Arch Inverted Showoff [8mb teaser]

[Ninetongues]

Hey.

Here's a teaser for Arch Inverted RPG, a sciece-fantasy game I've been working on for some time.
It's still in early-alpha stage of development, but we decided to stitch up this Showoff, just to tease some minds, and to provide basic information for artists and community.

Warning: Contents are very fresh and hot. This file will be changed, before officially shown. We are still looking for people to help with my sloppy english skills, so You will probably have to overlook some (or many) grammar and/or vocabulary mistakes.

Here it is: Arch Inverted Showoff.pdf (8,4mb). File on rapidshare.

1 It contains professional pics
2 It is NOT a playable demo
3 I'm looking for basic feedback from You guys, as in "the Forge" users. Please do not let the file "out", as the better, corrected version will be based on Your feedback also.

Cheers!

[Eero Tuovinen]

Flowing commentary while reading:

The beginning is inspirational - I could see a couple of interesting directions for a game about superheroes in a superworld. Brings to mind something like Planescape crossed with Exalted. Could be good, depending on what the game actually does.
Duels, a comparison to CCGs - still good stuff...
Saving games, party-based crunch, reputation system... all good.

The harping about the revolutionary scientific-based Arche mechanisms and phenomena feels a bit naive. It's all fluff of different sorts as far as I'm concerned, it's not a selling point that the concepts are "original" because instead of having "magic" the characters have "Essence of Ro". This sort of fluff needs to be allowed to sell itself, just saying that it's amazing only evokes laughs of derision. Better not to mention it at all unless there is something backing up the claims.

The stuff about the players not ever having any way of influencing the story/adventure is amusing: the actual paragraph is trying to say that the players only act through their characters instead of influencing the fiction directly, but the verbage phrases this by saying that the players never can influence the story/adventure (I don't know which it is, because the text refers to both). This leaves one to question what the point of play is if the players can't influence anything, even through their character. Perhaps that is indeed the case (that'd make an interesting game for sure), but it's more likely that the writer is trying to say that the players can only influence the story/adventure through the actions of their characters, not that they can't influence it at all. If this is not the case and the players really can't influence anything (not even the results of duels?), then perhaps that's something that could be illuminated in a bit more length.

The text starts to lose me in the lexicon, although it does give some little sense to what sort of content we're looking at. I stop reading in the setting part after the third paragraph, when I figure that it's just a boring explanation of how the fantasy gods created this particular world. Leafing through this part, it seems that there are lots of made-up names for stuff, some non-human species, kingdoms...

Two pages later comes an explanation of the player characters' role, which perks me up. The explanation about the geography of the world is mildly interesting; it's a weirdo world set on the inner surface of a Dyson sphere, with 15 hours of day and 15 hours of night each daycycle. Winter is caused by a winter moon that moves in between the sun and the land, or something of the sort. Flavorful strangeness, in other words. Some considerable space is spent in discussing the curvature of the horizon and other such issues of this world; obviously the designer is excited by this part of the game.

The races bit loses me again, as there seems to be little rhyme or reason to the 20 races; perhaps they're there to provide each player with something they like. (I'm not that hot on player-servicing rpg settings, so this is clearly bias.) There's also a good five pages of description about one of the races. Seems to be some sort of primitive dark elves, not bothering to read.

We get to the meat of the thing, the rules: interesting treatment of attributes, I like that they're all combat-important. The names of the attributes are silly, but that's what you get in elaborate fantasy settings. It seems at first glance that describing a character in these terms (which the text suggests is the purpose of the system) is far from natural, as the attributes are all pretty weird.

The reputations seem to be a fixed list, interestingly enough. There's ten of them, don't know if it's too many for a focused game. Reputation seems to exchange directly to experience points. Perhaps for this reason there is no negative reputation - instead, people forget you when you fail to live up to expectations.

The actual resolution system seems to be bog-standard skill+attribute+die roll. There's an interesting twist in the procedure in that the player is explicitly expected to negotiate the difficulty target number by increasing or decreasing the scope of the character's efforts. I expect that this'll have no real bearing upon the combat system, but who knows.

--

Overall, my impression is that this project has interesting goals and good production quality for a free game - excellent, even, as it's obvious that the designer has spent some considerable time making the game. I'm most excited by the goals of the game, and while I feel that both the setting and the mechanics are a mixed bag for me, I could see this becoming the next Runeslayers in terms of quality and positioning the hobby field.

Thanks for the preview, I think that this file already does a lot to excite the audience about your project. The things I find undesirable I find objectionable as a hobbyist in your audience, and they're about the game, not the preview. I'll definitely check out the finished product when you get it done, just to see how everything hangs together when it's not my preconceptions filling in the holes.

Looking at constructive suggestions, you might wish to shorten the preview a bit by cutting those parts I disdain the most in the above flow commentary - it's enough to say that the finished product will include a setting with elaborate history; marching that history out for us to read about is just boring when there is no complete context for it. The same holds true for the races: it'd be much more enticing if you explained in general terms that you're going to have 20 races and why that is, and how those races each live in their own communities in the world. The specifics with their funny names and such are again more of unwanted baggage in transmitting the basic ideas of the game. You'll benefit from pushing the amount of material down in general, as that'll make your point stand out more. So show less and describe more, that'd be my advice.

The same goes for the geography section, incidentally - the stuff about how the world and seasons and stuff work is interesting and intriguing, but unless it's genuinely the focal point of your game, it's not good to flood the preview with that stuff. Cutting it down to two pages or so will benefit you in that you can show how the setting is weird, but also leave comparative room for the actual point of the game, whatever it is (dueling?).

Also, run the layout through some more efficient distillation process, there's no reason for a pdf file intended for screen viewing to be over 8 megabytes in size. What programs are you using to create it?

[Ninetongues]

Now that's an elaborate feedback, thanks. I really appreciate this.

I've found your main advice "show less and describe more" wise and smart. Just by analyzing your feedback, I can notice that the beggining is good, and more enticing than the "excerpts filling". I lost you at the history, and archegraphy parts, and theese are the parts that will need to be shortened, as they are actual excerpts from the sourcebook, word by word. By showing less, I can, as far as it's shocking for a designer, find more fans. Everyone will see what he wants himself in this game.

Anyway, I will want to create two pages about Fencers themselves. I think the main idea as "Fencers in Worldmachine" passes as a bit "lost in the crowd", and that main idea I would like to underline. Twice. With red crayon.

I would have another question though: I noticed, that you didn't curse about the language. Is it good enough? It's quite hard to tell, I've never wrote nothing as long, and while I feel quite comfortable with my english skills, I just can't look objectively at it. I noticed some grammar mistakes, some missing comas and stuff, but is it good overall? Is the language clear or does it sound like if some hotheaded teenager's rant?

Now, as for the "distilling"...

It's all done with Microsoft Word. Word. And simply saved wit PDFCreator (the file that works like additional printer).
I know it's crazy to do it in the Word, but I know this program through, and I'm just learning Illustrator. This will take some time.

That's one of the first PDFs I've ever created, and I couldn't really find a good references about how to do it better. I will be really gratefull for any advice.

Thanks again
Cheers

[Eero Tuovinen]

Your language is just fine here. The thing about language is that while it can hold a product back, it will only provide extra value if you're really good at it. So unless you fancy yourself a writer, anything that doesn't actively hold the work back is easily good enough. Here that is the case, so in your shoes I wouldn't worry about it. Minor grammar and spelling errors, should there be such (I didn't look for them, and didn't notice any in my purely audience-viewpoint foray), are easy to ignore when the work is not in print and it's free, besides.

For distilling from Word, there are indeed things you can do. PDFCreator makes it a bit trickier, though, mainly because I haven't personally used it much and I suspect that it doesn't have quite the array of options Acrobat Distiller does. Looking at the PDFCreator documentation, it seems to me that trying to tune it to create smaller files would require some understanding of the pdf format issues. Perhaps it's best to try to the easier route: the reason your pdf file is so large is primarily because you're using too large images, probably both in your graphical elements and illustrations. You can decrease the file size without loss of appreciable functional quality for computer display purposes by changing all the (raster) image files to use a 72 dpi resolution and .jpg or other loss-compression file format. I don't know that this is the case, but most likely you get a large pdf because the pdf distillation settings in PDFCreator are not changing the images like this; perhaps it could be made to do this, but I don't remember a whit about how its settings are controlled.

Even if that's fixed, you could probably get the file even smaller by using Adobe Distiller; I don't know what causes it, but Distiller seems to make smaller pdf files - probably it simply has better algorithms than third-party solutions. If you try the above method and the file is still too large, send it to me at firstname.surname@arkenstonepublishing.net and I'll distill it. Something like this shouldn't take more than half a megabyte, it seems to me.

Or perhaps somebody else has more specific advice on PDFCreator? There are people on these forums who have actually used it to do stuff, I seem to remember.

I concur about the role of the player characters, detailing it further is not a bad idea. In general, what I at least like to see in rpg sales material is plain and direct explanations of what, how and why you do things in the game - I do like a smattering of visuals and some fluff text, but more to set the mood and demonstrate the quality level the designer works with in that regard. But the explanations of the play procedures are the king. I'm reminded in this of how I managed to avoid a game called Dread: the First Book of Pandemonium for several years simply because nobody ever explained to me how the game combines police procedurals with demon-hunting built on a very balanced, challenge-facilitating rules-set. Everybody just raved about the violence and porn in the game, which is nothing new and certainly didn't entice me to look closer into a game that might as well have been yet another unoriginal clone of the '90s game design paradigm.

[Rootlin]

Thanks to the tips you have provided we have been able to compress the Showoff to the size od 1,4mb which is totally satisfying at the moment.
The file in its new size is avialable for download here: http://www.box.net/shared/y0fp1cq3dv
Nine has also fixed few details.

In other news: We are prepareing official website. I belive it will be avialable next week.
The Showoff will be avialable on the website. There will be also basic information about the designing team, concept artists and so on.
We will link the page on the forums.

That is one great piece of feedback Eero Tuovinen. Thanks. It was pleasure to read.

[Eero Tuovinen]

My pleasure, it's looking good. Good luck with your game!

[David C]

Well, I started reading the first copy before seeing the second.  I have to say, on the front page, the first font you used was charming, but soon became distracting.  The second font you used was... aweful.  The U's look like V's, the R's look like B's, the capital M looks like a mutant , and it mixes lower case and upper case. Nobody is going to notice if you use a standard font, but they'll certainly notice if they can't easily read your game's font.  Combined with some five dollar words and the unusual spelling (British?) of "arch" and I got really confused and had to read the whole thing twice just to understand it.

What I might do is use the special font, from the first copy, for your first lines, then a similar, but easier to read font for the paragraphs, and then back to the original font.  There's a rule where you want to use no more than 3 fonts for something, but 2 is definitely OK.

You seem especially interested in your writing, so I'll critique it. I'm only going to point out the rough parts, but I do like the overall feel of it. Also, writing is VERY opinionated, so consider what you like and ignore any of my comments you don't like.

"At the end of time, where..." You talk about time, and then say "Where" which trips up a reader.  You can say "at a place where..." or change it to 'when', and even though you are emphasizing the *where* of your game, I think using "where" instead of "when" doesn't actually help. 

"Powerful being..." You are missing an article here, which I assume is 'a'.  Without it, it's an incomplete sentence (there's no subject) and is hard to read.

"Trained in all kinds of martial arts"  I'd get rid of this line altogether.  My most influential English teacher said that a great writer has to be able to "Kill their darlings." He meant, nixing lines that were beautiful prose to the author, but detracted from the reader's experience.  This particular line interrupts your flow.  Its context is already implied by "fencer", and implying they know *other* martial arts is unnecessary, fencing is already a top mastery martial art, if they can fence well, other martial arts will come naturally.  (It's kind of like saying a linguist knows Latin, if they don't already know it, it's obvious they could easily learn it.)

"to the Memoir, where the memory..."  Memoir and Memory share the same stem word.  Using memory right after memoir hurts the impact of memoir.  Words you could use that come to mind are "imprint" or "wisp."

Next, I see a whole slew of small issues. I feel like you "break the immersion" by exposition of your game's selling points.  You say "plot and fight for influence in Invisible Wars"  I feel like you're adding some gristle to your sentence by saying "for influence."   Again, it's implied and halts the structure of your prose.

"Face ancient races, archgods, hundreds of weird entities and uncover..."  This is a break in the rules of lists.  This causes a disconnect, because what about archgods and/or hundreds of weird entities?  Basically, in your sentence, you say "face ancient races" and then later say "archgods, hundreds of weird entities."  My suggested fix is putting a period after Invisible Wars (which also helps add impact to this point.)  Then say "Face ancient races, archgods and hundreds of weird entities."  In fact, say "and hundreds of *other* weird entities."  (I find archgods and ancient races to be pretty weird entities.)  I wouldn't capitalize archgods, you're talking about a group (dads) not a specific being (Dad).

Now we're stuck with "Uncover uncountable secrets of this world machine." I suggest adding a "the" before uncountable.  Then, place "And" (yes capitalized) to the beginning. Capitalizing and starting with conjunctions is common writer practice to add emphasis, but it should be used sparingly.  Also, I'd say "The world machine" since you already said "The world machine" and there aren't other world machines, are there? Finally, I recommend changing all the commas to periods and capitalizing.  You *can* leave it the way it was, but it isn't grammatically sound, and I'm not sure you have a good reason to break those rules.

Here's the changes...

Journey through the breathtaking landscapes of Arche. Fight others like you for fame
and power in the Tournament Eternal. Wander to the Memoir, where the wisps of
all Universes dwell. Plot and fight in Invisible Wars.  Face ancient
races, archgods and hundreds of other weird entities. And uncover the uncountable secrets
of the Worldmachine.

I just noticed you spelled arch with an E and without (in the file title), make sure you do it one way, for consistency. 

...and, I'm spent.  Sorry I didn't get to the rest of your document.
-Dave

[David C]

I came back because I remembered I wanted to comment on Eero's comment.

The races bit loses me again, as there seems to be little rhyme or reason to the 20 races; perhaps they're there to provide each player with something they like. (I'm not that hot on player-servicing rpg settings, so this is clearly bias.) There's also a good five pages of description about one of the races. Seems to be some sort of primitive dark elves, not bothering to read.

I have to disagree with Eero on this one.  I think for science fiction, exploration of alien species has been very important.  After all, was Star Trek about quantum drives or was it about Klingons?  Even Ring World, which is known for it's exploration of scientific and engineering marvels, spends a great deal of time exploring other species.  Not to mention, if this is the place everyone goes after the universe implodes, I'd expect there to be a wide variety of species. 

Also, this language, cut it out, it sounds arrogant.

Before you will read our exemplary race
description about ascotes

Finally, I'd like to direct you to a comic strip that has some VERY important advice.
http://xkcd.com/483/

[Ninetongues]

What I might do is use the special font, from the first copy, for your first lines, then a similar, but easier to read font for the paragraphs, and then back to the original font.

Simple, and good idea. We might do just that.

You seem especially interested in your writing, so I'll critique it.

I appreciate this very much.
Language is very important to me, especially in this "disclaimer" that you've went through. This kind of critique is something that I believe will help me a lot when writing in future. Few simple explanations like yours have so much better impact than dozens of language sourcebooks.
I've revised the text and already corrected it.

Great thanks, David!

Now about the "made up names" thing:

Finally, I'd like to direct you to a comic strip that has some VERY important advice.
http://xkcd.com/483/

I have already heard such opinions from game designers (and game designers only). While I admit, that sometimes a bunch of crappy fantasy names may be an author's try to mask his second-rate ideas, the rule that was so well portrayed by the comic strip you linked to, is absolutely untrue in my opinion.

Would you say something like that to Tolkien? "Sorry mate, no Rohrrims. Minas Tirith? You're joking, right? And who the hell are the Nazgul? Sounds like a detergent..."
Or maybe to Frank Herbert? "It's all cool, but crop that 'Bene Gesserit' one out. Call them 'the Ladies'."

No, I don't think so. After all, 'elves' and 'dwarves' were actually a bunch of "made up names" when Tolkien used them. So I would say, that while this pictured "rule of thumb" is sometimes very usefull when it cools off young minds, it is simply so untrue.
But, as I mentioned, we heard such opinions before, and we decided to rely on more experienced people, than ourselves. Names of the races will be more... Descriptive. While each nation and race will have names in their own languages too, because they have own languages, and it is logical and natural, that they use it. And we will try to limit the number of "made up words".

Again, thank you for downloading.

If there would be anyone else, who would like to share an opinion on the file, please post it, while the demo isn't "out" yet.
As Root said before, it can be downloaded from: http://www.box.net/shared/y0fp1cq3dv . It contains 34 pages, with illustrations, and "weights" 1,4MB.

[Eero Tuovinen]

The issue with the made-up names is not in truth that it'd be somehow taboo to make up new words. Lots of new words are just a superficial sign of a certain sort of trash fantasy that tries to emulate Tolkien, for example, without having the flair of it. An adult can easily sound superficial and ridiculous if he goes all out on the props of fantasy but doesn't have the mojo to pull it off. This is often the case in roleplaying, as it simply doesn't work the way novel-writing does - people try to analyze Tolkien, Herbert and whatnot on the basis of how presumably excellent their "world-building" is, but it's not the world-building that makes the reader accept the imaginary world; it's the characters, situation and theme. When you make a roleplaying game that has all that world-building but none of the literary qualities (as has to be the case; rpg text is not a novel), the initial impression is often ridiculous when you try to bash the reader with the imaginary setting.

I'm myself setting out to write a new edition of a great fantasy game, The Shadow of Yesterday, which also has this whole slew of fantastic places, races and histories to draw on, all with weird fantasy names. I avoid the sense of superficial weirdness for its own sake by fronting the thematic issues: each oddly named tidbit of setting is presented as a tool of play with certain game-based reasons for existing, rather than as an effort at full-body fantasy immersion. I won't try to wow the jaded reader (who is admittedly my target audience) with superficial weirdness.

What this comes to is that focusing on whether you name your fantastic creations with weird fantasy names or more descriptive Capitalized Words, that's a superficial issue in comparison to the substance of your communication. Yes, there is a certain skill to making up fantasy names that sound real, and it's one where Tolkien was really skilled. But that's secondary to actually providing the named entities in a functional fictional context - you can name your fantasy things whatever you wish as long as you present them in a necessary and useful manner. The reason for why I'm not interested in your fantasy races and the made-up history of the gogliwogs is that I am not provided with any game-based reason to care; the made-upness of the critters just emphasizes the lack of substance, but does not cause it.

This touches on David's science fiction analogy as well - David said that these fantasy critters are important because science fiction is about exploration, but I'm not seeing that exploration depicted in a systematic manner here. Reading a scholarly description of some fantasy races is not exploration and it's certainly not play, which is why I get bored. I could imagine reading this sort of thing after going through the game itself and deciding that I'm going to play and going to need that setting to do it, but it's all just noise to me before then. (And I have to say that it's not a given that I'll bother with a fantasy setting even if I decide to play something - when I played Runeslayer last year, I decided after a careful read that the setting stuff is extraneous and not very useful for the game.)

Also: not that it matters for the purposes of this conversation, but both elves and dwarves existed in fantasy and folklore before Tolkien in relatively similar form. Orcs he created (or at least renamed) pretty much whole-cloth, though.

[Rootlin]

I disagree with this "law of thumb". For me it is untrue in the form that was linked by David, but I would use other argumentation then Nine did to prove it.
In my oppinion one can invent names as he wishes and it does not influence his work as it is shown in the comic AS LONG AS he maintains balance in what he does. Balance, the middle point, it is important to have it everywhere, in everything you do. Extremes are always dangerous and simply speaking "bad". This rule applies also to making up the names. Here is how:

Method
If you invent no names, and use up words that has already existed you have to give them new meaning. New meaning is like inventing up the names. Similar. Example: Paladin = Huge mechanical creature. => same name, new meaning. This implies = if you do a fiction work, any, you have to invent names. It is only metter of the method, quantity and quality. The method may vary but "on longer distance" it is about the same thing.

Quantity
If you invent too much names without giving them any meaning, and without any reason this blows your work - if this is what the law is about it is ok.
But it is not true that the number of names given influences the work in a way shown on the linked pic. I belive the balance is not:

number of names TO quality of your work
BUT
capacity of your world + your skill + needs TO quality of your work

It is like with special effects in movies. When you have one good special effect scene, you remember the movie for the scene. If you have plenty scenes with special effects then "the movie was good" but there was nothing special about it. You cannot remember any special scene that made an impression on you. If there are few names given well the work is far better. But there is this balance, the middle point you have to know. I think number of names that can be given depends in a way on detail and size of the work you do. For example: If your movie is 300 hour material, divided between 3hour episodes, you can have one special good effect each episode. This gives 100 special effects not one without destroying your work. The balance is important.
I belive that as long as you can keep the balance with the quality, the number of names in not a problem. By quality I understand...

Quality
If you know how to invent names then you can blend them perfectly into the world. How to build names is a subject for a compleatly different topic.
You can invent many of them. As long as they are needed. Some items are simply inventions of given world and it simplies the game to give them new name. Some names have to be given as cultures/civilisations and other conceps are built around them. So you simply change their meaning or give a new name to distinguish the normal item(sword) from special invented one, made from unknown alloy etc etc.

I belive that if a world is a compclited one, it can absorb many new names as there are many concepts, ideas, etc.
All this does not influence the good/bad of work as long as you keep the balance.

The problems begins not with the number of names. The problems starts when:
A. Someone gives names and does not know how to do it. Simply tries to copy solutions of others without possesing their skills.
B. The problem is also visible when there is to much names, more then the world capacity/complication can uphold.
C. The is no need for giving names and they are given (which is partially point A and B) in too much quantity.

Conclusion
As long as:
-you know how
-you have world complicated enough
-there is a need
you can give any number of names you want, and the law of the thumb is untrue.

No metter this conclusion we should check out the balance just as David suggested. If there is an impression something is not right, this must mean
something is not ok with the balance. Remember that the Showoff is just a small part of whole work, packed with a lot of things and the real balance is/will be different. But the tip remains good. We should keep the balance in a way in which we can use the names we like, without making the work tireing.

[David C]

Inventing names alienates your player.  Trust me, I'm speaking from experience.  In my game, I had made up names for all the races, magic, continents, places, people and more.  Out of the first 10 people I showed my game notes to and my first play test group, there was resounding feedback: they were lost in the names. I scaled this back drastically.  More places and continents are named things like "Stonegate."  I started naming people, people names.  Occasionally I use a made up name, but they're easy and recognizable, and only for important people. People aren't so confused now, but I still kept some of the made up names.

New meaning is like inventing up the names. Similar. Example: Paladin = Huge mechanical creature. => same name, new meaning.

Any fiction writer worth their salt isn't going to use the name Paladin in the way described, unless they have Paladin like qualities. In this way, made up names are completely unlike using a real word in a fictional quality. 

It is like with special effects in movies. When you have one good special effect scene, you remember the movie for the scene. If you have plenty scenes with special effects then "the movie was good" but there was nothing special about it.

This insight is golden.  If you're making up a name, it's because it either should a) have no human precedence or b) be important enough to warrant its own name.  More made up names equals less emphasis on each.

Also, I think many of you aren't interpreting the graph correctly.  First of all, the area under the curve represents good works.  The area above the curve represents bad works.  The more words you make up, the more likely you'll end up with a "bad work," because quite simply, made up words weigh down a text.  If your writing isn't clear in the first place, made up words are going to exacerbate the problem. Basically, it all comes back to, if you're a great writer, you can get away with murder.  If you aren't very good, you have to follow the rules (and in this case, the rule is to write using "dictionary words.")