Stats, cards, and the gauges who love them.

[cottc cid]

Hello all.  I am an amateur game designer, and a friend directed me to your site.  I think that it is great that there is a resource for people to converge on game design, because it is a tough subject that there is no training for.  I have a little design experience under my belt (2 games finished, 3 in the playtesting stage, and innumerable false starts, like half of America) but my previous attempt at an RPG fell totally flat.  Recently, I have realized how desperately I have wanted to write my own RPG, because all the ones that I have played have fallen short in some key area. 

I started with these principles, that I have gathered from previous attempts:

1.  Fun.  The obvious thing to begin with, but it has several meanings.  Try to avoid complicated rules that involve either arguments or look ups.  Let the players affect the outcomes of events (IE don't just roll a die to see if the villain spontaneously dies).  Discourage power gaming, because everyone wants to feel that they can do things.
2.  Explosive moments.  The every day happens... well, everyday, but everyone remembers that one time where the impossible happened.  Allow for incredibly unlikely events to happen on occasion, because people love the spectacular events.  Open ended dice are a great way to do this.
3.  Consistant gameplay.  Explosive moments will get people to remember your game, and fun will draw them back, but the best way to keep them in the long run is consistant, balanced gameplay.

With that as the base, I started writing.  I have written the universe previously, and without going in to depth, it is kind of like the situation in Princess Mononoke:  The human world and the forest.  Basically, humans are on their own, magicless, and all the other races/creatures live in the endless forests.  The theme is one of fear, exploration, and politics.  The forest is scary and filled with many undiscovered things, making adventuring dangerous but profitable.  The politics comes in between the human nations, who have different opinions on how to deal with the forest, and the relationship betweens humans and the forest.  Not that the forest is unified, however.

Anyway, most of my previous experience with RPGs was with combat heavy ones, such as DnD and Gurps, so that is where I started.  I have always liked card games, so I decided to do a card RPG.  Each player will have a deck of cards that represents his/her actions.  These will include generic actions such as "Attack" and "Shield Block" as well as more specialized attacks such as "Disarm" or "Sweep".  The deck will contain 50 cards,  and is allowed to start with 50 points.  Cards will have different point values depending on the power of the action.  For example, a "Double damage" modifier card for the power attacking class could be worth 4 of the 50 points, meaning it would be difficult to put in many copies.  The most generic cards, such as "Attack" will be worth 0 points, so the player must decide the balance between high and 0 point cards or a range in between.   As players level they will have the option of increasing the point cost of their deck, giving them a better overall deck quality.  There are more rules for deck construction that are not relevant at the moment, but are mainly there to catch accidental power gaming vulnerabilities.

Players start the combat with 5 cards in hand (plus any bonuses from intelligence).  Each turn, they can declare that they are either attacking or performing a different action (such as using an item or running).  Since other actions are not necessarily combat related, they are handled outside of the combat deck (it wouldn't make sense to only be able to drink a healing potion when you draw the "Drink a potion" card).  If the player declares that he is attacking, he draws a card from the deck and then plays a card.  If the player has no legal actions (such as a hand full of "Shield Block" cards) they will discard and end their action.  The goal of this is speed, since players will not be able to mull over actions:  When you only have your choice of 6 cards, it cannot take long to decide.

The initially available classes are all combat related, and separated into the different attacking styles used in most RPGs.  Each class has a different way of interacting with the combat deck to make them all feel different.  So far, I have come up with:

Mercenary:  The power attacking class.   He uses Delay Modifiers, allowing him to unleash devastatingly powerful single attacks.  For example, if he plays a "Double damage, delay 3" followed by a "+10 to hit, delay 2" next turn, when he attacks 2 turns later he will have +10 to hit and double damage.  The modifiers stack, so theoretically he could play a delay 1 card on the next turn to increase the modifier further. 
Duelist:  The duelist is about finesse fighting.  He will have two stances, offensive and defensive.  The special cards that the duelist adds to the deck are split cards, that do different things depending on which stance the character is in.  For example, the "Attack/Riposte" card would allow you to attack if you were in the offensive stance or deliver a riposte (counterattack) if in the defensive stance.  The duelist will also have a theme of card drawing, which will increase his hand size past the normal 5, meaning that he is more flexible.  However, his damage will be low, so he will have to focus on maneuvering and special attacks among other things.
Assassin:  The assassin is taking the traditional role of the thief.  He uses sneak attack, which has the "Stack" ability.  Depending on how well he stabs the enemy, he applies sneak attack damage by revealing the top X cards of his library, and playing any sneak attack cards revealed in this way.  He also is the master of unarmed combat, as he is trained to deal with concealable or no weapons.
Ranger:  The ranger serves an essential role in the party, as the guide to the forest.  His combat focus is on two weapon fighting (a good amount of weapon deflection and follow up cards) and ranged combat.  I have not decided how to use bows yet, so this area is blank as of yet.

There will be advanced classes available later, although I have not decided how to allow access to them.  This will include classes like Noble, who uses guns, Clockwork Knight, who takes advantage of the mild steampunk available, and the Sergent, who commands troops.  Mass combat (IE frontline fighting) will make an appearance from time to time,

The main worries so far are the lack of good mechanics for archery or reach weapons.  Most RPGs handles spears like longer swords, and I want them to feel and play different.  Archery, as well, has been difficult to design.  I would like to make it flexible between aimed shots and rapid firing, but I would settle for a good mechanic on either.

While the main focus so far in design has been classes and card mechanics, I have recently started on stats.  My #1 goal here is to make every stat useful:  I don't want to have dump stats like charisma in DnD.  Stats range from -4 to +4, and are in general added flatly to rolls.  In addition, high stats give additional options.  If the player has a stat of +2 or better, they can "burn" (discard) cards from their hand for an additional effect related to the point cost of the card discarded.  For example, a character with a +2 strength could discard a 3 point card for an additional 3 points of damage on an attack.  This effect provides some (hopefully) interesting tension, as discarding better cards can make attacks succeed more.  However, since hand size is limited, the amount of stacking available is limited (except in the case of the duelist:  It is planned that the character will eventually get a large hand size and be able to discard a slew of cards in one spectacular move).

Strength
Adds to damage rolls.  A +2 allows you to discard cards for additional damage equal to the point value.  A +4 allows discarded cards to add an additional point (a 2 point card adds 3 damage).
Reflexes
5+Reflexes equals the characters dodge, the amount you must hit to hit the target.  At +2 you can discard cards for additional dodge against 1 attack.  At +4 burned cards are worth an additional point.
Coordination
Adds to hit.  I am sure you can guess which bonuses do what here.
Intelligence
Used for non combat stuff, but the combat relevance comes based on the value.  At +2, your initial hand size is increased by 1.  At +4, your hand size is increased by 2.  Any penalty to intelligence shrinks your initial hand size, so a character with a -4 intelligence only starts with 1 card in hand.

Beyond that, I am at a loss for stats.  I want to include Perception, Speed, Willpower and Social, but I cannot think of how to include them.  For willpower, I was considering adding a Pain mechanic that causes grievous hits to stun the character unless they make a willpower check.  I was thinking of having perception be related to spotting chinks in the armor, and social for bluffing opponents, but mainly I want them for non combat purposes.  I was considering making speed your amount of movement per round (5 plus your stat, plus the "burning" mentioned above) but I am worried that it will not be as useful as the above abilities.  However, having non combat stats defeats my main purpose of having everything useful:  I don't want combat powergamers to have a dump stat.

Weapons will have modifiers, making them more attractive to certain classes.  For example, a dagger may be "+3 to hit, 1d6 damage" meaning that it is good for the assassin, because while the damage is low, the bonus to hit increases potential sneak attack damage.  However the greataxe "+2 against dodge, -2 against defense, 2d8 damage" would be better for the power attacker, since the higher damage means even more damage after doubling.

Armor works a little different than in other RPGs.  There will be a "dodge, defense, and damage reduction" on each piece of armor.  The Dodge reflects the character's ability to dodge:  If the attacker does not meet the dodge, the attack misses completely.  Defense represents the coverage of the armor:  How possible it is for the enemy to stab into a chink.  If the attack roll is higher than the defense, it negates the damage reduction of the armor.  If it exceeds the dodge but does not exceed the defense, the attack hits, but the damage reduction of the armor applies.  For example, a suit of leather armor could have "Dodge: -1, Defense: +1, Damage Reduction: 4".  This would mean that the characters dodge is reduced by 1, it has a defense equal to the reflexes stat +1, and if the defense is exceeded the damage reduction of 4 does not apply.  As armor gets more powerful, such as platemail, you might see "Dodge: -7, Defense: 10, Damage Reduction: 14".  Basically, light armor mainly relies on the character's reflexes, although it provides a small amount of protection on its own.  The heavier armor makes it almost impossible to dodge, but the defense is high enough that the damage reduction will almost always apply.

Anyway, enough writing.  I would appreciate any feedback from this initial information, especially suggestions on how to implement the additional stats, or how to work archery or reach weapons (such as spears or polearms).

[Anders Larsen]

Hi and welcome to the Forge

I am not good at these complex mechanics, so I will let other people answer your question about that.

The thing that really caught my eye here was the setting. It is properly because I am a big fan of Princess Mononoke, but I think you have some really great concepts here. You mention the themes of fear, exploration and politics, you also have stuff about man vs. nature, and clash between different cultures. All of which I think is really great stuff for a RPG.

I am then a little confused of why you start with designing a combat system, that, for what I can see, don't tie very well into your setting ideas.

I would by more interested in hearing about how you want to evoke the feeling of the setting, what type of stories you want the system to support, what type of characters you can play and what conflicts they have to face. And in general how you are thinking about handling the different concepts in the setting doing the game.

The combat system, in my opinion, should come much later.


I may have completely misunderstood your intent with this game, if so, then just ignore this.

- Anders

[cottc cid]

No, you have not misunderstood my intent.  I am focusing on the combat system because that is the part of the game that I think is the least developed.  Since I am trying to focus on fear, survival is one of the key tools for GMs, and survival horror does not work out well when the combat is undeveloped.  In addition, it would be nice to have the system hold it's own regardless of the setting, ala DnD.

As for your question, I am basing the feel of the game off of several things.  First, as mentioned above, is the setting of Princess Mononoke.  I like the feeling that there are two opposite sides, but that neither one is good or evil.  I am going to be expanding that by putting  a sort of cold war feeling on the game:  Both sides will have terrible weapons of mass destruction, but are hesitant to use them considering the retaliation.  While normal wars are fought, both sides will have to be careful how they unleash new weaponry, because if it escalates far enough terrible things could happen.  (Humans have, among other things, a device that sets leylines on fire.  Considering the density of leylines in the forest, it could ignite hundreds of square miles, killing thousands).

The second thing I am basing it on is fear.  Imagining how the universe would feel to the common peasant that lives in it.  Being scared of the forest but having to use it for food and lumber.  Kids don't have to be told to be in by dark, and rarely run out of sight near the edge.  Every town has a palisade, and all peasants are trained militia.  The kingdoms that make alliances with the forest are besieged by those that don't, so there is a constant threat of war over and above the mysterious unknown.  This forms strong social groups, in many areas, almost clique like.  Would you want to rob a farmer of his pitchfork knowing that he might need it tomorrow to fend off an ogre?  Despite the fear, or rather because of it, people band together.

The third thing I am basing it off of is a vision.  The humans have a very primitive magic system, either through using plant/earth materials seeped in leyline juice or through ritual magic (basically demonic).  This scene involves an assault on a town by an army of gnolls lead by several ogre-shamans.  The mayor has erected a ritual magic circle around the town, creating an invincible force shield that springs up with a yellow glow.  The ogres stop outside the edge of the circle and wait.  A gnoll comes along and starts emptying a bladder full of water in the ground, forming a giant pool of mud.  The ogre reaches in to this pool and grabs great handfuls, spreading it over his arms and body.  With a quick chant, he reaches out and touches the forceshield.  It starts to crackle around his hand, and finally he penetrates.  He reaches his other hand in, and widens the hole.  Gnolls start pouring in and the battle begins.  This would be a good introductory adventure, because it emphasis the power of the forest (outnumbered and facing strange magicks).

The types of adventures  the players would go on would be varied.  Being frontline soldiers in a war would be a common theme:  It combines the politics and the fear, because being a frontline soldier you would have little control over the course of the battle, and it would make you feel helpless.  Diplomatic missions into the forest would also be common, although not necessarily for peace:  The enemy of my enemy is my friend.  The players (expendable diplomats) could be sent in to gain the allegiance of one tribe of forest dwellers in an attack against another tribe. 

I would like exploration to be a big theme, but unfortunately that one is difficult to do.  The very point of exploration is revealing new things, so it relies entirely on the creativity of the GM. 

Maybe I am looking at this incorrectly:  Is there a way to help GMs create exploration challenges?  Are there any games that do it well, or is there any advice that can be given related to this?

[Anders Larsen]

I am focusing on the combat system because that is the part of the game that I think is the least developed.  Since I am trying to focus on fear, survival is one of the key tools for GMs, and survival horror does not work out well when the combat is undeveloped.  In addition, it would be nice to have the system hold it's own regardless of the setting, ala DnD.

The funny thing is that I disagree with nearly everything you say here, which tells me that I am in a completely different camp, regarding what types of RPGs I like, than you are. So you should properly take my ranting here with a grain of salt.

To get elements of fear and survival horror, you do not need combat at all. Here is an example of an approach I may use to get to this (without having thought to much about it): When fear is a so strong present in the world there is a tendency for people to group together in small tight communities, so I would start with have the concept of a community the character will be a part of. Then I would have some stress stat for the community. The stress will increase when the community is threatened, and if it get to hight, people will begin to do desperate things, and the community will properly dissolve. The characters' job is to decrease this stress by making the land around the community more peaceful. But when the character dedicate there time to helping the community, they will neglect their own personal needs, and have to face a lot of hard challenges, which courses stress in the characters. The character can get around personal stress loss if they choose the easy way out of a situation, but then the community will suffer for it. Of course the character should be pressed so hard, so they time to time may have to choose the easy way out. The thought is to have the the fear of the community vs. the unknown, and the horror of when things go wrong.

Of cause this could lead to combat situations, but equally important would be the characters' diplomatic and social skills. But combat and diplomatic and social skills will only be what solve a situation - not what creates it.

A system can only do these things if it is tied together with the concepts of the setting. if you try to make the system setting agnostic it will not support any setting very well.

About exploring. Well I am actually working on a game where exploring is one of the important themes. Here is the post I made that properly goes most into the exploring part: http://www.indie-rpgs.com/forum/index.php?topic=21991.0

There you can see my view on this, but as I said, we properly have different opinions about what we find interesting in a  RPG, so I do not know how much of that which will be helpful.

- Anders

[cottc cid]

I fully admit that I am biased towards combat RPGs.  My limited RPG experience has been with combat heavy ones, and I have not found any that explored other styles of conflict.  I have found the fighting frustrating, however, since it generally takes more than half of the adventure.  The large focus towards combat I have been doing so far has been to streamline it, so fights could be taken care of easily to allow more time for other interaction.

Your idea for a stress system related to self and community is interesting, but I do not think that it would work as an RPG system.  There are basically two possibilities:

1.  The heroes are from said town.
2.  The heroes are wandering strangers.

The first option limits attempts at exploration.  Players protecting their home town would feel constrained, unable to travel abroad.  New adventures would have to be developed about bringing a challenge to them, which would get formulaic after a while.  "You mean another ogre raiding party comes into the area?"

The second option would also not work out well.  With a tight nit clique, the new town would not be accepting, and the players would feel detached.  There would be no consequence for failure, because if the town became overran, they could just shrug and move on to the next village.

However, I do like the idea of a stress level for villages.  Maybe the players start off as a band of traveling entertainers, looking to put a "quick patch" on the stress level by throwing plays in the villages.  This could lead to interesting adventures, where players have to try more mundane alternatives to glamorous adventuring:  Say guaranteeing that the ale supply gets through the mountain pass, or coordinating a harvest festival.  All things that lower the stress level.  When the stress level is down enough, the players can enlist the help of the people to permanently solve their problem.

Also, I took a look at your exploration system.  It looks interesting in that it is focused around exploration.  However, it looks like it adds flexibility by putting extra effort on the GM.  Most people would not worry about this, but I am a terrible game master in practice, and I worry about any situation where I have to think up stuff on the spot.  Have you playtested it at all?  I would be interested to hear how it works out.

[Simon C]

I'm going to go in the opposite direction to Anders on this one.  He's right on the money for advice if you want a game where the tension between the forest and the villages is central to the characters actions.  But if you love combat, why not have that the main focus of the game?  If you find GMing hard (as many people do), why not write a game that does much (or all) of the work for you?  I really love the idea of a card based roleplaying game, but I don't think you're taking it as far as it could go.  Why have stats at all?  I think you could easily pare down the system to the point where your entire character is a deck of cards.  Fighter types would have lots of attack cards in there, spellcasters would put in lots of spells, and you could have special skill cards that let you bypass some combat challenges.  So, for example, ranger types could put in a "Woodcraft" card, that lets them bypass a combat challenge in the woods, while a Theif type could put in a "Tinkering" card, that lets them disable a trap challenge.  You can also have a limited number of "equipment" cards which your character can use (maybe a small library of these, of which only a few are in play at a time, a bit like the "crypt" in the Vampire card game.  The major advantages of this way of doing things are that your character is completely customizable.  If you want your fighter to have some magic, just throw in some magic cards.  If you want your theif to fight more, throw in some more fighting cards.

Now, to get more revolutionary.  If there are cards that represent the characters, why not have cards that represent the GM?  You'd make a deck of cards, with a theme maybe, like "forest", and stock it with challenges, like "Bog Spirits" that will fight the party, and other encounters like "village" where the party can rest and change equipment.  And more interesting challenges, like maybe "mysterious tracks" which require a certain card (maybe "Woodcraft" from before, or some spells) to trigger another challenge and a reward.  And you'd have rewards in there too, like more equipment, special cards, and so on.  You'd have a pretty kick ass GM emulator for a very "video gamy"feeling RPG, which I think would nonetheless be very fun.  The great advantage to this would be that you wouldn't need a GM to play (but you could have one if you wanted).

Something I really want to stress is that I think it's unneccesary to have a dice mechanic as well as a card mechanic.  You've already randomized success with the cards, you don't need to randomize it again. "Attack" cards should represent successful hits.  Misses are represented by not drawing the card you want.  You're still attacking, you just missed.  I think as much as possible you should try to remove dice from your game if you're using cards.  The WH40k card game had an interesting mechanic where cards had a numerical value on their corner, which was used instead of rolling dice.  So, rather than rolling a dice, you'd draw a card.  Powerful cards tended to have lower numbers.  This balanced the game in two ways.  Firstly, players had to judge the balance of powerful cards with low numbers to weak cards with high numbers.  Secondly, by using a card draw rather than a dice rolling mechanic, luck is guarunteed to balance over the length of the game.

So, long story short:  Unashamed combat games are great! And there's a shortage of good games that support hard-core competative play.  I think a card based, combat focussed game would fill that niche nicely, and be a heap of fun.  Good luck!

[Anders Larsen]

My idea was that the characters would be a part of the town, and I do not think this would hinder exploration. There could be a forest nearby that represent the big unknown the characters time to time have to explore. They may be out to find an artifact that can protect the town, or a person may have been cursed by a forest demon, and the character have to kill the demon to lift the curse, or they may be out on diplomatic missions, maybe a child have been kidnapped by the wolf clan, and they have to find her before she become a wolf child (And there are properly many other plot that could be taken from Princess Mononoke). And apart from that, there could be a lot of internal conflicts in the town that the characters also have to deal with.

My point is, that even though the scope seem to be rather small, there can be a lot of things going on. Another thing is that if you want to have a lot of exploring you have to have something that ties things together (in my example it is the town), because if the character never stays in the same places for long it is hard to make an consistent story.

About Distant Horizons: No, I have not playtested it; I do not have a resolution system for it yet. But I have run games where I have started with a nearly empty map, and then added to it as needed. One of the point with Distant Horizons was actually to make it easier for the GM to do this, by having the players come with suggestions.

But anyway. You should of course do what works for you and not be bugged down by my ramblings. Instead listen to Simon, and there are properly other people here that can help you with what you actually asked for.

- Anders

[David C]

First of all, I'd like to say this is a game I think I'd have a lot of fun playing. Secondly, let me clarify a couple things. Do you see your players having a character sheet?  Use Dice?

Here are my suggestions.
1) your stats, although noble, aren't linear or simple. I'll give you an example of what I mean by linear. Strength allows you to discard any card for a 1 point damage bonus, you may discard no more then 1 card per point of strength on any one attack. If these are specializations earned for having a particularly high stat, then ignore me. :P

2) I playtested a pain mechanic in my game. The way it worked was a character could only take so much pain before getting stunned. So if you had 3 pain, and got hit in the head 3x, (or any other action that caused pain) the third would knock you out. I dropped it in the name of simplisity, but hopefully it gives you ideas.

3) Dump stat. I see two plausible ways of doing this, seperate the point pools for social and combat stats, or give every stat a combat purpose. Also, I recommend keeping your stats to a minimum. Coordination, Willpower, Social, Strength, Speed, Reflex, Intelligence, and Perception seems like too many stats to me. If you have a hard mechanic for preventing very low stats, dump stats can be ok. Some hard mechanics: Lets say chararacters can only lower their stats by up to 2 points. Or stats can only be lowered by racials. Or they lower at a 2 for 1 ratio.

Try and not confuse specialization with powergaming. In D&D, a fighter maxed for damage is not overpowered compared to the rogue who can disarm traps, trip, disarm people, hide, socialize, etc. You should allow for specialization for a little more oomph, but make sure it makes the character vulnerable. Scissors might beat paper in a fair match, but maybe paper bullied rock into joining the fight. :P

A lot of people on the forge are extremely "Narratist" (people who love the story/social) you sound more like a moderate "Gamist" (people focused on the mechanics). Try to analyze where people are coming from before you take what they say to heart. If you're trying to make a Gamist RPG, listening to everything a Narratists desires won't be to your benefit. However, Narratists bring up a lot of good points - just remember some things they say aren't for you.

If you're interested in chatting about your game on an Instant Messenger, PM me your IM name.