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Game Design
So, this thread is for general game design stuff, since a lot of people here talk about it.
To kick things off, here's a question regarding how many choices to give players. In this context it's about a TRPG I'm designing, but the question applies to games of all sorts.
Basically, I'm trying to avoid having there be a single best build ever, but instead make success relate more to situtaional strategies. One of the ways I'm doing this is making each weapon have some sort of unique rule or modifier that fundamentally alters how it interacts with certain situations. For example, a warhammer more or less ignores armor, but it's easier for someone to dodge and can't effectively be used with quick successive attacks. A rapier, meanwhile, can do some serious damage to an unarmored opponent, but is extremely unlikely to even damage an armored opponent.
Anyway, now for the actual question. I'm concerned about new players finding all the options overwhelming and being driven away (even though in practice, you really only need to know the rules for whatever weapons you're carrying), and I was wondering how many options would be too much. I do intend to playtest, but I thought it might be a good idea to get some advice for a baseline for where to start.
Comments
things i have liked in games: when there are (potentially) significant portions of the rules dedicated to non-combat stuff.
to the point one could possibly play through the game without combat, if they were skilled enough.
That's always fun.
I think there's somewhere out there that lists how many enemies have to be killed to complete certain games.
Mostly for pacificst runs, though. And that's not intended by most of those games.
True.
You've played Deus Ex, right?
no
Play it.
Now.
The mechanics are designed to let you do pretty much whatever the hell you want. Even for bosses, it's entirely possible to just run past them. And the levels have so many ways to get through it's absurd.
The latest game, Human Revolution, is mostly the same, except for a few really stupid mandatory boss fights, but has the bonus of adding dialogue bosses, which are amazing.
Also, play Vampire: the Masquerade - Bloodlines. It's pretty much Deus Ex, but you're a vampire instead of a cyborg.
Firstly, you need to think about how many options are "necessary" and why. For instance, you might want to represent three, four or five broad "styles" of fighting in a game, each one represented by a weapon balanced with the other two, three or four. Once you've established which of these is most core to your system and can articulate that clearly, you can decide whether to build off that with variation. Extra content might draw focus away from that core, it it could augment it.
For instance, a mace and a warhammer are fundamentally similar weapons, but the latter generally has a spike face as well as a blunt one. Ergo, these could be almost identical mechanically and be thrown into the same type, like "mass weapon". And perhaps the set of rules you established for maces apply to all "mass weapons" (maces, axes, hammers), with variable alterations for each. This is how games end up at their own distinctions.
Take Elder Scrolls. It doesn't distinguish heavily between a mace and a sword, but it does distinguish heavily between a sword and its two-handed equivalent. This is because the games try to offer two distinct styles of up-front close combat, for better or worse. In theory, TES games only need that simple distinction and the rest of it is taken care of via individual weapon variables. On the other hand, you could look at Dark Souls. It doesn't have particular skills associated with styles, but its stats influence which weapons one can use, and those weapons bring the bulk of the attributes. Daggers have pretty massive critical damage and they're Dexterity weapons, so they encourage a certain style of play. On the other hand, the most versatile and consistent weapons (such as the claymore) tend to be based on a balance of Strength and Dexterity, implying that they're meant to be accessed by and useful to a variety of characters. Finally, you get Faith and Intelligence, which are in turn implied to be useful for characters that follow their particular disciplines.
Note how these all tie up with a theme. A dagger is all about making a pinpoint, debilitating thrust -- ergo, low basic damage but unsettlingly high critical damage, which is exacerbated by a high Dexterity build. So not only is the theme of the dagger enforced, the theme of its user as a lightweight, highly-mobile combatant is as well. A divine weapon is strongest in the hands of the faithful, and that kind of character will know a few Miracles if their build has been put to good use.
It basically boils down to what you absolutely need, in terms of both mechanics and narrative. Perhaps you should write two lists of your game's needs? One can be purely from a mechanical perspective, and the other purely from a narrative perspective. Then you can play a matching game -- see if you can draw a line between a purely mechanical need that could enforce a purely narrative need. Then keep going until all the strongest relationships between mechanics and narrative have been spent.
Generally speaking, I'm more of a 'less is more' kind of guy. I think things like giving complex rules for how this weapon works or that weapon works is just needless prevention of letting someone window dress their character.
I've had a couple ideas for a TTRPG that was meant to be basically Shonenshit: The RPG. I'll share more ideas when I'm less tired.
Re: How many options is too much.
What Alex said. Figure out how many weapons the battle system needs and go from there.
can't
expensive
^^^ It depends on the context of the game. A TTRPG like Riddle of Steel absolutely requires detailed weapon rules because one of its selling points is its accurate-to-history combat system. Something like World of Darkness is obviously much more abstract in that respect, because its focus is on supernatural shenanigans in the modern world.
Basically, you need to first and foremost look at the type of experience you're going to be delivering and the kinds of demographics that are going to be interested in it, just like any other work of art or media. I once read an interview about a game designer who was asked if he could make a "military first-person shooter with vampire romance" by a publisher -- no joke. That's a stupid idea, at least played seriously, as it's trying to combine factors of opposed demographics; namely, the dudebro military shooter consumer and the chicksis paranormal romance consumer. No-one would be pleased with that game because they would have to put up with elements meant to appeal to the opposing demographic.
One of the major strengths of a game like D&D or Skyrim is its capacity to be enjoyed by multiple demographics via the inherent diversity of the experience, even if neither game is very elegant or sophisticated mechanically. But something like Call of Cthulhu or Amnesia: The Dark Descent will always provide a superior experience to its intended demographic because of the focus, elegance and sophistication that can be lavished on its focal points. Ergo, we get things like insanity systems, which are completely inappropriate for the general D&D or Skyrim experience, but work brilliantly in their native context.
I'm more going for giving players a lot of options to encourage creative thinking and diversity of capabilities. For example, a character specializing in combat (which I don't intend to overemphasize, but I'm designing it first because it's probably the thing that will need the most playtesting) might want to carry two different weapons that complement each other's weaknesses, like maybe one for armored opponents and one for unarmored opponents.
Regarding weapon categories, my weapon skills are currently one-handed and two-handed, with the lowest bumped up to half of the highest, but I think I'm going to move to something more like weapon categories, such as polearm or mass weapon. I think in the long run it will actually make the game simpler, oddly enough.
Mechanical needs are that I want to emphasize on-the-fly strategic thinking over having the one true best build ever. That's why I'm doing situational stuff with what weapons can do.
Narrative needs...that's more difficult to pin down with a TRPG. I'll think about that.
I see where you're coming from, but I'm not trying to make the rules overly complex. They're mostly stuff like "warhammers ignore armor" or "attempts to parry a knife are at a penalty, but attempts to block it with a shield get a bonus."
You could use both skill-types and weapon-types.
For instance, a longsword might be "Skill: One-handed or Two-handed" and "Type: Sword". So you might use the skill associated with the type of use, while the weapon's particular properties come from its physical type.
Ergo, one-handed and two-handed are probably good enough as a skill distinction. What you might want to do now is think about how each physical type should perform tactically. Just off the top of my head, this is how I might separate close combat weapons:
And perhaps a weapon could have more than one physical type. For instance, a poleaxe is both a "polearm" and a "mass weapon", so it might get the special rules from both. This is especially good if the special rules for each weapon are simple. The rule for "mass weapon" might be as simple as "armour values are halved against this type" and the rule for polearms might be "add 10 to your character's one-handed/two-handed score while using this weapon" because of their ease of use.
I also think you should keep variable values, like health and damage, pretty low. Vidya can get away with huge values because the system does everything for you, but TTRPGs need to be played on the fly. Hell, I even encourage low values in context of video games, too. If you can keep everything in the low-mid double digits, I think it'll make stuff a lot easier. But even lower is better, if you ask me.
That could work.
Huh, polearms are easy to use? That's kinda counterintuitive. Could you go into more detail?
I'm trying to do that. It's theoretically possible to hit 100 HP if you spend ages leveling nothing but endurance, but it's probably pretty ineffective to do so, given how much experience you'd have to sink into it. A starting character will most likely have 20-25 HP, and no more than 30 (there's a separate HP score for bludgeoning damage, and characters have 60% more of it since it's generally a less immediate threat).
Damage, meanwhile, is based on the difference between an offensive and defensive roll, both of which are 2d10 plus stuff, so it should tend to gravitate toward low numbers unless one opponent has a significant advantage.
Basically, you get a lot of mileage out of a comparatively smaller amount of skill. A sword's strength is its versatility, a mass weapon it's pure impact force, but a polearm (usually) affords good distance and is very simple to use. In fact, it's possible to teach formation shield and spear only using three guards and two thrusting techniques. For training time and cost, a polearm delivers the most in a battlefield scenario, especially since they're all so similar.
Personally, I think this is likely to complicate matters. Instead, I'd make it so that bludgeoning weapons do lowish damage, but armour can never prevent more than X% of damage. That should even it out so characters can use a consistent HP score without complicating matters.
Huh.
In that case, I might represent that by making the skill increase somewhat faster from use.
It's a bit of a tough one. Much easier in video games, where the length of a weapon is a much more obvious consideration.
Hmmm...maybe they should beeasier to parry but hard to counterattack?
I think this would be much easier with context. Remember: purpose and theme.
Something I have been thinking about recently is the concept of skills within a TTRPG.
For example; in Dungeons and Dragons, you have a Diplomacy skill. In order to try and be diplomatic towards a creature, you roll a d20 and add any relevant modifiers to this roll.
Now, usually this is to represent the concept of randomness. And, indeed, it can be used to represent that; it could represent the person stumbling when speaking, for example, or the person they are talking to being slightly out of sorts, and thus more suggestible than normal.
However, while randomness has its' place, so too does... not-randomness.
So, what I am thinking is; how would you design a game with static game elements? No concept of random rolls and such, but still having some element of... control, so that everything can still be determined, by both the players and the GM (so, without being freeform)? And, more importantly, how would this influence the way the game was built?
^^Well, in terms of weapon systems, my goal is to make each weapon good in some situations, but bad in others.
^You could give each player a set of outcomes, like "very good, good*10, bad*5, very bad," to use as they wish, but they don't get a refill until they use everything.
^ I mean that you should provide context with other rules. If you can definitely decide what you want one thing to do, mechanically, you can start narrowing the fields for other things.
^^ I remember reading someone doing something like this on /tg/. The game was meant to be a TTRPG adaptation of Dark Souls, and they removed random factors because they wanted the mechanics to be a test of intelligent application more than anything else. From what I recall, combat used stamina, like in the game -- every round you got X amount of stamina back, and different abilities and actions costed different amounts of stamina.
As for skills, perhaps you could still have the same kind of thing going? Some kind of abstract resource that is used up as the character uses said skill and regenerates over time.
I'm not entirely certain I follow. Do you mean the combat system in general, or specific weapon rules, or...?
Anna and Gunther in the first game are both mandatory without some rather major glitch exploitation.
They're mandatory in the sense that you'll encounter them, but you don't actually have to fight them if you don't want to.
As I said, without glitches, you have to fight them. The door behind Anna requires her keycard, and you can't use the terminal Gunther is guarding without being murdered horribly.
I might be wrong about Anna, since I did fight her, but I managed to lure Gunther to a different area and use the terminal.
Both, either, neither -- your call. But the strongest variables exist in context of strong mechanics. Basically, narrowing down what you definitely want A to do will help you with B, C, D and so on and so forth. It's a process of elimination, since you probably won't be revisiting the same variable; it's what gives A its particular flavour, after all.
Okay.
Well, here's the basic framework of the combat system. You attack using an attack skill, and the defender picks some applicable defense (which can be a purely defensive skill, like dodging or possibly an attack skill if you want to parry or something). The defender might get a bonus or penalty depending on the specific skills; for example, if someone's trying to punch you and you're countering by slicing their arm with your sword, you'll get a huge bonus.
This is less complicated than it sounds; there's a little chart, which I plan to put on the character sheets.
Anyway, the attacker rolls 2d10+the attack skill+its associated ability, and the defender rolls the same. If the attack roll is higher, the defender takes that much damage. Otherwise, the defender doesn't take damage and if the defense roll is higher, might do damage to the attacker depending on the defense being used.
There are two types of damage, regular and bludgeoning, the latter of which is less lethal, as characters have a separate, larger set of HP associated with it. Some weapons do one, some do the other, and most do both. The way armor works is that it converts a certain number of points of regular damage to bludgeoning, then if it still has points left when that's all gone, removes the remaining number of points from the bludgeoning damage.
There will also be some penalties for using the same attack or defense multiple times in a round, or for being injured, but I don't have the details of those worked out yet.
As for rules specific to weapons, I'm trying to have one advantage and one disadvantage for any given weapon. For example, a rapier doesn't do any bludgeoning damage, making it very lethal, but damage from it is negated entirely by armor instead of converted to bludgeoning damage.
I still think having two HP scores is too much to keep track of. If you must have two different combat resources, then I say differentiate them more. Have a stamina bar, and you could say that bludgeoning weapons deal damage to that until it's empty, in which case they start damaging regular HP instead. Stamina could then be used as a cost resource for techniques.
If you use two different HP bars, I think players will just house rule over the top of them or forget about the second one completely.
The rule for mass weapons could then be "deals double stamina damage against adversaries in hard armours like maille and plate".
Stamina also allows you to differentiate weapons a bit more. For instance, two-handed weapons could halve their stamina cost for use, where the balance is that single-handed weapons allow for an off-hand item.
This is more complex than having two HP values, but I think it'll get a better reaction from players because they'll immediately see the function of these two different combat resources.