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Exeunt Omnes
A game of strategic sophistry. Convince or crush the teenage girl who wants to end your reign of evil.
A game of strategic sophistry. Convince or crush the teenage girl who wants to end your reign of evil.
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Lying to and deceiving the player
All the bad examples of lying listed so far are bad simply because you have no way to tell that those people are lying, except by believing them and getting burnt. Which obviously sucks. Craze's example is slightly better because you could tell from the skeeviness but, as a one-time thing, you need to signpost it heavily so not very interesting either.
However, I have no trouble imagining a game where you know that some people are going to lie to you, and there are logical causes for it that apply systematically throughout the game, and uncovering these causes to make the right decisions is a real (if purely mental) part of the gameplay. Outside the realm of strict "detective" games, Pathologic is a great example.
It could also replace randomness and hidden information in terms of "risk management": you're not sure whether you are going to win this battle, not because of a RNG or hidden variables like an enemy with unknown moves or unclear AI, but because you have three conflicting sources of information, and you don't have enough clues yet to know which one to believe.
However, I have no trouble imagining a game where you know that some people are going to lie to you, and there are logical causes for it that apply systematically throughout the game, and uncovering these causes to make the right decisions is a real (if purely mental) part of the gameplay. Outside the realm of strict "detective" games, Pathologic is a great example.
It could also replace randomness and hidden information in terms of "risk management": you're not sure whether you are going to win this battle, not because of a RNG or hidden variables like an enemy with unknown moves or unclear AI, but because you have three conflicting sources of information, and you don't have enough clues yet to know which one to believe.
Fundamental RPGology Thread
Wow there are incompatible versions of RMXP? Well anyway thanks for trying!
The tiles actually change color to reflect their current element but I agree that's not very legible.
To be honest, I just threw that out there in case someone would be amused to see some combination of everyone's ideas, but clearly, it would need more than one evening of work to take shape.
The tiles actually change color to reflect their current element but I agree that's not very legible.
To be honest, I just threw that out there in case someone would be amused to see some combination of everyone's ideas, but clearly, it would need more than one evening of work to take shape.
Forkits Engine demo 9 - Carrying Blocks
Fundamental RPGology Thread
author=NeverSilent
Though, I think we should keep using this thread to further discuss any unconventional approaches to battle design whenever the need arises.
Agreed! There's no necessity to have a permanent conversation but I do hope that at least this whole thing will have facilitated some ongoing reflection about battle design. I will try to come back with further ideas for your project whenever I'm done thinking them through.
hero_bash> Could you give some info about your system?
Fundamental RPGology Thread
Well, I guess we can safely say that this will never happen unless someone takes charge :P So let us know if you ever start this project for real, NeverSilent.
Fundamental RPGology Thread
Funny story, RPGs are full of numbers and tables just because they were born from miniature wargaming. Many pen and paper games have evolved beyond that, though (occasionally in directions that can actually be reproduced on computer, but not always).
One possibility is making a RPG with only discrete states, which was one of my suggestions for the contest (for example having "aggressive/cautious..." stances or equivalent character states, as seen in NS' or caparo's systems among others, with the further condition that you win the battle if, say, you use skill "German Suplex" while enemy is in stance "Unbalanced", or more than half the enemies are "Afraid", or whatever).
That could even tie into the second thing I wanted to discuss someday: having multiple victory conditions (almost every strategy game has more than a single path to winning, for instance 4X games usually have military, technology and diplomacy at least). It's even more interesting if each way of ending the battle has different consequences - some reward you in XP, others allow you to learn the skills of an enemy that you have spared, others have consequences on your reputation...
One possibility is making a RPG with only discrete states, which was one of my suggestions for the contest (for example having "aggressive/cautious..." stances or equivalent character states, as seen in NS' or caparo's systems among others, with the further condition that you win the battle if, say, you use skill "German Suplex" while enemy is in stance "Unbalanced", or more than half the enemies are "Afraid", or whatever).
That could even tie into the second thing I wanted to discuss someday: having multiple victory conditions (almost every strategy game has more than a single path to winning, for instance 4X games usually have military, technology and diplomacy at least). It's even more interesting if each way of ending the battle has different consequences - some reward you in XP, others allow you to learn the skills of an enemy that you have spared, others have consequences on your reputation...
Fundamental RPGology Thread
author=MerlandeseMy reaction to that PM was that I absolutely agreed, and that I thought that actually, most RPG battling systems are quite bad at that, they don't give anything like the feeling of what they're supposed to describe. I'd never write my ultimate confrontation in my fantasy novel like "And lo, the heroes summoned Knights of the Round Table and mimicked twice a turn, again and again, drinking the occasional potion of full restoration, until all the one million HP of the final boss were gone." That's a fitting representation of lumberjacking while drinking beers, though :P
That is, part of a good RPG Battle is themeing, and how it fits into the rest of the game.
NeverSilent's idea of playing the GM is cool because it gives a lot of easy metaphors to work with (e.g., the more the players win, the more they are willing to suspend their disbelief at your cheating for the sake of fun, and so you can progress from "adjusting" dice throws to temporarily "correcting" monster or equipment description, all the way to forging tables in the core rulebook :P)
Treason's idea with the wheels:
that's an interesting way of tying multiple constraints together, but at the same time, it really doesn't work for me as a metaphor. Metaphors needn't be realistic, so long as they sustain your imagination of how things represent the action (you can imagine the little soldiers in board games, for instance). The wheels are okay to represent tradeoffs, but they don't help me imagine what should be on which wheel and connected to which other, they don't make sense for an entire rule system (I may be proven wrong). I promise I'll try to come up with an alternate way of doing this, because everyone's a critic ;)
caparo's suggestion>
my only problem is with the proposition for the initial skill: I think messing with the rules should be more than just "increase characters' defense". The skill should not have a single effect, instead it should modify (predictably) the way every other mechanism works (or at least multiple ones), so that you can react to whatever the characters are doing and build one it (which is what Treason's wheels was doing well: you could start with only the skill "move blue wheels", then another for green, red, yellow wheels, and other ones for moving forward or backward, or keeping them moving every turn....)
As for making that system for real, why not? I'm a bit wary of community endeavours on the full game scale, but just designing the battle system together, the good coders implement it fast, and then anyone who wants to write a one-shot quest for our imaginary P&P table can, that seems achievable. Prototyping a game quickly is really possible (as long as you can code or script, I rediscovered trying to make my chimera how everything takes ten times longer in eventing)
Fundamental RPGology Thread
author=NeverSilentHaha that idea is so cool, a kind of Black&White/Populous RPG... or actually, the first ever CRPG where you play the Game Master. Like "Oh god my players are so stupid they are bound to die, how can I cheat with the rulebook to keep them alive". I'm sure you can sell that pitch if you make a Kickstarter :P
a battle system where the player controls only the rules. That means both sides (the heroes and the enemies) would be controlled by the computer
(OST by Alan Parsons as a stretch goal?)
This is definitely something that can be prototyped quickly, so we can discuss it very concretely if you'd like. I don't know when you're planning to start this project, but we could go through the actual rule design in detail, if only as an exercise in collaborative creativity.
author=caparoIf I'm in it, I'd appreciate having your watchful eye to tell if we're going crazy :P
If any of you ever decide to develop this idea into a full project, I'll volunteer myself to be a alpha or beta tester!
Fundamental RPGology Thread
It would (hopefully) work if there are few such rules. I was describing the potential complexity of the player's actions, which is very different from the actual complexity of the ingredients. (my dumb example of a special rule for swords was for fun, actually you'd have only a few global rules that combine variously to define things like swords or spells)
For instance, the recursive aspect (rules about manipulating rules) will appear on its own, because of the rules themselves, not as the result of the devs defining every single situation and consequence (as with the puddles and everything).
soulkeeper> Yep that's more or less what I was imagining, essentially giving a small, constrained programming language to the player and showing him the "source code" of the battle system. Only you don't start from scracth, and you don't have access to everything all the time (e.g. you can at first modify only peripheral rules, and you must work to get closer to the "core" ones like "skills cost MP"). At the very worst it would still be less complicated than using RPG Maker, except with constraints and an enemy playing against you.
(and yes Python is awesome :P)
For instance, the recursive aspect (rules about manipulating rules) will appear on its own, because of the rules themselves, not as the result of the devs defining every single situation and consequence (as with the puddles and everything).
soulkeeper> Yep that's more or less what I was imagining, essentially giving a small, constrained programming language to the player and showing him the "source code" of the battle system. Only you don't start from scracth, and you don't have access to everything all the time (e.g. you can at first modify only peripheral rules, and you must work to get closer to the "core" ones like "skills cost MP"). At the very worst it would still be less complicated than using RPG Maker, except with constraints and an enemy playing against you.
(and yes Python is awesome :P)
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