Darwin's Charity

[quixoteles]

I read a game informer lately, in it was an article about co-op games. It mentions that innovation in competition and solo play in video games far out strips Co-operation.

Co-operation is essential to role-playing games, I think it is actually the thing that role-pleying games does really well, and is set up to do well. A bunch of people, who are supposed to be civil and cooperate and be in earshot of each other in a quasi-competitive environment. This co-op play sadly is also underdeveloped in most role-playing games.

I know Amber and Universalis has some co-op play, but that's not really what I am talking about, I mean very serious play, like 1/10 of your hit points play. co-op isn't really important to the critical time moments of most role-playing games. I find that really wierd. In my own games I am working on something like this.

Co-op is about trading off and watering down consequences for the actions of the players. for every save or piece of aid you give to your fellow player, you reduce the conflicts impact in long term play. The play model is about sticking together and caring for the other players.

Charity is Caring. Caring is Co-op.

The game is played in Gambits. A Gambit is a risk taken for a potential reward.

Gambits can be taken throughout the party.

Charity is where the danger is. Does this cause turtling, where players don't want to become involved with each other to keep their characters skin intact? I could design a system that long-term bites players in the a$$ for saving their own skin, but that not conductive to skilled play.

Skilled play meaning that I want the game to be abused. I want people to get really good at it, so good that they want to keep playing for years because they want to be able to squeeze everything they can out of setting gambits and getting them to fall to the gamblers advantage.

Back to Darwin and Game Informer Magazine. Darwin says that humans are social scavengers; we like to form groups and communicate, then assign meaning to found objects and use them for our benefit. The primary joy of co-op play is charity. Charity is more satisfying when it is effective, but a lot of the material in my hobby really doesn't make going in with someone very exciting. It is not, strangely, where optimal play is. The game informer says that the reason the programmers haven't done compelling co-op play is because it is harder to program implement and develop. I remember playing Chrono Trigger for SNES because of the co-op play  (double and triple tech) even though I appreciated the story and visuals for Final Fantasy VI more, simply because I like the level of involvement the meat of the game and when I say that I mean the fight engine provided to me.

I know that it is more work intensive to program than it is to create a working role-playing game, so then it should follow that we would of maximize and innovated co-op solutions and developed sophisticated co-operation mechanics over the almost 40 years in the hobby?

It doesn't really, these games we play don't make it any easier for people to come together, and don't keep people together the same way a spectator sport or a oak bar and a beer tap does, and that's a shame.

[matthijs]

Q,

This sounds pretty interesting as a starting point for a game. However, parts of your post are pretty hard for me to understand. Could you give an example of how a game of this type would play out? Like, "Player A says so-and-so, player B rolls dice, GM says so-and-so".

[Vulpinoid]

This response is merely intended to clarify you position...try not to read too much into it, except as a means of clarification.

There are a few games on the market that provide bonuses to characters when they work together. I've got dozens on my shelves, from the Old World of Darkness, where there are situations in which one player could declare an action against a task and this might reduce the difficulty number for the next person attempting a similar task against the same target. I've also encountered plenty of systems where a single objective can't be taken down by an individual, but they can accumulate their successes to resolve the objective.

One person takes the risk, if they succeed, then this paves the way for other to follow with less risk. Or it allows those others to follow and gain more benefit from their risk.

Programming such a sequence into a computer game would be relatively easy. Player X scores a hit, for the next Y seconds, the target's defences drop by 10% when another player tries to score a hit. This could be cumulative across a number of players...that's where it'd start getting tricky.

Player X scores a hit at second 1. Bonus applies to players W and V during seconds 2 through 6.
Player W then scores a hit (with the target at -10% defence) in second 4. This bonus applies to players X and V during seconds 5 through 9.
Player V scores a hit in second 6 (with the target at -20% defence). This bonus applies to players X and W during seconds 7 through 11.
Player X's contribution to the reduced defence expires.
Player V scores a lucky follow-up hit in second 8. He doesn't get the benefit of his own contribution to the defence reduction, and Player X's contribution has expired. The defense is only at -10% for this hit.

The same type of thing could easily be applied to a string of successful skill attempts toward the same objective.

The thing I'm finding most confusing about you post is the following...

Co-operation is essential to role-playing games, I think it is actually the thing that role-pleying games does really well, and is set up to do well. A bunch of people, who are supposed to be civil and cooperate and be in earshot of each other in a quasi-competitive environment. This co-op play sadly is also underdeveloped in most role-playing games.

In the same paragraph you've stated that co-operative play is done really well in roleplaying games, but it's also sadly underdeveloped.

As for the comment...

The game informer says that the reason the programmers haven't done compelling co-op play is because it is harder to program implement and develop.

That's true to an extent. But it's more to the point that programmers are lazy and they stick to the things they enjoy doing rather than the slow back-end stuff. That's an over generalisation, but it's supported by the fact that most PC and console games at the moment are based off a few standard game engines and are really just a new bunch of 3d models, a new skin, and maybe a new meter that reflects something funky about this game world in an attempt to make it look different to the dozens of others using the same game engine...or a new way to push buttons to bring new combo manoeuvres into play.

It could be described like a world where your only two option for play are the d20 system, the Fusion System and GURPS. They've each got a huge range for adaptability and can mimic thousands of different worlds, but you're still playing the same three games in new settings.

Over the past few weeks I've had to interview a few companies of programmers for a series of simple programs that build up into a complex package. I've found that most of them will simply say it can't be done if they haven't encountered it before. They'd much rather make nice looking display screens or add in buttons and subroutines that they've had success with in the past (even if it's not effective for the current project).

Like I said, programmers can just be lazy. (I'm sure there are plenty of programmers on these forums, and these comments aren't necessarily directed at you, but if you are in the programming business, I'm sure you know the kinds of people I'm referring to...)

As for the last comment about keeping groups together, that's an entirely different discussion.

V

[baron samedi]

The new edition of D&D4 has analogous mechanics regarding the "Leader" character type, who provides support and aid for the whole group as seen in MMORPGs. (Powers that can only be used to aid others, which all players could have.) Shadows over Camelot, with the mechanics of using cards (powers) to different effects when used for your personal benefit vs the groups', might be another model for inspiration.

[GregStolze]

Yeah, I was going to say D&D4ed.  If everyone fights their own little fight, each PC is going to be less effective than the sum of the parts. 

But part of it's cultural: America adores the rugged individualist.  If you can't keep up, well... see ya, wouldn' wanna be ya.   (This is how free market capitalism is works, unless it's a company with clout that's in danger of failing.)  And speaking of which, it's a lot more profitable to make a game (even an MMORPG) that can be played solo with cooperation as a nice fillip.  How well would a MMORPG do if you couldn't play unless five other specific people logged on at the same time?

-G.

[Evlyn]

Some time ago, I have read something about evolution, Darwin's theory and cooperation. The text was about the misconception that evolution selected only competition behaviors. It stated that social species where highly effective and adaptative, and that inter species collaboration behaviors where in fact often selected. And that to a certain point, investing too much energy in competition strategy could often become less than useful for a specie. A very interesting read. (I don't remember the source of the text).

Concerning RPG teamwork, there was a article on Ars Ludi: Buffing is not Teamwork.

As for myself, I have a small personal RPG project where players play a hivemind. But I really need to rework on my material. I was toying with different ideas. Player characters where all physically identical. There was no individual attribute. Players allocate aggression, preservation and reproduction dices to a collective pool. There is also something about linking dices to individual memories and to feeding the hivemind with those memories, so that the dices and the memories become accessible to the collective. There is also narration rights associated with those dices and memories. But I really need to reread my notes. My design objective was to depict the hivemind like something positive and warm. Naturally my notes feature also some stuff about the characters developing individual conflicts.