Justin Achilli

Tag: engagement

6 February 2011

Roll One and Die

This guy will either explode you into your component molecules, or he will hide behind the barbarian.

Warhammer Quest used to have an interesting mechanic surrounding its “wandering monster” encounter system. Every turn, the player with the wizard character rolled a die to determine his available Power (the magic resource) for the turn. On a roll of 2-6, the wizard has that much “mana” for the turn. On a 1, however, the wizard has no mana — and a random encounter occurs.

This is pretty consistent with the Warhammer world. That is, when something kind of bad happens, something god-grindingly awful usually piles on top of it. As a pacing mechanic, though, it’s neat game design. It makes for spikes of “SWEET MOTHER OF CRAP WE’RE ALL GOING TO DIE,” which is the sort of thrill that makes a game that has randomness as such a central element exciting. It’s way more engaging than rolling poorly in Settlers of Catan — 2 or 12, nothing happens, because nobody bothers building on those number distros unless they have to.

"And then I was, like, 'Wait, my Humanity is FOUR? But this is only the second session of the chronicle!'"

I used to employ on one of these “trouble spots” during convention and demo games of Vampire I’d run at shows. (I always create pre-gens for convention games, since for a demo people won’t have their own, and because the scenario construction for Vampire relies a lot on the types of characters undertaking it. I didn’t want to take the chance of having a political mystery scenario written and have to shoehorn trenchcoat katana mirroshades Kindred Braveheart into it.) I’d dole out characters by whatever method — one of my favorite methods is “give me three adjectives that describe the character you’d like to play” — and then I’d have each player roll a 10-sider for his starting blood pool. And then, to illustrate the potential of the system, I’d have each player spend a blood point at the beginning of the session to reflect the mystic consumption of vitae.

The results were what you’re dreading: Someone inevitably rolled a 1 on that blood poll roll, and upon spending that first blood for the night, awoke into a ravening frenzy. This was a convenient, exciting, in medias res method for illustrating the blood mechanics, the Beast, and frenzy (and probably Humanity and the Masquerade…) all at once. The game got started with a holy-smokes action sequence, but still got to hit the thematic high points of Vampire.

The system I lovingly know as “roll one and die” makes for a fun and thrilling tipping point, but it’s not universally employable. The drawbacks to using it as a common design principle are few, but can be significant.

  • It can’t prevent a character from participating meaningfully. If all the player does once he’s rolled his one is sit there and wait for his next turn, that’s not an engaging design. The Warhammer Quest rule, for instance, lets the wizard character continue to play his turn, whether by using magic items, attacking with a physical weapon, etc. The Vampire example places the character front and center in a dramatic scenario, and gives him a handful of situational escape or conclusion possibilities. Both of their outcomes engender clever thinking and force accountability.
  • To that end, it doesn’t port well to a solo environment. If the only player who has any input suffers the double-whammy of something bad appearing, and the resource to be used against it is absent, well, that’s trouble. (Of course, Warhammer’s propensity for piled-on catastrophe often turned up triple-whammies, in which the players, already beset by monstrous hordes, are ambushed by an EXTRA BONUS monster horde, oh, and the wizard still has no mana to sling into the fray. Good God, loving this game was masochism.)
  • Players are a cowardly, superstitious lot, and the guy who rolls a one — even though he’s the only guy who ever has to roll that die, so it’s bound to happen eventually (one time in every six, actually) — becomes a veritable Jonah when the inevitable finally happens. This isn’t a problem in most cases, but with particularly salty groups, it’s no fun to be That Guy.
  • If “roll one and die” occurs too frequently, it ceases to be exciting and instead becomes tedious. The Vampire example (even in a non-sadistic convention environment) lets a vampire watch as his precious resource (blood) dwindles, but allows him to choose when her replenishes it. Warhammer Quest balances roll one and die with the presence of the other characters, and the options of items and melee.
  • It’s dangerous to rely on this as a balance mechanism. WQ flirted with this, because the wizard is a powerful character class, but in general, a system that depends on randomness to enforce balance is going to face trouble in the long run. Most cases with play out according to the balance, but statistically, what about those poor slobs at the low end and the lucky stiffs at the low and high ends of the probability distributions? “Wizards suck! All they do is cause problems,” and “Wizards rule! Nothing bad ever happens to them and they always have more than enough Power to face the enemy.” You have to be a hardcore fan of randomness to enjoy the highs and lows of this feature type as a character trait.

What do you think? What games, whether tabletop RPGs, boardgames, or video games, use a system like Roll One And Die to good or bad effect?

10 comments
20 January 2011

Talking at Flowcharts

Task resolution systems. Oh, good heavens.

When these players' characters talk to an NPC, they're talking to the GM, who can improvise or rationalize a genuine personal response.

In many modern tabletop games, you have a core mechanic that resolves most game situations. Whether combat, occult research, technological repair, or fast-talking the security guards into beliving you’re supposed to be here, there’s a common system to it all. It might be a d20-based system, or perhaps it uses the storytelling rules, or perhaps it’s the One Roll Engine or the Coinematic Unisystem. It might be damned simple or it might have graduating complexity. Combat is probably more specific and complicated than the other situational resolutions. Tabletop RPGs do have their roots in wargames, after all.

Most importantly, though, tabletop roleplaying games have a GM: real, live, thinking (in most cases) rules arbiter and narrative director who can interpret dice rolls, take the role of non-player characters, and improvise situational results.

In most cases, you don’t have that in a video game. You don’t have a guy there who can, through informational relay and creative interpretation, change the results.

In most cases, that’s fine. Most games are designed to do one thing well, so the fact that there is no “hacking” resolution mechanic in Starcraft II doesn’t matter. Lara Croft doesn’t have a portrait-painting minigame. Minecraft isn’t “missing” cryptography.

In most cases, though, the gameplay designed for non-combat contested tasks is just the combat system with anemic set dressing and a whitewash vaguely suggestive of what you wanted to do. The vast majority of computer roleplaying games are designed with combat first and foremost. “Roleplaying” in a computer game context really means “advancement,” not “you take on the persona,” and as such, fighting stuff to level is your primary gameplay.

What if my character wouldn't say any of these? Then all I see is broken immersion and a game that wants me to play it on its terms, not mine.

Fast-talking or seducing an NPC with a social character in a computer RPG is usually just reskinned combat. You’re clicking the social attack button and subtracting that social attack value from whatever social defense value belongs to the NPC. You click your numbers at its numbers and eventually something happens, which is probably a text dump. It’s exactly the combat resolution system, except that combat has all sorts of nifty particle effects and fancy animated maneuvers and yomi-based move-and-countermove. Social interaction challenges maybe have some facial expression changes and your reward is READ THIS, FUCKER.

Combat has open-ended results, but when dealing with a computer-controlled NPC, the social interaction reward is either the linear plotline that you would have been on anyway regardless of your conversation, or it’s an extra handful of clicks through a dialogue tree (which is actually probably a dialogue diamond that’s  going to likewise direct you back into the linear plotline that you would have been on anyway regardless of your conversation).

My big two offenders, largely because of their profile rather than doing it any worse than any other game, are Fallout III and Dragon Age. Both of these are basically combat engines with varying amounts of text piled into the interstices between combats. In Dragon Age, you can have extra cut scenes or dialogue options as a social character, but eventually, you’re going to do that goddamn quest or the game isn’t going to move forward. Fallout III lets you choose a flavor of additional dialogue text, but in no way does its claim that you can make any sort of character you want change the fact that you’re going to be firing that hunting rifle at mutants’ heads way more than you’re going to be Diplomacying the world into revitalization.

These are not “social interactions.” These are more obstacles to click through to get to the big fight at the end that you’re going to have to have anyway. At the best — at the very apex of what they can achieve — they’re lore-delivery vehicles. To paraphrase one of my recent favorite observations, an NPC is just an object you click to get text.

Clicking "mock" on an NPC is not the same as talking to a real person and having an interaction. Also, I'm pretty talented at UI design.

For true “social interaction” or investigation in a video game (to distinguish it from a tabletop RPG with a GM), the gameplay has to be different from the combat engine. If the combat engine requires me to select a target and then spam the hell out of the special attack buttons, then a social interaction engine that requires me to select a target and click the hell out of the “fast talk” and “devastating repartee” buttons is no different from that combat engine.

This guy thought he had a "relationship" with an NPC, and the truth of the matter was more than he could handle.

Further, when you put “social interaction” in a multiplayer game, and all it requires of the player is to click on some predefined sequences with an NPC, the designer is spitting in the player’s eye and insulting his family for three generations, at the very least. Social interactions are for interactions between players, not the limited-output constructs of the game. Whispering filthy innuendo to your PSP isn’t social interaction, either, so stop trying to tell a player that talking to an inanimate object is. This is a simulation of social interaction, just like videogame combat is a simulation of actual physical violence. Capcom doesn’t tell me I’m really engaging in some badass karate maneuvers when I’m playing Street Fighter.

Like I said, good heavens.

 

13 comments
9 December 2010

Stadium Design

All of the people in this picture are participating in the football game, not just the players on the field.

It’s no secret that I’m an NFL football fan. Every Sunday (and Monday evenings… and Thursday evenings late-season… and some Saturdays during playoffs…) I’m sprawled on the couch, watching a game I love and yelling at the television. I keep track of player stats, monitor playoff brackets, and fume at coaches for things I have no control over.

Outside the actual watching of the game, though, I remain a football fan, and it shapes some amount of the community I have with my friends. When I see a person wearing a football jersey or some other team-branded item, I know I can have a conversation with them. I married my wife at least partially because she was a football, fan, too (and because she liked the correct team).

Where is this all headed?

The metaphor CCP Game Design Director Keli Oskarsson uses is that the game experience is designed for both the sportsmen and the audience in the stadium. “Stadium design” is good design. As a football fan, I’m participating in the football hobby even when an actual football game isn’t on. I’m engaged, I have buy-in, I have relationships, and I’m doing football-related things that aren’t tied to any actual football game in progress.

That’s encouragement for retention. That’s community. That’s an incentive to play or watch more and engage that community and that common interest again — and soon!

From a design perspective, the “design” of the game of football is more than the actual football game being played on the gridiron. Everybody at a football game is “doing” football, even if they’re not a direct player.

Maybe your downtime activity between games is "Think of a way to modify the board before the next session."

That’s a pretty daunting concept from the design perspective. So now, as a designer, you have to design what people are doing when they play your game and when they’re not playing your game?

Not exactly. But what you want to do is give people something to share. In MMOs, you see this a lot in guild culture, where people often join the guild and therein form friendships, and then those friendships keep them coming back to the game. A common interest with an established group of friends is infinitely more compelling and rewarding than the dreaded pick-up group. In a tabletop game environment, let the players engage in downtime activity — a “table talk” mailing list, say, or wikifying some of the worldbuilding elements.

The participation doesn’t need to end when a game session is done. Time out of game planning for the next session is a great example, or spent in a social network tool doing some activity that relates to the game: a Facebook game, for example, that engages people’s existing social networks and then translates accomplishments therein into advancement in the core game. (And I’m not talking those clickfest Facebook games that serve only to annoy your friends.)

So what do you think? How do you keep an ambient awareness or a low-intensity participation in your game when the actual game isn’t happening?

2 comments
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