Evaluating Your Game: Part Four
This is part four in an ongoing series, designed to help you evaluate and improve your game from the ground up. Previously, I discussed Genre, Setting, and Scope, followed by an analysis of Character Generation Methods and The Role of Randomness.
In most RPGs, you will eventually encounter something in character advancement that has a pre-requisite - something you must already have to be able to qualify for the advancement. These will typically apply to traits, classes, and occasionally skills.
Pre-requisites are good because they serve the function of providing a barrier between who may use something and who may not. This may be because of a concern with specialization, such as with d20’s prestige classes, or because the system does not implement a point-buy advancement and there is a desire to make somethings more costly, as with d20’s feat system.
The first concern with using pre-requisites is that it may make things too costly for a player to pursue - the Whirlwind Attack feat being an ideal example, it is highly desirable but almost never pursued because of the litany of pre-requisites.
The second concern with using pre-requisites is that they can go against a character concept. The Whirlwind Attack feat is another perfect example of this - among it’s pre-requisites are three defensive feats, one of them (Combat Expertise) will never see use if it was taken only because of the pre-requisites. Players will most likely try to avoid this wasted space on their character sheets.
There are one of two solutions to this problem:
First, you may offer alternate pre-requisites, a different path that can accommodate different concepts so that they may access the same thing.
Second, you may create an alternative to what the pre-requisites originally guarded - the alternative would represent the same skills if they were lacking whatever pre-requisites were not included and augmented by whatever they were replaced by. In the case of Whirlwind Attack, a version which did not include the defensive feats might provoke Attacks of Opportunity.
The use of pre-requisites is a balancing act - you must be sure that the requirements do not outweigh the perceived benefits, and that the requirements of a feature will appeal to everyone that would be interested in that feature.
Evaluating Your Game: Part Three
This is part three in an ongoing series, designed to help you evaluate and improve your game from the ground up. Previously, I discussed Genre, Setting, and Scope, followed by an analysis of Character Generation Methods. Today, I’m going to explore the role that randomness plays in your game.
When I talk about randomness, I mean meaningful randomness which affects the outcome of events purely through game mechanics. Rolling a die for an attack roll is a good example, where deciding what clothes a random bar patron is wearing is not.
First, what does the randomness represent in your game? Is it luck? Favor of the gods? An independent range of outcomes? A range to succeed or fail, determined by skill? While many people may be tempted to assume it is the last one, keep in mind that in many games, the range of randomness is never affected by skill, simply what is acceptable in that range to succeed. Be sure to consider this in all aspects of the game, skill use, combat, and character creation. For instance, why are hit points random?
Once you’ve determined what role randomness plays in your game, determine how big of a role it can play in the course of a game. You may be surprised.
For instance, in the d20 system you may assume that someone has a Base Attack Bonus of +10. In addition to this, their stat modifier gives them a +4 bonus to their attack roll. Further, they have managed through use of superior equipment, positioning, and tactics to acquire an additional +6 bonus to their attack roll, giving them a total of +20 to their attack. This means that thorough skill and preparation which borders on or exceeds the “realistic” human limit plays an equal role to pure, random chance.
Once you have figured out the role that chance plays, determine if it is the correct role. Does it play too big a part? Too small? Does it scale the way you want it to? (If scaling luck is of importance to you, I recommend looking into systems with dice pools.) If the answer to all these questions is no, then you need to ask yourself if your players will be happy with the role chance plays - if it plays too big a part, players may feel that chance simply dwarfs their character.
If you are investigating new systems, one thing to look at is how they present the odds of chance. Simply on a practical level, percentile is the easiest to work with, as people usually think in percentages when they think in terms of chance - it’s simply more natural than increments of 1/20th or 1/6th.
The final consideration with chance and randomness is how much you will do during play to minimize or alter it. If you are going to allow re-rolls in many instances due to clever thinking, or it simply being appropriate in the situation, this will slowly control the role that chance plays.
Evaluating Your Game: Part Two
This is part two in an ongoing series, designed to help you evaluate your game from the ground up.
Often, the first and most important thing that your players will encounter in your game is the process of character creation. For purposes of this discussion, I will assume that the characters being created are done so using the Dungeons and Dragons 3.5 rules, though I believe the process is universal enough that it may be translated into different rulesets without difficulty.
The first step in character creation is the assigning of attribute points. The different methods used to determine attributes all have different effects on the character creation process and how players approach the game.
Random attribute generation is perhaps the most classic, and my personal least favorite method of character generation because it takes a large level of control away from me in the process of character development. While it is true that you can play anything with any stats, it can be very hard to have sufficient attributes to make a character worth playing in the presence of other party members, who’s attributes are far better. Nothing deflates the enjoyment of the game for me like having all elevens and twelves while someone else in the party has all seventeens and eighteens.
Some people, however, prefer random generation. It has the benefit of being more realistic, and forcing players to make do with statistics which may not be quite ideal for them. It can also have the benefit of encouraging people to play different concepts or class types.
The pattern I have noticed with random character generation is that more high attributes tend towards fighter characters, while single high attributes tend towards caster characters.
The second method of attribute generation is the array method. The array method works through taking a set of pre-determined numbers, usually 8, 10, 12, 14, 16, and 18, and allowing players to place them as desired. This method has the benefit of being balanced between party members and discouraging min-maxing.
The third method of attribute generation is the point-buy method. This method works by giving each player a number of points, which are then used to purchase attributes. The purchase cost can either be flat, usually one-for-one, or the cost may increase for higher attributes, so that each modifier increase costs more. This method has the benefit of providing players the most freedom, though it can lead to min-maxing, and the process can take longer with the point-buy method than any other of the others, due to the number of choices to be made. Though the point-buy method is theoretically balanced, the fact that it can lead to min-maxing means that it can result in some unbalanced characters.
The final method of character creation is a hybrid method, combining random generation with the point-buy system. In this method, players generate their attributes randomly as normal. They are then free to use the point-buy system to shuffle points around and customize their attribute distribution. This method can lead to unbalanced characters, as the random method can, though it is rarely as crippling as with pure random generation.
What method do you use to generate characters?
Evaluating Your Game: Part One
This is part one in an ongoing series, designed to help you evaluate your game from the ground up.
The most basic part of any game is the genre. This one choice determines more about the course of game play than any other factor, including setting. An espionage game is likely to encourage little combat, lots of role-playing, and characters designed with a wide variety of skills in mind, while a science fiction game of space fleets is going to encourage players to design characters with piloting and tactical skills in mind.
When looking at your game, ignore all other aspects of it and try to determine what kind of genre or mixture of genres your game best falls into, and what aspects of it your different players respond to the most. Armed with this knowledge, you can adjust your presentation of game elements to better match the genre your players want to see.
Setting contains all the specifics and details that genre leaves out. Everything from geographical to political, legal, and religious matters all into the setting, as well as the laws relating to physics or magic, which may well be different from that of our own world.
Is there an aspect of your setting that your players are ignoring? If so, why? Are they aware that it exists? Have they had the time or opportunity to explore that aspect of your game? If an aspect of your game is generally ignored or avoided by the players, they are either unaware of it, or unaware of why they would want to deal with it. Make a point of demonstrating why that part of your game is there and how your players can enjoy it; if they still don’t react, it may be time to remove it from your game.
Scope determines how much of the setting your players are likely to encounter, and how they are going to be interacting with it. The scope of your game is the starting point of the players, and everything they do right up to the end - there exist aspects of the setting/game world/game mechanics outside of that scope, but it does not affect the course of the game.
To determine where the scope of your game is likely to extend to you, look at how characters start off in your game. Are they lowly (or not so lowly) adventurers or mercenaries, just looking to make money? Or are they spies, stealing secrets from an enemy agency? Or are they simply ordinary people put into strange circumstances?
How the scope of your game progresses throughout it is also determined by the type of game, whether it is story, drama, or combat based. Characters can begin in a more powerful position in the former two types of games, as advancement is not the primary focus. Most combat games, however, include progression as an essential aspect, and if characters have nowhere to grow, the players may soon feel the game has no point.
The final aspect for this installment is reward. How do you reward your players? How do you reward the characters? Is the reward type appropriate to the game type? Items and equipment are seen as important in combat based games, but unless they forward the story or drama, they are far less useful in a less combat oriented game.
