The Miscreant Engine

[Tobias]

The rubber meets the road in a very conventional way (in the name/number of the stats).

I'm not saying that's good or bad, mind you. (Apparent) familiarity will allow really quick up-take of the ways of character-building. It may even trick players into making assumptions based on old systems - and discovering that things work different after all. And, of course, there's a reason these stats see so much use - they work. And I like that you've gone for the parallel of a physical and mental manifestation of 4 base concepts.

On the other hand, part of me really groaned seeing the same stats come along again... any chance of cool-i-fying them?

[F. Scott Banks]

Yeah...I did use those stats intentionally.  I was kind of hoping they would lure players into using them the way they'd been used before.  I want the surface system to look very much like what everyone's used to.  The numbers are intentionally misleading as well.  This is a more accurate representation of the system in practice.

Body/Mental:

Power
Speed
Endurance
Social

But...all skills tap multiple stats.  A single attack is affected by the player's strength, speed, and numerous other skills that modify it further.  By using the spoon-fed system of a simple system on the surface, I can hide a lot underneath.  

A player might notice that he fights better the longer he fights.  Another player might notice that after a few rounds of using a heavy two-handed weapon, we fights extremely well with a lighter weapon.  Neither player can figure out why this is with the mechanics I'm letting them see but I don't want to outright cheat my players with false numbers, or remove them from the mechanics by using text instead of numbers.  These are game traits I can hide under this admittedly cookie-cutter interface.  A lot of strategy RPG's are workin' overtime underneath their cartoony, anime-style system.  

I got the idea from a game I played called Tactics Ogre.  In it, players would actually have "bad days" where nothing went well for them based entirely upon their "mood" and past experiences.  If a powerful character dies, characters recruited into your army by that character would either become useless, or step up to fill the void.  If storyline characters died...other storyline characters would suffer noticeable changes in effectiveness.  I thought this was just my inagination until I found algorithim charts describing how to keep your troops "spirits" up.  There were horoscopes that accurately told you when certain troops were going to be most effective on what days and against what foes.  

Had any of this information been available to me in game...in whole or in part...I would be playing it right now, trying to find the perfect astrological matches for the third-level boss.  That game, more than anything else is to blame for my belief that the more complex the system...the less of it should be visible to the player.  It was fun to play not knowing.  I'd make educated guesses as to who would be the best match against an enemy...but it felt more like strategy because I was playing hunches instead of doing algebra.

So yeah...that is a pretty standard system but you were right in guessing that's why I went with it.  I figure I should cop to that one right away before I get pounced on for "lack of innovation".  It's not supposed to look innovative.  The underlying system, however, reads like a payroll ledger as those eight simple stats combine to effect almost every skill in the game.

Besides, it's the skills that really drive the game.  The stats aren't usefull without them.

[Tobias]

Cool. I was hoping that'd be it.

Have you read the current thread on Strategy Guides for (A)D&D?. I mention it, because your system of hidden complexity can easily lead to a few 'incorrect' early builds - thus causing frustration for players.

'Incorrect' being a gap between imagined performance (and required tactivs) and real performance (and appropriate tactics) leading to a lack of fun. (And almost no-one likes playing a loser). If the gap leads to fun discoveries, all the better for it.

[F. Scott Banks]

Well, I haven't read it yet...though I'll be heading over there soon.  However, I notice that AD&D's skills are frequently "comprehensive".  This means that something like "backstab" tends to be all-inclusive.  Backstabbing covers all instances of backstabbing.  This causes problems when you run across another comprehensive rule such as "blindfighting" because blindfighting covers all instances where you're fighting with reduced visibility.  So if you're trying to backstab and blindfight, there will be instances where certain rules will supercede others and turn the rules into sggestions and fodder for argument.

This is of course an overgeneralization, but AD&D skills are slanted heavily towards interpretation.  Some are hard and fast, but others are flexible for certain situations.  This being a program, none of the rules are flexible or open to interpretation.

But my skills are very narrowly defined.  Two weapon-fighting is just that...swinging a weapon in each hand.  if you want to perform a specific two-handed technique...you have to learn it.  You can't say...I've got a weapon in each hand and I know how to throw, so I throw one weapon and use the other as my main.  You have to learn that specific technique if you're going to do it in a single turn, or learn the proper combination of techniques if you're going to do it within six turns.  

Again...I haven't read the rant...though I will as soon as I'm done here.  But one way I intend to avoid confusion is to have very specific skills.  There's no skill where you can say "I've got this skill...what I want to do is kinda like that skill...so here goes".

Now, there are talents, which are specific collections of skills and Merits which are collections of talents.  But these are more for categorization's sake.  At the bottom of it all, it's the skills and I'm keeping the skills as singular as I can.  Striking a fake coin is a specific skill, only applying to that specific act.  Forgery is a talent because there's forging artwork, forging governement papers, forging checks...etc.  Scoundrel is a merit because it's a combination of forgery, slight-of-hand, and other underhanded talents.

So I'm trying to avoid the confusion by coming here to have the weak spots plugged and also by leaving as few "open to interpretation" skills as I can.

[Palaskar]

Interesting. Tight skills are definetely the way to go for a computer-moderated RPG, assuming you have the time (I don't.)  The system reminds me of Unclebear's Imagination's Toybox, which is a base-10 system with 3 different scales (I believe they are Normal, Cinematic, and Superhero.) Have you considered implementing such as scale system for very powerful players?

Also, is there the "Star Wars:Galaxies" problem with skill acquistion in your game? By this, I mean, do characters begin extremely unskilled. Frex, in Galaxies, PC have fight (and will die fighting) butterflies.

[F. Scott Banks]

lol..I don't forsee any problems with players getting killed by butterflies.  Actually this is something I hated from my days of MUDding.  I don't see why games have that time period where you're locked in mortal combat with field mice and getting hacked to shreds by your average farmer's wife.

Seriously...why does the town drunk have spells that burn with the heat of a thousand suns and I'm weeks away from learning how to kick dirt?

Anyway, I'm doing that with "negative" levels.  NPC's start off at 1 in all stats.  The average hero is a fine specimen, having average stats across the board.  The average NPC is only as strong, smart, or fast as they abosolutely need to be.  A bootblack doesn't neccessarily need the strength of a blacksmith.  This prevents those embarrassing situations where your lawless brigand is getting pounded into the dust by a serving wench.  Negative levelling means that NPC's don't start on the same level as heroes and it's possible to make lambs that are actually weak as lambs, instead of demonically powerful engines of destruction.

Umm...superpowers aren't really possible here.  I guess as we branch into magic, we start playing with off-the-scale damage and phenominal power.  But magic is easily countered by magic.  All skills have a rock, paper, scissors counterpart.  This means that along with good rolls and powerful skills, players will need some form of strategy because there are skills in the game that may completely negate your most powerful attack.  Actually, the most powerful attacks are the most easily deflected.

Magic missile is weak, but being raw magic, it's nearly unstoppable.  When imbued with fire, it does greater damage, but has a greater chance of being disrupted by a counterspell.  Spells are "woven" this way, adding skills to core magical spells (just like with the hunk of steel from the sword example) until you have a customized spell that behaves how you want it to.  That's wizardry...allowing players to build their own spells on the fly by knowing how to perform certain magical skills (enchantment, conjuration, illusion).  Sorcery works differently...each spell being complete and the casters effort is not placed in building it, but supplying the force behind it.  Sorcerous spells are defeated the way they are cast...through force of will.  Wizardry spells are defeated through countermagic.

This does two things.  It means that individual spells are easy to stop with the right skills and strategy.  However, no player would be able to have the skills to stop every combination of magic, or level of sorcery.  Balance is more important than attaining uber-powers in this game.  You need multiple tactics if you're going to someone on in combat.  No single power is going to stop everything that gets thrown at you and may act as a hindrance in other situations (The "Breaker" talent doesn't cast spells, but disrupts them, causing them to injure the caster and his allies...a powerful spell can be more effective in the hands of a breaker than the original caster).

So I'm trying to curb any superpowered characters with things like that.  Good solid combat techniques will stop flashy ones just fine (the flashy ones will do more damage should they hit however), and having a solid knowledge of the magic system is better than having obscenely huge spells.

Now, if your knowledge of your opponent is great enough, you can use powerful moves and spells against them.  Wear 'em down and hit 'em with the finisher.  Super-skills have their place, but their use is pretty "situationally" specific as well as being easily avoided (if you know they're coming).  Basic skills are guaranteed hits, only stopped by superior armor or skill and scoring every time they're used.

[Palaskar]

Ah good, the "butterfly effect" (*smirk*) was something I hated also, so I took it out of my setting as well.

Your rock-scissors-paper mechanic sounds very interesting. Do you use the same mechanic for all types of action, or do you customize it for each group of skills (one for magic, one for sorcery, etc.) (In other words, do you do it like your Stat system, or do you invent a wholly new system for each group of skills?)

Personally, I'd lean towards having the same mechanic for all actions if this were a Pen-and-Paper game (and thus, something which I will consider for my own setting,) but making the mechanics deliberately complex would hinder people from figuring out the math behind it and min-maxing...if such a thing is possible in such a system.

Frex, as a rule in MUDs, the fighter/cleric is picked over the fighter/mage for soloing. Why? Because fighters can already deal out damage. Adding mage for extra damage is redundant for soloing, while clerical healing powers balance out the character with the fighter's damage potential.

So, I suppose people could reverse-engineer things if the system was not deliberately complex, and choose the best party composition for a given task. I'm not sure if this is good or bad. On the good side, it would encourage partying. On the bad side, it means that there is a given party composition, or compositions, that are best suited to a given task, which you seem to be against.

[F. Scott Banks]

The rock, paper, scissors system is something that works across the board.  Magic has a system, as does combat.  There are even skills that are set up as counters to crafting skills in the "Sabotage" talent.

But this is more principle than practice.  Rock, paper, scissors is just my way of saying that for each skill in the game there is another skill that completely negates it.  There are also numerous skills that reduce it's effectiveness and others that result in critical failures.  

For example, there is a combat stance called "Aggressive Defense" that increases the effectiveness of blocks and shield work.  Taking an aggressive defensive stance also sets an aggressive offense on counterattack.  Since counterattacks are pretty much free hits, it's easy to see where a player would want their character to do it hard and often.

"Feint" is a combat technique that causes a defender to open themselves up to an uncontested counterattack.  Counterattacks usually have more penalties applied to them because you're relying on your opponent to provide the opprotunites instead of making them yourself.  However, if a player feints on the attack, an aggressive defender will overcommit to the block or parry and their own conterattack will go to the attacker, allowing the attacker to get an uncontested hit where otherwise he might not break his opponent's defense.

So here we have a "super skill" that allows the player to block nearly everything thrown at him and get an advantage to their counterattack to boot.  However, there is a skill in the game that actally robs that defender of this advantage and gives it to his opponent.  The mere existence of "feint" drastically reduces the effectiveness of "aggressive defense" because it not only negates the skill, but takes it's advantage and gives it to an opposing player.

Mind you, "feint" has it's shortcomings as well.  Using up an attack round on a false strike isn't an attractive proposition unless you know your enemy is going to fall for it.  Also, there's a good chance the opponent will recover if he doesn't commit fully to his own counterattack.  Effectiveness is reduced if your opponent plays moderately, giving you a smaller advantage.  If instead of blocking, your opponent parries, placing only his weapon in the path of the attack instead of his entire body, your free counterattack has a lower chance of success because the opponent is still in a defensive stance (parrying instead of blocking automatically sets you to a defensive stance...even if you parry from an aggressive stance).

So this is how the skills play off each other.  They work differently in different situations, but only do one thing initially.  Sometimes feint will work marvelously and other times it's just a wasted attack.  Sometimes "aggressive defense" will enhance shield work and be the anchor of a brick-wall defense and other times it will handicap the defender into foolishly putting his body in the path of danger.  

The game is skill-based, but that doesn't mean that a player can win just by giving his character powerful skills.  It's in how you use what you know that you truly play the game.  The skills define the character, but your personal srategy will still show through.  If you don't have strategy, get a big sword, learn simple attacks, and hope their armor gives out before your sword-arm does.

[Palaskar]

No more comments from me for now. It looks like you're getting exactly what you want, WK.

Unless anyone else has some comments, I move that you post something new.

[F. Scott Banks]

Yep...I'm starting to think that it's time to give the game itself it's own thread.  This originally dealt with how to make a Multiplayer RPG, it's internal mechanisms, interface...etc.  I was concerned with how to design the game, how to make it work, so that it wasn't just another hack-n-slash with elves and hobbits.  Think we've pretty much covered gameplay issues and the "how-to" of the design for this one, taking it from theoretical "this is how someone should do it" to a more concrete plan.

But, without the game itself, the ideas on this page become theoretical.  I'm going to give ADA it's own thread later on today so that we can discuss the strengths and weaknesses of the game itself and leave this thread for hammering out the "how" of getting it to work with a computer GM.

[Palaskar]

Uh, WK? I didn't mean we should end this thread, I meant that we should move on from chargen to a new part of the game.

-Pal

[shoka]

Hi again.. :)

I've been busy writing proof-of-concept code for the framework and traveling around Finland on my summer vacation (so that's why I've been so quiet). Just thought to post something here to let you know I'm still around.

The current status is actually quite good - I was unable to sleep as the nights were so hot and decided to do something useful instead of rolling around in my bed. What I've managed to do so far is the base system with preliminary versions of most components up and running, and two rooms that you can move between - nothing fancy yet, just a basic text description of each, but its a start. (And after all, the framework doesn't care how we describe the objects to clients, it could easily be full-blown 3D model instead of simple 'This is a room'-message..)

Now I'm going to focus on writing the basic version of game rules engine (for skill/action resolution etc) so I can start testing various ideas I have about how the skills and other aspects are handled (tehcnically, that is.) Another thing I'm working on is a graphical editor for creating areas, built as Eclipse plugin with LWJGL used to render the scenes in 3D with OpenGL (as basic cubes and spheres until we get somebody who can draw at least those stick figures). It's also just a draft, but getting better every day.

Now, I think we (though I'm again speaking only for myself) are committed enough to make this thing happen, so it would probably be right time to setup an open-source project for this.. I'm a bit hesitant about releasing the code to public until I've got a working alpha (as the interfaces might change a lot and cause unnecessary confusion), but at least we would have some central place for this. Also, I think that my posts don't really belong here, because they are not so much rpg-related - so it would be nice to have a place where we could discuss purely technical (programming-wise) issues to not to clutter this thread with them..

So, that's what I've been up to - let me know how you feel about this whole open-source thing and I'll set us up to sourceforge or some other place if everybody agrees.. :)

[F. Scott Banks]

lol...yeah.  I've been elbow-deep in code myself.  I've been writing a special MUD code that will support objects graphically as well as textually.  Actually, it ain't that special, but there aren't too many code bases out there that support a graphical MUD client (that isn't tile-based) so I have to tinker.

I'm strugglin' to work my flexible environment into a MUD though.  The MMORPG (obscenely huge graphic goodness) handles it easily because each hex square is it's own environment.  A wall automatically changes the area's around it to create "rooms".  Squares can be "occupied" by walls to divide areas in ways that are smoother and more natural.

With a MUD, as I'm sure some of you know, characters move from "room" to "room".  This makes movement more a matter of moving across a map than moving through a room.  This really throws a monkeywrench in my whole player-based world building.  Now, I have to expect players to create entire rooms instead of just making a wall or a bench.  This means players will have to "write" room descriptions (and modify the decriptions of adjacent rooms).  It's somewhat cruel really, that certain things that I can make work so easily in the complex version of the game work disasterously in the simpler version.  What's particularly vexing is the fact that it seems to be the cooler features that get cut.

Oh well...so the MUD won't be fall-down sweet.  It still serves to prove that the core programming works.  I'll put bells and whistles on later.

[F. Scott Banks]

Ohhh but I abhor back-to-back posting...then again.  If you use the forge as a drawing-board, you're bound to walk the same roads over and over again...

This time, it's about something far less interesting than combat, familial and social bonds, crafting objects, or even balancing a fantasy diet.

Need a name for the "Beta" of this program.

The story of the MUD is pretty much vanilla fantasy...just to establish the groundwork that'll go into the interesting one.


Hmmm..."The interesting one"...not a bad working title.

Anyway...anyone have any "Vanilla Fantasy" titles in 'em?

[Mike Holmes]

Not to be rude, but have you considered starting some new threads for this concept? I think you could get a lot more milage if you split out some of these concepts for further development.

Mike