The Most soul Destroying part of Game Gevelopment?

[gabby2600]

Well Just done the first stages of character generation, in a week of so I know it will all turn to crap. I 'm starting Skill descriptions, this is makeing me shudder already and I'm about a week off.

This has lead to this topic, to me me Skill descriptions have to be the most Soul destroying part of game and system development. I'm just wondering what parts of development everyone else loves to hate.

[failrate]

Balancing statistics.  Gawd, but I wish i had some kind of cyberbrain sometimes or a better grasp of math, but it's just making sure I've got the statistical (#) balanced.

[Rich Forest]

Hi Gabby,

First, in case no one has said it yet--Welcome to the Forge.  

Now, I hate to be the guy to ruin the party... but this doesn't really seem like an Indie Game Design topic to me (Read the sticky at the top of the board).  This board is really for working on games and helping each other with specific questions/problems/ideas in our games.  It isn't really for letting off steam or sounding off about stuff, or just socializing.  So we need to make this thread useful to your design of your game if it's going to continue, I think.  

So do you have any specific questions about skills that are relevant to your game?  What approach are you taking to choosing skills for the game?  What are your goals with these skills?  

What is your game about, by the way?  For us to help you work on skills, you need to tell us your goals for the game.  What do you intend "playing the game" to be like?  If we can focus on how these questions relate to your plans for incorporating skills in the game, we should be able to start something constructive here.

Any thoughts on this?

Rich

[Mike Holmes]

I think lots of people have found what you say to be true, Gabby. Further, I think that part of it is because it's simply inane to have to have a description like:

Pickpocket - using sleight of hand in order to take objects from people's pockets, or to cut purses, etc.

We all know what these things do. They don't really need descriptions at all, IMO. Who is it that doesn't understand what Pickpocket skill does? I could take any schmoe off the street, and ask him what it meant in a game, and I'd get a good enough answer.

So just don't do it.

I know that lots of games do it, but it's a waste of paper. The list itself will suffice. I know lots of people who play GURPs with just Lite, which has no skill descriptions at all (they don't even miss the fact that smart folks get a +1 with guns and the like, which are pointless anyhow).

Further, you may have noted some designs of late that don't even have lists. Yep, you can have players come up with their own skills. So have you considered just not having a list at all? Just guidelines and examples of what makes a good skill instead?

Mike

[Ron Edwards]

Hello,

Let's all wait to post until Gabby answers Rich Forest's questions.

Best,
Ron

[ZeOtter]

I know that we are not suppose to post on this yet but I am just dying to add to what Mike said...

We all know what these things do. They don't really need descriptions at all, IMO. Who is it that doesn't understand what Pickpocket skill does? I could take any schmoe off the street, and ask him what it meant in a game, and I'd get a good enough answer.

So just don't do it.

Another option is take the approach that Unknown Armies took (http://www.atlas-games.com/) and that is don't even make a skill list, let the players make up the skills they need.  You can keep it simple and have them make lists of skill like "sword", "cooking", "etc..." Or more elaborate like "put a cap in you ass", "New wave sexy", "etc..."

It may at first seem like a copout but really it lets players customize their game to what they want to do.  The example Unknown Armies gives is, how may games list white water rafting as a skill?  Really how many games need white water rafting as a skill, but maybe someone really wants to make a character that is a professional white water rafter...

Just my thoughts... Sorry about not honoring your request Ron, you may punish me accordingly

[gabby2600]

I agree with some of you on the idea of not having skill descriptions; however I'm aiming the game at newcomers, who well basically do need guiding through every stage of character development. If doing skill descriptions helps make their life that bit easier and adds some more depth to the setting them I'm afraid I will have to hunker down and do it (A t least I only have to do it once).

As for what the game is about, I'm probably best cutting some info direct from the Website.

---
Wraeththu: from Enchantment to Fulfilment.

In the near future, humanity is in decline, ravaged by insanity, conflict, disease and infertility. A new race has risen mysteriously from the ghettos and ruins of the northern cities: humanity has evolved into a new species, which is stronger, sharper and more beautiful than any that have come before. They possess psychic powers and the ability, through a process called inception, to transform humans into creatures like themselves. They are the Wraeththu?.

In this world, Wraeththu are destined to inherit the earth. Humanity has only a few years left before they have lost control completely, but they will not give up without a fight.

Over the past decade, Wraeththu have begun to leave the northern cities of their ?birth?, and have spread across the continent and beyond. While many are still little more than savage barbarians, no better and in some ways worse than the race they superceded, others have become more organized. They have glimpsed their own potential, and now want to understand and wield their unique abilities. Some Wraeththu ?hara? have formed tribes and councils, and their originally rough settlements are becoming towns and cities. But whether they are wild or enlightened, one thing is certain: through magic, passion and war, Wraeththu will change the face of the world forever.

It appears that nothing can stop the advance and expansion of the Wraeththu tribes. They are spreading too fast. But what will become of them once all suitable humans have been incepted? Will they learn to reproduce amongst themselves, or are the stories of Wraeththu ?harlings? only myths and rumours?

Wraeththu must learn from humanity?s mistakes, or risk extinction themselves. Their challenge is to rise above their origins, to understand who and what they are, before it is too late.

---

A lot of what we are doing is breaking new ground in setting design and system design, as over the past years I have seen games produced which make the non gamers cringe and drop. So were trying to make our system fast effective and easy to understand. Rather than go for a far out off the wall systems with radical new concepts, I have chosen to pick some of the best tried and tested aspects of role-playing, because i) they work ii) Their easy to understand for experienced gamers iii) it's quite easy to explain these tested concepts to new players.

Also many games start out with a fully developed history, we are plonking the characters in the thick of the history and progressing the setting on through each phase of releases. This gives us the chance to develop cultures in far greater details, just like those of our own reality. We can start from the early development of tribes and work out the progression and advancements through each era, with feed back from fans and players about what they have been up to in their campaign.

The system development and testing has been an on and off thing for over 10 years now. I started back in 1991, after finishing a massive BTRC Timelords campaign. I was a little unhappy about how the system flowed and the magic was just non existent. However it had good and interesting elements in its design. So I adapted some of the better elements with ideas I had for improvements, developed a magic system and started work on a combat system that would be quite realistic. Many of the early ideas were dropped such as multi-tier skills, which made life hell, other things got tweaked and values adjusted over the years to try and balance out the system. Now in the final write up of the system I?m still tweaking combat to make it faster and better. Then it?s on to the final stages of play testing, I think this is the third round that I hope will iron out any problems with the descriptions of the rules and maybe add a few more tweaks to the game. Also I dropped the idea of spells right from the get go; I thought doing skill descriptions from the start was bad enough.

And yes I have read through many documents on system and game development and most of the games people recommend as having good ideas and concepts in are on my shelves. Such as Phoenix Command (shudder), it did have good melee combat (if a little slow) so that did help me out in developing combat for this system.

Anyway this post is long enough and I could go on for hours.

[Mike Holmes]

Hmmm. Where to start. I think that there's about a dozen new topics that you've broached in there, but I'll try to stick to the main one.

First, you still haven't told us what the game's about. I read the entire site (including the "what is an RPG" pdf), and I don't know what the game is about. I know that it's set in the Wraeththu setting (there was a poster here once with that screenname, interestingly). I know that you play a Wraeththu, from one of the eight tribes. I know that they "have to learn from humanity's mistakes" as a race.

What I don't know is what kind of characters the players play, or what they do. What's the game about in terms of play? Not where it's set, or what the characters are like in terms of species. What sort of action can we expect in play?

Because that's the only thing that's important in deciding how to write up skills and such.

On the web site, and above you make an assumption that certain methods found in RPGs are "tried and true", and that incorporating them into your game will make it more accessible to newcomers, therefore. There's a lot of folks here who would disagree with you quite a bit. For example, they'd probably tell you that having a book in which there were descriptions for skills creates a reading hazard that might bore the players right out of being interested in the game (assuming that they decide to plow through it at all). The typical person when they think of ruls for a game think a small booklet of no more than 4 pages, or all the rules on the back of a box top. To an extent, it's the size of RPGs that might be keeping a lot of potential newbies away.

Think of it this way. Potentially the most accessible RPG to players is the one that has the following rules.

One player, called the GM, describes a world to the players. They then create characters, telling the GM what they're like. The GM then sets up scenes, and controls all the actions of the things in the world except the characters who are directed through the story by their respective players. Everyone should respect each other's desires for the story as it progresses.

There, that's an RPG that everyone can get into with ease. Hardly anything to learn, and essentially relies on the basic ablity that all players have to relate a story.

You could tailor it for Wraeththu by adding the information on the setting.

Now, I prefer more rules, personally. And I assume that you want more rules. But you do want to make it as accessible as possible, or so you've said. So the question becomes why you think more data is better in this case?

The following question is snarky but intends to make a point. Why do you think that you're so much smarter than people who don't play RPGs that you know what "acrobatics" is, and they don't? Why do you need to tell anyone that "Computer Skill" is "the ability to operate a computer", or somesuch. Could you post one of your write ups so we can see what it is that you're putting in the game that's so crucial to the understanding of these things?

Now, if you have skills in the game that are unique to the setting or something, well, sure those need description. But outside of that, you can just give a single example. "Bob's character has Computer skill meaning that he has some technical training in the area. If he encounters a computer, he'll be able to use it better than untrained characters. This is how skills work."

One explanation and then a list of skills. What's more difficult, having the GM just decide arbitrarily what a skill means from it's commonly known usage, or having to memorize or look up a skill when it comes up in play. I posit to you that the former is so much easier that skills never get looked up (or even read - does anyone actually read descriptions of skills?) in play. In which case, why kill trees to print the definitions?


More importantly, the idea that you need a list of skills indicates that you think that the average person doesn't understand the term skill. If I ask anyone to name a skill, I'm sure that they'll be able to do it whether they've played an RPG or not. So, again, all you need is an example or two, and some guidelines, and anyone can make a skill up for their character. It's easy as pie.

Now, I would agree that creating characters in terms of selecting skills for them is not easy. But then that's true whether there's a list or not. That's a downfall of having chargen based on skills. Have you considered not having skills at all? Much simpler is to go with effectiveness based on archtypes. A player might not understand what her Cop character with Acrobatics is capable of, but I'd bet that they'd understand what a Gymnast can do.

My point is that you seem to be assuming that a lot of traditional methods are the simplest way to get people into your game. An association lots of designers make by noting that D&D is the most popular design in gaming. But we'd posit that D&D and such (very complex games; consider the page counts) is exactly what's keeping newbies from joining. You're arguing that your game will be groundbreaking in that it'll attract newbies, but then you say that it'll do that by using traditional methods. I don't get it.

So I completely disagree that having skill descriptions is a way to lower the barrier to entry. We're not talking about some "artsy" way of handling these things but very practical ways, in fact. When it comes to ease of play, less is more.

Mike

[Robert Ahrens]

While I think that Mike makes a very good case for not having a skill list, it is also possible to use a skill list to good effect to characterize the nature of a game.

For instance, the Buffy RPG has been very popular (at least online) and one thing that's often cited as an improvement in its treatment of Unisystem (the so-called "lite" version of Unisystem) is the fact that it has a limited list of Skills - about 20 or so.  One of these skills is "Wild Card", which exists to cover White Water Rafting, Origami, Master Of Babylon 5 Trivia and all those other character definition skills you might want.

The advantage of this kind of a limited skill list is that it avoids all kinds of granularity problems.  Games like Orkworld and Unknown Armies both have fixes (or at least GM advice) on how to compare the value of skills like Hide and Hide In The Bushes.  Yeah, the latter may be more evocative than the former, but the former is obvious and helps describe one of the things that people commonly do in the setting.

In short, I'd say that player-defined skills help define characters.  A game-defined skill list helps define a setting and the expectations of a game.  It depends on what you, as a designer, are looking for.

Whether this leads you to need to make D&D or Exalted style lists of benchmarks for skill checks is all down to how anal you expect your play groups to be.  Six months ago, I would've told you that I never look at that stuff and don't care.  Now that I run a wider variety of games, some consciously gritty and some consciously OTT I do try to pay more attention to the benchmarks.

Final comment:  My comments are probably contrary to the general tone of design conducted on the Forge, which tends to be aimed more at "innovative" or envelope-pushing designs, mostly motivated by KISS principles.  I find this to be a very good thing.  But then, from what I understand, you're not really aiming Wraeththu to be an "Indy game" in the conventional understanding of the term, are you?

- Scorpio flapping his beak.

[Andrew Martin]

...does anyone actually read descriptions of skills?

Min-maxers (I'm a min-maxer!) read skill descriptions exhaustively to find the mistakes that the writer has put in so as to better min-max their characters.

That's why it's a really good idea to not have exhaustive skill lists and skill descriptions, because you're bound to make a mistake, and insert a bonus for a min-maxer to pick up on.

The same applies to equipment lists and their descriptions: more fodder for min-maxers to chew over.

[Rich Forest]

Hi Gabby,

Ok, I've read your post and checked out your site, and I've done some web searches for Wraethu and Storm Constantine.  So I have a bit better idea now of what you're working on.  I think this board is a good place to get feedback and design discussion going, if you're interested in that, and I'll be interested in seeing where you're going with the game.  I'm going to try to focus my comments on skills in Wraethu, although as Mike's pointed out, there are a number of interesting things in your last post that I'd like to talk about too.  Instead, I'm going to just note a couple of these things in short: 1) I suspect you'll get quite a different list of games with good ideas and concepts here than you've been getting at other places, so we still might have some interesting games to point you toward.  2) I agree with Mike, and he does a good job of addressing the question of various assumptions about what new gamers would/could like or learn.  If you'd like to read a whole lot more about it, check out this thread.

So, you're game is based on a fiction property, and from what I can tell, the author of the book supports the creation of the game.  Just knowing this has helped me get a clearer idea of what the game might be about, although I'm still not clear about the role you imagine for the players.  So my next question is—Do you want the game to let the players hang out in and do stuff in the world of the books, as a primary focus?  Or do you want them to be able to play games that allow them to address the themes of the books through their play?  Or something else?  This is an important distinction, I think, and can be really informative to your game design.  For my money (and I suspect I'm not alone in this one around here...), the textbook example of the latter is the one-two punch of Ron Edward's Sorcerer and the supplement Sorcerer and Sword, which give players what they need to create sword and sorcery yarns, not just hang out in sword and sorcery worlds.  

Now, to keep my attention on skills, I noticed that you've mentioned your combat system.  Of course, I'm assuming there are some combat skills that are associated with this sub-system, but I'm wondering if there is a lot of combat in the Wraethu books.  Is a lot of text in the novels focused on describing combats and battles?  What other kinds of activities dominate the books?  You're skill list could do worse than to reflect the emphases of the books themselves, and just going through and identifying the major "skill uses" in the books could be a great way to clean up your skill list and make it really fit the novels.  Also, are a lot of passages focused on descriptions of social interaction?  Of sex?  If social interaction and relationship related stuff is focused on in the novels, do you have systems that support this in play of the game—do relationships get the same attention from the game system as combat does, for example?  Is this connected to the skill system or to some other sub-system?  

Rich

[gabby2600]

I try to answer these but I no specific order.

It?s a ?Or do you want them to be able to play games that allow them to address the themes of the books through their play? game

I think setting in the books would be degrading to the setting as the book sonly cover a limited area of the world and limited aspects of what is actually out their.

I do kinda agree that just a list of skills is good, and will probably have a simple list followed by the descriptions, because it is a fantasy setting, there are new skills which most people would not know what they were unless they had read Storms work. So we would still have to do some limited amount of descriptions with these new skills. So why not do them all as it would look a little odd. Also because of the nature of the setting some skills may not be as useful as you think and other will have been adapted in other ways. So those skills would need a limited amount of description. Plus I see them a another way to enhance the setting a bit more.

One other thing we are working on is giving information on how to write professional stories, as I work with a number of publish authors who are willing to help on this, we will be providing information on what makes a good story and how to work plot hooks in right. Also lots of information on story arcs.

I think that one think that happens with games is experienced players will just ignore the descriptions and go on to any relevant system parts if needed. So one thing I will be doing is making any system specific info easy to find so those who don?t want to read length descriptions can cut straight to the crunch. Also I feel that not putting descriptions in a game seems a bet of a cheap way out, I personally would prefer to see these descriptions even if I don?t read them all, Plus sometimes these descriptions can give you ideas for using that skill you have not previously thought of.

[gabby2600]

On the Combat System...

Thier is not much combat in the books, howeer we are setting the game in a time before the books where a war a brewing, and their is still conflit with the remaining humans. so their is an emphisis of combat but also of conflict of one's self. Because the Wraethtu are trying to be better than Humans, some make take the non combat approach.

Their is a lot of emphisis on the magic system which we have developed for the game, this we ahe made free form as i the books the nature of magic is nothing like the traditional D&D sence.

I'll pop up a skill description or two int he next day so you cansee what I'm aiming for and pass coments or ideas.

[Jeph]

so their is an emphisis of combat but also of conflict of one's self.

If this is the emphasis of the books, and you are attempting to push those themes in actual play, it is VERY important that Wraeththu have some mechanical support for man vs. himself conflict. Good examples of this are Pendragon's i-forget-what-they're-called-but-if-you-read-the-game-they'll-jump-out-at-you and the Responsibility rolls of Kurt's game Unsung. If you do not already have such a mechanic, you may likely find that Wraeththu is a better game for it (by which I mean more true to the source) if you put one in!

[Paul Czege]

Hey,

I read the first two Wraeththu paperbacks back in the late 80s. Perhaps my memory is fogged over, but I recall the story being vaguely about self-discovery. The main character seemed to drift about from place to place, falling under the sway of various stronger (and mostly benevolent) personalities for periods of time, and learning about the world and Wraeththu culture almost as a byproduct of this. I never read the third book, so I have no idea whether the main character ever graduated to asserting his own personality, but I can't imagine how the series would have any thematic power if he didn't. Basically, the books are a fantastical allegory for experiences common to a lot of adolescents in the years of self-discovery and cultural education after initially realizing that they are gay. Anyway, it's hard for me to imagine that fans of the books are going to be interested in skill lists and an introduced combat element. It seems to me that some kind of lifepath of discovery experiences that deliver packages of development/growth to characters might be a better solution. If you haven't had certain kinds of experiences, defending yourself is hard. If you haven't had certain other kinds of experiences, making good choices is hard. That kind of thing.

Paul