Creativity is hard!
Nov. 10th, 2005 01:39 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
bluegargantuaHey,
So I'm working on an RPG. I'm hoping to have it ready for GenCon next year. I'm not talking about it a whole lot yet since I want to try and have some sort of alpha-kit finished for people to look at. But I do feel compelled to mention one or two things right here and now.
According to Johnathan Tweet, there are three ways to resolve the question of "do I hit the orc?". These include:
So the game I'm working on has a great deal to do with resources -- and the choices we make about using those resources. So I was thinking that it would be good to have a game based around Karma. You'd get resource points and you could just spend them to succeed at various tasks.
It turns out that this is a lot easier said than done. The games that I know of that lean on Karma resolution are Amber and Nobilis -- two games about Godlike beings where death isn't exactly a show-stopper. My game deals with a more mundane reality and Karma becomes much less interesting. "Can I succeed?" gets reduced to a binary "yes/no" situation. I tried adding some tweaks to it, but it didn't get past the fact that you would only succeed at things you could afford to buy with Resource points. Everything else would cream you. Strangely, in many ways this produces a very "realistic" game. Can I outrun a horse? No. Can I take on 10 guys all at once? No. But you only get an interesting game when the PCs can beat the odds. Maybe not always, maybe not often, but they do.
So I'm back to a Fortune system. Specifically, you spend points to buy dice for a pool. You can buy d6s or d10s. If you've got a ton of points you can easily outspend the other guy and get so many dice he'll (probably) never stop you. If you and the opponent are even close to each other, you can pull off an upset. You can buy lots of d6's or gamble on a few d10's. The point being that if you want to win the contest, it's possible for you to do so, even if your resources aren't quite as good as the other guy's. In Karma, that's something that generally can't happen.
I've just now considered the idea that you might be able to have a Karma-based game where a poorly ranked underdog could beat a nigh-invincible champion. Imagine if your stat or resources or whatever translated into a chess piece (or set of chess pieces). If your stat is high you get extra pawns and pieces and if your stat is low, you may only have a few pawns. So you setup and play a game of chess. There's a chance that the underdog can still come out on top. However, this is obviously an incredibly cumbersome way to play. A die roll is much faster.
Speed is the other issue that I'm considering as I go through all of this. I'm considering it on two fronts. First, I want to make sure that the "handling time" (from deciding what the conflict is about to determining who won) is fairly short. Nothing is worse than 15 die rolls to figure out if you hit the guy. As it stands, I'm a little worried that it might take too long to hash out at resolution. It's not terrible, and it needs some heavy playtesting, but I feel like it might be a bit long.
The second speed issue is that I've got a system of rotating "antagonist". Saying I've got a rotating GM is a little strong. Basically, players go around the table and the person opposite them runs the opposition they face on their turn. Right, so something I look for in RPGs is the ability to let the GM quickly manage the opposition. The key is to have a way to streamline the system used by the PCs so the GM can generate similar game effects without having to make all the choices that, for an individual character may be interesting, but for large groups of characters (or for ad-hoc individuals) would be tiresome or slow the game down. The game is a lot more fun for GMs when they can quickly react to the screwball things that PCs do and keep the game going. With the "antagonist" duties rotating around the table, being able to pare down the effort in this area becomes doubly important. Time you waste in getting set up to resolve a challenge is time that you're not playing and it's time that's not being spent resolving the challenge and moving the spotlight around the table until it's your turn to go.
My concern here is that I may have actually sped it up too much and now problems will either be too trivial or too huge (the opposition will constantly outspend the PCs by such large margins, probability can't help them any more). It's really hard to find a good balance.
Bleh. Anyway, more as it develops.
later
Tom
So I'm working on an RPG. I'm hoping to have it ready for GenCon next year. I'm not talking about it a whole lot yet since I want to try and have some sort of alpha-kit finished for people to look at. But I do feel compelled to mention one or two things right here and now.
According to Johnathan Tweet, there are three ways to resolve the question of "do I hit the orc?". These include:
- Fortune: A random element plays a crucial role in determining the outcome. There may be a lot of modifiers and such, but at the end of the day, some randomizer is used in determining success. Pretty much every game does this.
- Karma: You compare two stats. Higher stat wins. Classically, this is Amber. I can't think of any other games off-hand that use this system, although I'm sure there are a few. Nobilis is another one although it uses a few tweaks to disguise it.
- Drama: You go with what would be more interesting. This is normally the domain of GM fiat, or Freeform group consensus. For example, when the dice show that a PC should've died, often a GM will "fudge" it and just say the PC survives because that's more fun that having the PC die. Aside from Theatrix, I can't think of a commerically published game that relies on this, although it's a resolution method that frequently happens in games as outlined above. Oh wait, Polaris has a back-up Fortune method but is primarily Drama.
So the game I'm working on has a great deal to do with resources -- and the choices we make about using those resources. So I was thinking that it would be good to have a game based around Karma. You'd get resource points and you could just spend them to succeed at various tasks.
It turns out that this is a lot easier said than done. The games that I know of that lean on Karma resolution are Amber and Nobilis -- two games about Godlike beings where death isn't exactly a show-stopper. My game deals with a more mundane reality and Karma becomes much less interesting. "Can I succeed?" gets reduced to a binary "yes/no" situation. I tried adding some tweaks to it, but it didn't get past the fact that you would only succeed at things you could afford to buy with Resource points. Everything else would cream you. Strangely, in many ways this produces a very "realistic" game. Can I outrun a horse? No. Can I take on 10 guys all at once? No. But you only get an interesting game when the PCs can beat the odds. Maybe not always, maybe not often, but they do.
So I'm back to a Fortune system. Specifically, you spend points to buy dice for a pool. You can buy d6s or d10s. If you've got a ton of points you can easily outspend the other guy and get so many dice he'll (probably) never stop you. If you and the opponent are even close to each other, you can pull off an upset. You can buy lots of d6's or gamble on a few d10's. The point being that if you want to win the contest, it's possible for you to do so, even if your resources aren't quite as good as the other guy's. In Karma, that's something that generally can't happen.
I've just now considered the idea that you might be able to have a Karma-based game where a poorly ranked underdog could beat a nigh-invincible champion. Imagine if your stat or resources or whatever translated into a chess piece (or set of chess pieces). If your stat is high you get extra pawns and pieces and if your stat is low, you may only have a few pawns. So you setup and play a game of chess. There's a chance that the underdog can still come out on top. However, this is obviously an incredibly cumbersome way to play. A die roll is much faster.
Speed is the other issue that I'm considering as I go through all of this. I'm considering it on two fronts. First, I want to make sure that the "handling time" (from deciding what the conflict is about to determining who won) is fairly short. Nothing is worse than 15 die rolls to figure out if you hit the guy. As it stands, I'm a little worried that it might take too long to hash out at resolution. It's not terrible, and it needs some heavy playtesting, but I feel like it might be a bit long.
The second speed issue is that I've got a system of rotating "antagonist". Saying I've got a rotating GM is a little strong. Basically, players go around the table and the person opposite them runs the opposition they face on their turn. Right, so something I look for in RPGs is the ability to let the GM quickly manage the opposition. The key is to have a way to streamline the system used by the PCs so the GM can generate similar game effects without having to make all the choices that, for an individual character may be interesting, but for large groups of characters (or for ad-hoc individuals) would be tiresome or slow the game down. The game is a lot more fun for GMs when they can quickly react to the screwball things that PCs do and keep the game going. With the "antagonist" duties rotating around the table, being able to pare down the effort in this area becomes doubly important. Time you waste in getting set up to resolve a challenge is time that you're not playing and it's time that's not being spent resolving the challenge and moving the spotlight around the table until it's your turn to go.
My concern here is that I may have actually sped it up too much and now problems will either be too trivial or too huge (the opposition will constantly outspend the PCs by such large margins, probability can't help them any more). It's really hard to find a good balance.
Bleh. Anyway, more as it develops.
later
Tom
