Rampant Coyote on December 26, 2011

With a Christmas bonus from the Day Job, I went ahead and picked up Skyrim on Friday. Thanks, Day Job, for the game.

Of course, the following day it appeared on sale at Steam for a third off. Ah, well. My internet connection sucks right now and would have taken me days to download the dang thing (that’s supposed to be fixed hopefully today).

Anyway, one joke goes that Skyrim is “like Fallout 3, but with swords.” Considering how much I’ve enjoyed all of the Elder Scrolls and Fallout games, in all honesty it’s not a terrible thing. The Elder Scrolls series began, by my understanding, as an attempt to expand on what Ultima Underworld achieved. Thus in many ways Skyrim and the latest two Fallout games are spiritual descendents of one of my all-time favorite classic RPGs.

I know I’m late to the party, and many of you who are reading this have already “beat” the game twice before I ever installed it. But I often get games many months or years after they’ve been released, so this feels positively current for me. 🙂  The game is jaw-droppingly beautiful and graphically excellent even running at medium-quality, as I am. Twenty years ago, if you’d asked me to describe the ultimate RPG, from my limited vantage point then I probably would have described something kinda like this game.

Today, of course, I can pick nits… between the crashed to desktop and the what-the-hell-were-they-thinking console port of the UI to PC (anybody who complains about Frayed Knights‘ UI but gives this game a pass is on drugs, IMO – though it does highlight the fact that making a good, usable UI for a game that doesn’t just imitate another games’ gameplay is NOT EASY). And of course there’s my old complaint about how they aren’t making the kind of RPGs I really want to see. But I don’t want to begrudge Bethesda their success, and frankly they were making these games before those old kinds of games went extinct among mainstream publishers, so that’s really a silly complaint. Yes, I’m not entirely sure if I’m playing an action-RPG with FPS elements or an FPS with RPG elements, but let’s talk about what it is and what it tries to be, not about what it’s not and not trying to be.

But there’s something else that kinda clicked in my head while playing this game. Back when I was still in school in the early-mid 1990s, I attended a science fiction & fantasy symposium and went to a discussion on the use of computer graphics in current and future entertainment. At the time, as I recall, the movie Jurassic Park was the hot news with CGI dinosaurs that still look pretty dang cool today. Anyway, they culminated the talk with a video clip from an interactive “game” (more like a walkthrough) done by local simulator company Evans & Sutherland. It was a dungeon, with really cool lighting effects from torches and swinging pendulums you had to time your way through, and a big ol’ dragon at the end that was so large you could only see his head and neck coming. This was supposedly in real-time, and I went nuts. I immediately thought of Ultima Underworld – which was also a pretty recent release at the time.  THIS is what I wanted to play. It’s what I wanted to make! It also made me apply for a job at Evans & Sutherland as I approached graduation. Yes, it was not anywhere close to fair — the E&S dungeon was running on top-of-the-line hardware costing hundreds of thousands of dollars (if not more). But it was so dang cool!

Ironically, while E&S never got back to me (and were apparently having problems and downsizing at or about that time), I got a job at fledgeling start-up Singletrac, founded by a bunch of ex-E&S people, including the principle guys responsible for that little dungeon project that got me so excited. They clued me in on how much they’d faked things to get that demo to work… it wouldn’t have held up to the scrutiny of a true interactive game, but the project had been done largely “off the books” and after hours without official sanction (or budget) anyway.

Anyway, as I’ve played a bit of Skyrim, going through dungeon corridors with timed pendulum-blade puzzles and of course fighting BIG OL’ DRAGONS, I felt that thrill again, and didn’t immediately recognize it. But the game has everything that old high-end simulator hardware dungeon had, only far, far prettier.

So, yeah. Skyrim. Is it the perfect RPG? No, there’s no such thing. Is it even an RPG? Yes, I’d argue so, though of course I fret that it’s popularity is helping to redefine RPGs as little more than a subgenre of action games. But it’s a very very cool game, and so far seems deserving of its record-breaking sales. What the series continues to do right is to place such a large emphasis on exploration. That’s a principle aspect of the western RPG experience for me, and so in spite of lacking some other elements that ‘scratch the itch’ for me, the exploration is still plenty of fun and plenty rewarding. While it’s still early in the game for me, it does feel like they corrected most of the parts of Oblivion that sucked and left a game that might not be quite as vast in scope and ambition as its predecessors, but what it does do it does very, very well.

Filed Under: Impressions - Comments: 10 Comments to Read

Merry Christmas!

Posted by Rampant Coyote on December 25, 2011

Merry Christmas, Happy New Year, and may your days & weeks to come be safe and fun!

Filed Under: General - Comments: Read the First Comment

Participating in the Peanut Gallery

Posted by Rampant Coyote on December 23, 2011

While Markus “Notch” Persson (of Minecraft fame) livestreamed his progress during the Ludum Dare competition last weekend, one guy (Mister Speaker) spent some time seeing what people were talking about in the accompanying chat channel.  The results are funny and sometimes sad. Think about it: One person (Notch) is doing the project, oblivious to the chatter. And then there are dozens if not hundreds of people watching his progress and offering their own comments and criticisms, and getting into some serious flamewar arguments over it.

The author’s own comment, at the end, sums up many of the comments: “It was obvious that most people liked the idea of making a game, but balked when confronted with the part where you actually had to put in a bit of effort.”

I assume this comment is based on a number of remarks that he didn’t post. While some of the comments he shared are pretty obnoxious and downright wrong, there also seemed to be some honest, earnest questions from people who were just clueless newbies. There’s nothing wrong about that. We were all there once. Sure, you can say they could have just looked up the answers to their questions on the Internet, but in a group of people where some of them at least acted like they knew what they were doing (though based on some of their comments, I doubt that was the case for many of them), why not just ask the question aloud? Or, in text.

I talk about people making games. A lot. The subject has fascinated me long before I became a professional game developer. Although I guess it could be because I was fascinated with the idea of making video games almost as soon as I discovered they existed. When I was a kid I’d read little bios or interviews with guys like “Slug” Russel, Gregory Yob, and Nolan Bushnell with enthusiasm. Discussing the process and people involved in making games is one of my favorite things, almost as much fun as actually making them.

Actually, it is sometimes a heck of a lot more fun…  Making games is a lot of work, and sometimes it’s not all that fun. But it is a lot more satisfying in the end. I would suggest that it’s a lot easier to be a critic than a creator, and the anonymity of the Internet acts as an amplifying echo chamber for criticisms. So if you want to see this kind of thing “in action” and talk about it, that’s cool IMO, just tone down the rhetoric a little bit, ‘k? 🙂

But more importantly — if you feel the desire to make a game, take the plunge! If you can be happy lowering your sights and creating something that isn’t quite up to competing with the latest multi-million-dollar AAA extravaganza from EA, but maybe more in line with EA’s original offerings (Hard Hat Mack, M.U.L.E., Archon, The Bard’s Tale, Murder on the Zinderneuf, etc.), you have a better opportunity today to get started and do something cool than perhaps any other time in history. As an example, I direct your attention to Matt Barton, co-founder of Armchair Arcade, author / co-author of books on the history of video games, who recently “went indie” and has now just completed his third indie game in about as many months.

So what can you do in next three or four months?

Here’s the link to the article:

What I Learned From Watching People Watch Notch

Filed Under: Game Development, Geek Life - Comments: 2 Comments to Read

Unity 3.5 – Public Beta Now Available

Posted by Rampant Coyote on December 22, 2011

Okay, I’ve been kinda excited about this. What an awesome Christmas present!

Unity 3.5 Beta Release

And for more detail, you can check out the release notes.

These are all good and welcome things, though for some reason I was expecting a major change to the UI system with this release, and I didn’t see any mention of it.  But hey, improved particles, pathfinding, FLASH export and native client support for Chrome, and a new occlusion culling system… that’s all made of AWESOME.

I was gonna play some Skyrim over the holiday vacation, but now I dunno. 🙂

Filed Under: Game Development - Comments: 4 Comments to Read

Indie RPGs Reviews Frayed Knights

Posted by Rampant Coyote on December 21, 2011

Craig Stern at IndieRPGs.com has a fairly extensive review of Frayed Knights: The Skull of S’makh-Daon. You can check it out here:

Game Review – Frayed Knights: The Skull of S’makh-Daon

There are mixed opinions on the endurance / exhaustion mechanic, some people loving it, others – like Craig – not feeling quite so much love. While there are aspects of it that may be refined for the next game (my excitement is growing quite a bit on this front… some coding experiments and a “break” during my visit to Asia have been good for me), it’s here to stay. I’m quite pleased with it and how it gently encourages the ebb-and-flow of pushes into dungeons and retreats back to the surface. The only part that did NOT work so well was the load times it required, which are artifacts of my game engine and I’d really like to improve in the next game.

As a side point, Craig also took the opportunity to announce a release date for Telepath RPG: Servants of God. (Valentine’s Day 2012, if you were wonderin’ but didn’t want to click on the link).

 

Filed Under: Frayed Knights, News - Comments: Read the First Comment

Can RPGs Be Easy to Learn Without Being “Dumbed Down?”

Posted by Rampant Coyote on December 20, 2011

I feel a little hypocritical after my (day-job related) business trip to Asia. I loaded up my computer with some really serious RPGs – probably way too many – as entertainment. I had some other game types, too, but I filled my hard drive with a good subsecti0n of my “unplayed RPGs” library. I figured I might get into one or two. That didn’t really happen.

I did spend some serious time doing game development, especially after the first week and I’d made my peace with jet lag and my work schedule. So I wasn’t totally slacking off. But the massive RPG love-fest I anticipated didn’t really happen. I gave it a decent try, but I don’t think I put more than three or four hours into serious RPG playing.

This actually caused me some concern. Was I just getting burned out after spending the better part of the last five years *making* a game inspired by the old-school sensibilities, and now I just wanted to play some hack-and-slash action RPG or real-time strategy game?

Maybe that was part of it. I think a little bit of burnout probably enhanced my lethargy, but really I was experiencing the fundamental problem from which modern RPGs have been “saving” us for the last decade or so… these older games require too much work up front to learn the game system before they become fun. I mentioned a few months ago how frustrated I was with Might & Magic 1 until I actually took the time to study the manual. And then I started having a blast playing it. That initial outlay of time can be even more significant for some other games. I found myself wanting to retreat to easier, or at least more familiar, territory – like re-playing an old favorite.

(I think a small part of the problem was that I have some games in progress back home, and I felt a little reluctant to start a new game that I didn’t think I’d finish before returning home and having Yet Another Half-Finished game on my hard drives…)

It’s a fundamental issue. Games should be easy (and fun) to learn. If you aren’t having fun in the first five minutes, something is wrong. I give RPGs a little more leeway, but maybe I shouldn’t. This is a problem, especially if you have a game system that has a lot of mechanical depth – which I have always enjoyed. In fact, some of my favorite strategy games are the ones in which I learn new tricks and expose new layers of depth every time I play. This is good game design – to create a game that’s playable and fun without having to understand all the details, but which rewards continued play and exploration with ever greater depth (and more skills to master to improve play).

Unfortunately, the industry’s answer to this quandary has not been satisfactory, in my mind:

#1 – Tutorials. Tutorials usually suck and are generally not much fun. They feel like hand-holding, often because they are so tightly scripted, and I often find myself looking forward to being “allowed to play the game” once the tutorial section is over. That’s wrong. We should be playing from the get-go.

#2 – Eliminate Complexity. This is too often the other approach – to “dumb down” games so that there’s not nearly so much to learn. I will admit that depth doesn’t have to be the same thing as complexity, but this streamlining effort often throws out the baby with the bathwater.

#3 – Clone Familiar Gameplay. Game developers are making RPGs play “just like” popular action games, so veteran gamers don’t have to learn much new to get into the game. To me, this feels like RPGs are losing their distinctiveness and becoming just a minor variation on action games. I have nothing against action games – don’t get me wrong – but I play them for a different reason than I play RPGs.

There have got to be better approaches to the problem than this. While this isn’t exactly the same as “dumbing down” the genre, I’d say “watering down” is an appropriate description.

Another issue I think most of us “older gamers” have to deal with is limited time to play games. We love games, but we have to get our gaming in small segments than we could as kids. I find myself going back regularly to a game of Slay, simply because I can play a complete game in fifteen minutes.  My gaming time is usually in segments no longer than an hour, often less than forty-five minutes. If that experience ends with my having made little or no progress – due to dying and restarting, or simply wandering around talking to people trying to remember where I’d left off last time I played, or whatever – then I’m a lot less excited to double-click the icon again when I find myself in need of a gaming fix.

Again, the typical industry answer to this problem is hand-holding and linearity. Although the earlier love affair with fixed save points runs directly counter to this, and I find the inability to save and exit abhorrent in a PC game. But a decent “quest journal” and other goal suggestions can help here, without requiring an on-screen icon that tells the player to “walk here.”

So we have several potentially conflicting goals here:

* A good RPG should be easy to learn, and “playable” (and fun) without fully learning the system within the first few minutes of play.

* A good RPG should grab the player within the first fifteen minutes with drama and excitement, and the player should actually be able to “play” the game in that time (rather than stepping through a tutorial).

* A good RPG should have plenty of depth for the player to explore and master as the game progresses, once they’ve mastered the basics.  It shouldn’t be “dumbed down” and simply repeat the basics for a couple dozen hours.

* An RPG player should be able to make measurable progress in short game sessions (15 – 30 minutes, ideally) even if they don’t have a clear recollection of where they last left off.

* A good RPG should not be excessively linear, and should allow plenty of freedom for the player to attempt (and succeed) in achieving goals with different approaches, nor should it hold the player’s hand to guide them to a “preferred” solution unless explicitly requested by the player (through difficulty level or whatnot).

I cannot claim some kind of miracle approach that resolves all of these goals simultaneously – and I’d probably reject any claim of a “one true approach” that did so out-of-hand. And I think for most of these points, you could replace “An RPG” with “A Game” and they would hold equally true.

But these are good things to think about, both as a player and game designer.  RPGs have a reputation for being hard to get into and play, which is why modern RPG developers do all kinds of genre-distorting contortions to overcome that legacy. I can’t really say I blame them, and I can’t argue with the fact that Bethesda appears to have hit the mother lode with Skyrim with something that appears from my vantage point to have only a passing resemblance to an RPG. Their approach works, I enjoy these games, so it’s one solution. But I think there are others. This lightly-explored territory is a place that other RPG developers that aren’t named Bethesda or Bioware should definitely explore.

In the meantime, I have a couple of games to develop and a crapload of half-finished games to finish on my desktop now that I’m home. 🙂

Filed Under: Design - Comments: 13 Comments to Read

Matt Chat: Stonekeep Retrospective

Posted by Rampant Coyote on December 19, 2011

This is not one I have ever really played. I was tempted in 1995, and had a friend who played Stonekeep and recommend it, but I never “got around to it.” I picked up a copy via GOG.COM a couple of years ago, but still haven’t played more than the first half-hour or so. Alas, that describes too many of my GOG.COM purchases these days.

As always, if you like his show, consider a donation. Or buying the game from GOG.COM via his affiliate link.

If you have any interest in buying it from GOG.COM, now is the time, BTW. Until the end of the year this and a ton of other games are 50% off.  I took advantage of it last week (yes, from the road…) to pick up yet more games to compensate for not having enough money to afford them when I was younger. Now they are dirt-cheap, but I have no time. Ain’t that just the way it goes?

(Well, that’s not entirely true. I rediscovered Star Control 2 this weekend… I’m utter crap at the combat, but dang it’s still entertaining…)

Filed Under: Retro - Comments: 6 Comments to Read

Back in the USA

Posted by Rampant Coyote on December 16, 2011

Hi folks!

I made it back from Thailand in one piece. I’m jet-lagged as all-get-out right now, but I expect that by Monday I’ll be mostly back on schedule and things will be back to normal(ish) for a bit. I’m facing a mountainous backlog right now of tasks – for Rampant Games, the family, and The Day Job. If you sent me an email over the last two weeks and I somehow missed it, I apologize… there are a lot of things I wasn’t able to get to while out of the country, and I had good intentions of getting back to everyone, but some things got put off (sometimes because I lacked access to some things from the road) and then forgotten. I’m sorry about that.

Anyway, I must also adjust to going from tropical weather to cold and snow. *Sigh.* So far my day job has only sent me to warm climates in wintertime, for which I cannot complain that much.

I had some really good intentions of doing some SERIOUS retro-RPG playing while away, but that didn’t really happen. More on that in a future post. However, I did get some game-dev done… not as much as I’d like, and nothing definitive, but from an experimentation / learning perspective I felt like it was tremendously successful.

Anyway, I’m glad to be back home. While the timing was inconvenient (would it ever be convenient?), I guess I’d have to say that it was a pretty cool life experience that I don’t think I would ever have had if I hadn’t been “forced” into it by my job. So that much was pretty cool.

 

Filed Under: General - Comments: 3 Comments to Read

Guest Post: Information: The Tool Players Need To Use Choice-Driven Character Development Systems

Posted by Rampant Coyote on December 15, 2011

Today’s post is part three of three by Colter Cookson. I want to thank Colter and the others who have contributed guest posts the last two weeks while I’ve been in Thailand. It’s helped a lot. Anyway, here’s Colter:

In my last two posts-The Case for Choice in Character Development Systems and Guidelines for Designing Choice-Driven Character Development Systems-I identified several reasons to include tough choices in character development systems, then offered guidelines for designing them. In my final post, I want to discuss the key ingredient players need to make effective choices: Information.

For a game to provide all of the benefits of a character development system, the consequences of different choices need to be clear so players can go after the mechanical bonuses, fantasy, and gameplay style they prefer. The amount of information necessary can range from the formulas behind the game’s mechanics to short descriptions of different classes at the start of the game. For example, a game with both a sorcerer and an alchemist might describe the former as “a natural spellcaster that eradicates foes with fire and lightning” and the latter as “a wandering herbalist who brews potions to give allies the strength and speed they need to overcome the toughest foe.” Despite their brevity, these descriptions convey the classes’ theme and gameplay effect (direct damage versus buffing). Armed with this information, players should be able to tell which character-the powerful destroyer or the scholarly buffer–will appeal to them.

Ideally, players should also be able to access information about the challenges they will encounter in the game. While developers could provide such information in the manual or hint at it in a prologue, I suspect most people would prefer to get it through play. With that in mind, try to vary the first few hours of the game enough for players to see the effects of different choices. Include locked doors and traps for the rogue and monsters that allow tanks, damage dealers, disablers, healers and the ever-present hybrids to shine in turn. Otherwise, players might restart with a party that smashes through the early challenges but struggles as the game advances.

If the game almost requires a specific class, let the player know before they start. For example, if a player tries to create a party without a cleric in a game where endurance matters, warn them with a dialogue box that provides an explanation. If you don’t, they might come up against a roadblock their party can’t overcome and walk away from the game rather than restarting.

Jeff Vogel’s contention that players should make their most important character development decisions after they’ve had a chance to play the game makes sense, but I would add a caution: Don’t delay decisions so long the game becomes tedious. If I have to play for ten hours before I can make interesting character development choices, I’ll either ignore the game completely (as I did with Dragon Quest VII, an entry in a series I otherwise enjoy) or play through it once and never touch it again. I suspect this is true for many players, especially ones with life essentials like families and jobs.

You can make conveying information easier by using systems or conventions many players will recognize. Unless designers have a reason to do otherwise, priests should be able to heal, elves should have an edge when casting spells, and swords should be versatile. By following these long-established conventions, designers let players grasp the effects of different decisions immediately and give themselves the freedom to introduce complexity in other areas.

I have one other suggestion: Don’t ask the player to choose between fun and power. While it’s impossible to design a system where all classes are equally useful at every level, try to avoid creating classes that are fun and powerful at later levels but dull or useless at the beginning. And if you give players a choice between focusing on damage or mana regeneration, give players that focus on the former a quick and reasonably fun way to regain mana, such as drinking potions or resting, so she doesn’t need to wait. The trick is to make sure these methods come with a downside (e.g., spending gold or losing temporary bonuses more quickly) that makes investing in regeneration worthwhile.

At this point, the people who taught me to write five-paragraph essay are demanding that I conclude with a summary that boldly declares, “If you follow my advice–if you provide a character development system that rewards system mastery, inspires thought, sparks discussion, and caters to different fantasies and playstyles–your game will appeal to a broad audience.” I believe that to be the case, but as a fledgling designer who is only beginning to turn his love of tactics games into a concrete idea for a new one, I must confess that I have no monopoly on the truth. I’d love to hear why other people enjoy choice-driven character development systems and what guidelines they have for designing them.

Colter Cookson is a 25-year-old writer who enjoys video, board and card games. He would highly recommend Thunderstone, a card game that combines the deckbuilding mechanics of Magic and the themes of heroic fantasy with the simplicity and affordability of traditional board games.

Filed Under: Design - Comments: 3 Comments to Read

Guest Post: Guidelines for Designing Choice-Driven Character Development Systems

Posted by Rampant Coyote on December 14, 2011

Colter Cookson continues his thoughts on character creation and development in today’s post. Part three will arrive tomorrow around this time… and at a point where I should be somewhere over the Pacific Ocean. But today, Colter goes from rationale to some (hopefully) practical ideas for RPG design. I’ll let the rest speak for itself.

In my previous post, The Case for Choice in Character Development Systems, I argued that character development systems that require difficult choices can broaden a game’s appeal by:

1. Increasing players’ sense of accomplishment by allowing them to take credit for their characters’ power;
2. Giving players who enjoy thinking a problem they can tackle when they’re away from the game;
3. Providing material for debate, causes for questions, and an excuses to write guides that enable the game to meet different needs (e.g., my need to write and help people);
4. Enhancing replayability by giving players an obvious way to vary the gameplay;
5. Allowing players to enact the fantasies they find most compelling; and
6. Allowing players to adjust the gameplay to their strengths or preferences.

These benefits can be enough to justify a choice-driven character development system despite the demands it places on developers, who must balance the system, and players, who must design effective characters. However, for every two or three character development systems that work well, there is at least one that falls flat. With that in mind, I would like to offer a few guidelines on designing systems to provide these benefits.

Most importantly, the character development system needs to matter. A fighter should be able to stand toe-to-toe with a monster that would send the party thief running, an archer should be able to make shots that would put even the nimblest fighter to shame, and a cleric should be able to heal more efficiently than even the most skilled paladin. If the player can’t tell the difference between development choices, they become no more important than picking her character portrait.

To inspire thinking and out-of-game interaction, the character development system needs to involve real tradeoffs. If you want players to think about which weapons to specialize in, axes should be stronger but slower than swords. At the same time, the players need to encounter situations where strength matters more than speed or speed matters than strength. Otherwise, players will quickly discover which choice the game favors and focus on that.

To encourage thought and discussion as much as possible, specializing in one or the other should be a long-term decision, or at least one that takes time to reverse. If players can switch between specializations at need, they will have no reason to carefully consider their characters’ path or discuss it with others unless they’re facing a particularly tough challenge and want a quick solution.

For a character development system to encourage replays, the players’ decisions need to alter the way they play the game significantly enough for it to offer a new experience. For example, the fighter that specializes in axes over swords might need to time his attacks more carefully to ensure he can complete them before he needs to dodge. However, he might be able to take enemies down quickly enough to keep from being swarmed, an issue the swordsman can only avoid through quick movement and careful planning.

For a character development system to appeal to different fantasies, it needs to offer options that strike a chord with different people. Instead of giving players a choice between a fighter that has mastered the sword, a fighter that specializes in bows, or a fighter that specializes in axes, let them choose between a clever duelist, a nature-loving archer, and a fearless barbarian. If you do that, you’ll draw not only the players that love weapons but also those that want to pictures themselves as clever and quick, defend nature, or charge even the deadliest foe without fear. While you might turn a few players off–say the ones that want to play a ranged character but don’t like rangers’ nature theme–I suspect you’ll attract far more than you lose, especially if you employ proven archetypes.

For a character development system to cater to different strengths or preferences, it needs variety. In an action game, allow players to acquire abilities that reduce the importance of otherwise essential skills, such as aiming and dodging. As I mentioned earlier, the sorceress in Diablo II does this well. So does the necromancer, who can reduce the number of projectiles he needs to dodge by blinding archers with curses and absorb the damage from the ones that hit by conjuring bone armor.

In a turn-based game, provide character development paths that suit different playstyles. Final Fantasy Tactics does this well. The players who love thinking about every move but want quick and easy combat can use the mighty calculator, whose abilities take planning but can decimate enemies (or so I’m told; I’ve never had the patience to build one). Players who like to think about the game’s initiative system can go to town with high-level spells that deal massive damage but take time to cast, while others favor quick and dirty attacks. And players who want a challenge can try to beat the story battles in quick succession while their peers accumulate strength in random battles or rely on extremely powerful characters like Cid. I’m sure this flexibility helps explain the game’s success.

Filed Under: Design - Comments: 6 Comments to Read

Guest Post: The Case for Choice in Character Development Systems

Posted by Rampant Coyote on December 13, 2011

Today’s guest post is the first of a three-parter by Colter Cookson. I’ll include the bio at the end of part 3, but he’s tackling the character creation aspect of CRPGs with a bit of a vengeance. I’ll let you read the rest. Thanks Colter!

I have a confession to make: I’ve lost sleep over Baldur’s Gate II.

Among this crowd, that may not be much of a confession. But when I stay up, it’s not because I’m fireballing orcs, banishing shadows, or torching trolls. Instead, I’m tossing and turning in bed as I try to answer an unanswerable question: What class should I be? Will I be a mage who can put entire armies to sleep, a thief who can slay the toughest foes with a well-timed backstab, or a skald, whose battle hymns can turn his allies into whirling death machines?

At the mature age of 25, I would like to say I’m above debates over the nature of my virtual avatar. But although I’ve got more responsibilities now than I did when I first discovered role-playing games, I still enjoy weighing my options. Every time I pick up games like Baldur’s Gate II, Wizardry 8, or Final Fantasy Tactics, I’m almost immediately tempted to restart so I can try a different class, a different party, or a different job combination.

I suspect I would enjoy these games almost as much if they played like the American Final Fantasy II, where characters grow in predetermined ways. I would still get to watch my characters improve, slay monsters, gather loot, and save the world, so the games would continue to offer a compelling fantasy and positive reinforcement. Since the developers would no longer need to worry about challenging players who made different development choices, the games might also provide a more consistent challenge. So why bother including character development decisions at all?

Those decisions offer at least six benefits. First, they increase the players’ sense of accomplishment. If I beat a game with characters whose strengths and weaknesses are set in stone, I’ve solved the puzzle the developer has put before me using tools that are guaranteed to work. If I beat it with characters I’ve molded, I’ve not only solved a specific set of puzzles but also mastered the mechanics behind the game enough to craft my own tools. That makes victory even sweeter.

Second, character development decisions give people a reason to think about the game when they aren’t playing. For players with few other low-stress mental activities, that can make water breaks at work much more refreshing.

Third, character development decisions provide an excuse to talk about the game. For me, this significantly increases a game’s longevity by allowing it to provide a broader range of experiences. When I want to relax, I can read strategy guides and forum posts about the merits of different character designs. When I want to interact with others, I can discuss my experiences. And when I want to feel useful, I can write guides or answer peoples’ questions. This is true for all games, but a well-crafted character development system–one where several character development paths are equally compelling–can extend the discussion by providing fuel for legitimate and irresolvable differences in opinion.

Fourth, character development decisions give people a reason to replay the game by providing a way to vary the experience. A party of two fighters, a mage, and a priest will require slightly different tactics than a party with two wizards, one fighter, and one priest and much different tactics than a party with three wizards and a cleric, so players can revisit the game without feeling like they’ve seen everything before. For money-conscious players, this increases the game’s value. For every player, it can provide an opportunity to see how much their skills have improved by pitting them against challenges they once found difficult but now find easy. Players might also discover secrets they missed the first time, notice the nuances and foreshadowing in the game’s dialogue, or otherwise more fully appreciate the developer’s work.

Fifth, character development decisions broaden a game’s appeal by allowing players to enact different fantasies. I like to play games where careful planning and mental might can overcome even the toughest adversaries, so I avoid ones where the only hero is a buff barbarian but love ones like Diablo II, where it’s possible to play a sorceress or an assassin. Meanwhile, my zombie-obsessed friends can play a necromancer and my religious friend can play a paladin.

Finally, character development decisions allow people to adjust the game to their strengths or preferences. As someone with slow reflexes and poor hand-eye coordination, I loved the Diablo II sorceress’ ice spells because they allowed me to slow enemies enough I could target them reliably. More skilled or impatient gamers could focus on fire magic, which deals more damage. A few might even pick a class they consider weak or complex to give themselves a challenge.

The many forums and guides dedicated to competitive first-person shooters, the countless YouTube videos showing Minecraft masterpieces, and the long lines that once formed before Pac-Man machines are proof that a game can appeal to a broad audience without a character development system. However, for the right type of player–someone that enjoys molding characters and seeing them grow–a character development system that offers significant choices can turn an otherwise unappealing game into a must buy.

I am one of those players. I like character development so much that I tried tower defense games, a genre I’d previously ignored, the instant I discovered Defender’s Quest, which uses ever-improving characters in place of buildings or generic troops. Character development also explains why I love Warlords, Age of Wonders, and Heroes of Might and Magic, which all include leveling heroes, far more than other turn-based strategy games.

From the success of these series, I doubt I’m alone. Designers who take the time to craft character development systems that provide at least some of the benefits above-and more than likely others I’m unaware of-will greatly increase their game’s potential market.

Filed Under: Design - Comments: 7 Comments to Read

Matt Chat Interview with the Rampant Coyote, Part Four!

Posted by Rampant Coyote on December 12, 2011

Okay, the last part of my “Matt Chat” interview is up. Watch if you dare.  I give a bunch of hints and tips for playing Frayed Knights: The Skull of S’makh-Daon, and I talk about the general future of the series. And rats. We talk about rats.

I also talk a little about sales, piracy, and DRM. I’m amused that at least one commenter immediately knee-jerks to canned reaction to the discussion that has absolutely nothing to do with what was actually said. Straw men are easier to defeat than actual facts, I guess. I can’t prove anything, and I can’t say for certain that there’s a causal relationship. I can only point to the numbers and say that in this one case, there was a correlation that was striking and suspicious. Take it or leave it.

When we did the interview, the question that led up to that was going to be the final question (or close to it), and Matt said, “Okay, I don’t want to end the interview on such a downer note,” and so we went on a bonus round for a couple more questions.

As always, if you like this interview series, consider hitting the ol’ tip jar for Matt. Or subscribing.

Filed Under: Frayed Knights, Interviews - Comments: 10 Comments to Read



« previous top next »