My unfinished project is more of a gamebook than a pen-and-paper role-playing game, so you might feel that it's outside of this site's brief - but anyway, here it is:

www.ageoffable.net

any feedback, on either the game mechanics or the writing, would be very helpful.

Thanks,
James.

Hi James, and welcome to the Forge!

Your game is eligible to discuss here, at least at this point I say so. However, my concern right now is that "any feedback?" is not a permissible way to begin your thread. This is a discussion site, and by posting a thread, you're the discussion leader and must provide context and starting issues for everyone else.

So - what do you want feedback about? Is there a particular section in which the writing matters a lot to you? Or a particular feature of the mechanics which you invented because no other game you encountered did it right? Open up a little bit about why and how you did it this way.

Good discussions don't come from "gee, what do you think," but from you letting everyone see why you made the game a certain way. Then people who agree with those points can really help you, or others can help you look at those points from a different angle.

Best, Ron

OK - some design goals that I had:

• I wanted to have character classes that were common in popular culture, but weren't common in fantasy RPGs (perhaps because they're not basic options in D&D) - that's why there are pirates, fairies, and courtesans.
• I wanted to have non-human races as classes: like in Basic D&D, you can be a Dwarf or a pirate, but not a Dwarf pirate, because I thought that was closer to how non-humans are treated in literature/people's thoughts.
• I wanted to overcome a problem that I've found with gamebooks, which is that if you've completed half of the book and 'died', and start again, you'll spend a fair bit of time going through bits that you've thoroughly worked out already. In other words I wanted to try and make the 'time until I get to a new part' as low as possible.
• I wanted the mechanics to be as simple as possible, especially combat. Obviously this is easier for a gamebook than for a pen-and-paper game, because you'll never get an unexpected situation.

Another one I've just thought of - I wanted the world to be based on fantasy writing, movies and TV in general, rather than on 'Lord of the Rings via D&D'.

Huh ... those are really interesting, actually. The one I'd like to know more about is the bit about dying and not having to start all, all over.

Here's my suggestion: can you post about how that's worked out in actual play? Right here is OK for this thread, although ordinarily that could go nicely in the Actual Play forum. But hey, we're here, I'm interested, and I'm the moderator so I'm decreeing it's all right.

Best, Ron

Ron wrote:
Huh ... those are really interesting, actually. The one I'd like to know more about is the bit about dying and not having to start all, all over.

Here's my suggestion: can you post about how that's worked out in actual play? Right here is OK for this thread, although ordinarily that could go nicely in the Actual Play forum. But hey, we're here, I'm interested, and I'm the moderator so I'm decreeing it's all right.

Best, Ron

The other way I try and acheive this is by having the results based heavily on your attributes, so that even if you've been to a particular place before, you won't necessarily know the best option for the character you're currently playing.

So it's sort of a choose your own adventure format?

Couldn't going from A to D rely on player knowledge somehow? Like the path to D is available at A, but you have to turn  the suffed parrot around on it's pedistal, then play chopsticks on the piano and the door to D opens. You find out these tricks during B and C.

That said, if it's a game book - why are you imagining people not cheating and just continuing if they die? Certainly you don't like going through the bits you've already figured out, so that's a fairly strong incentive to just cheat. Is there something important about going through the experience right from the start and genuinely experiencing the books contents as the author intended? Rather than shortcuts to D, perhaps we could focus on that genuine experience and what it requires?

Callan wrote:
That said, if it's a game book - why are you imagining people not cheating and just continuing if they die? Certainly you don't like going through the bits you've already figured out, so that's a fairly strong incentive to just cheat. Is there something important about going through the experience right from the start and genuinely experiencing the books contents as the author intended? Rather than shortcuts to D, perhaps we could focus on that genuine experience and what it requires?

Ah, gotcha. I notice you didn't mention the 'play chopsticks on the piano to skip to D' idea - no good? It was just a wacky example, it can be something that makes sense in and fits with your story. Though of course it's there entirely for metagame reasons. Is it being so metagame an issue?

I just tried the game out. I lost my way - I thought I was making choices toward something at first, a goal for the game. Found after playing awhile there wasn't one given, so kind of started seeing all choices as equal - with them all being the same, I started making them at random really.

Couldn't say playing out a character was something I delved into either - like I tried to find a cure for the frog, but the game doesn't care about why I did so, or continuing the story in some way that might help examine why I'd help a little slimeball frog. Also the 'fight' where your humilated - basically I could see an opportunity to make a choice (and stop), but my character keeps going and putting on the ridiculous clothes then heads into the arena - I can see I'm not supposed to be in charge in that way.

Liked it at the start, in that odd sensation state when your mostly in a window shopping mode and finding out the format of the product "Ah, run into a unicorn straight away - then a frog who's really a man'. Perhaps it was when I hit the mundane choices that it flopped and I started looking for a goal for the game, or character portrayal play. Because looking for work or begging as choice, for example, doesn't tell me anything about the product as a whole - it's just minutae (so I can't window shop anymore - it's telling me nothing about itself). Or if it is important, it does tell me about the product - that it's going to be about scrounging for jobs (so again window shopping ends because I know what it's like now)

Anyway, on reflection of play, I switched out of window shopping mode at some point and started looking for a goal/character portrayal opportunities. I think this is why it happened.

At least as I found the game presented, I found it hard to find a way to protagonize my character. I didn't really know what the goals or themes of the game were, and I didn't know anything about the setting; and, having little knowledge of the mechanics, I found that putting effort into actually making a custom character would involve more time than I was willing to invest.

I had a similar reaction to the choices presented me as did Callan above. I don't have goals given to me, and I don't know enough about the setting to construct my own. So all choices seem equivalent.

Now, I think the idea is really interesting; and, as soon as I read about it on this thread, I trotted off to play it. So you've got some serious power working for you, I think, at least on the level of a pure concept: Choose Your Own Adventure - But With Dice, Stats, and Advancement!

Perhaps you intend to fill in some of these gaps at a later time; and so my criticisms may not be exactly to the point.

Ok, I've played for a while now, and I'm getting a bit frustrated.  I'm going around in circles, running out of shells.  It seems like there's not much your character can do (at least early in the game) to influence the world.  Many of the choices made seem kind of meaningless, in that once the scene is finished, they don't influence anything. 

I think it's also a poor choice to be able to permanently lose Heroism, and other stats. I found that frequently my character was regressing, rather than advancing, which is annoying.

The most satisfying elements of play for me were when I felt like I was making choices that would affect the game.  Turning Owryth human again was cool, but I felt like it didn't mean anything after it was done.  Also, why couldn't my character wish for anything for himself?  I also liked it when some choice I'd made a while back turned out to be relevant after all.  The Prince turning up to reclaim his shells validated my choice not to spend those shells.  That sort of thing is cool.

I think what would help me enjoy this game is a more clear sense of progress, of movement through a story.  There are lots of ways you could do this, but I think a neat one would be if, at character creation, you could select from a list of "goals" for your character.  It would be cool if the options were different for different character classes.  In my head I was imagining my troll searching for a way to become human, but I knew that was probably never going to happen.  If I could select that as a goal at the start of the game, I'd enjoy that. 

Another thing I thought about was trying to impliment "Keys" (as seen in Clinton Nixon's "The Shadow of Yesterday"), as a mechanic for advancing the character, and creating "story".  I can see that being a huge task, but potentially making for a revolutionary game.

You mentioned implimenting different starting points in the game.  This would be awesome to me, and would create what I think is the most important thing here - meaningful chpoices which affect not just the outcome, but the nature of the game.

Callan wrote:
Ah, gotcha. I notice you didn't mention the 'play chopsticks on the piano to skip to D' idea - no good? It was just a wacky example, it can be something that makes sense in and fits with your story. Though of course it's there entirely for metagame reasons. Is it being so metagame an issue?

Callan wrote:
Is it being so metagame an issue?

Thanks for the feedback - the common thread seems to be that people want more 'quests' in there. So I'll attempt to prioritise that from now on.

Leaving the overall structure of the thing aside, what do people think of the details (eg the artwork, the tone of the writing, the layout, mechanics etc?)

I'm not sure that the responses can really be essentialised as "more quests please".  I think the problem is more that the game is often essentially binary - accept the quest or refuse, succeed or fail.  I'd like to see more emphasis on the way you complete the quest being significant.  For example, I think the quest with Owryth is great, with a lot of potential to be really interesting.  But I want to know more.  I want to know what the signifigance of the frog quest is to the story of my character.  For me, it was a cool moment when my troll (who I'd imagined as trying to become more human) helped another being to become human.  It would be awesome if the game could support that more. 

I thought that the art was essential to the game, but the wide variety of styles was a bit confusing.  It's impractical, but I think working with a single artist with a stong visual style would be the best way to create atmoshphere for your game.  Sometimes I felt like the events in the game were designed to fit with a cool picture you'd found, rather than the other way around.  That was a bit frustrating, because it made the world feel kind of arbitrary.

While we're on that subject, I found the world presented in the game to be a bit hollow.  I didn't get the feeling that this was a place that existed outside the demands of the game.  I'd like to find out about the world as I play, and to have that world be coherant and interesting.  I'd like there to be events happening in the world that my character could interact with.

Sometimes pages were frustratingly slow to load.  I found my attention wandering if a page took too long.  That might be a problem of my shitty work computer though. 

I think the presentation of the game was ok.  Not fantastic, but servicable.  You might think about using a heavier font, perhaps with serifs, to convey a more archaic feel.  Always make readability come first though. 

I think what you're doing here is really interesting, and I'm giving you tough feedback because I think this has potential. 

Aw, man! I was just telling a friend about how I have never enjoyed DnD half as much as I enjoyed reading Lone Wolf as a kid. I've been scouring used bookstores recently, as well as pondering the potential of the gamebook format. I have some questions for you.

What gamebooks have inspired you? In what ways do you seek to emulate or innovate?

Perhaps more importantly, why did you choose this format? What can it do for that other types of games cannot?

I associate gamebooks with "Choose your own ADVENTURE" rather than with "Roleplaying". Plot-driven adventure stories (Haggard, Burroughs, Howard, Moorcock, etc.) seem much more suited to a format in which the range of choices and game feedback are necessarily so limited. "What? The Princess was captured? AGAIN? My honor demands I sally forth!"

Which seems to be the issue people are having here. This seems to be much more like a single-player MUD. A gamebook in which the reader is merely being set loose on a fantasy world. It must be very difficult to try and make something so freeform when you must remain neutral toward the player and the total potentiality of accumulated events. Which is why, I imagine, that the gameplay is a montage of seemingly random scenes (at least it has been for me so far).

Now that's not to say that I think it's a hopeless endeavor. I'm suddenly quite entranced by the thought of a huge coffee-table book that constitutes a game setting for a single player to explore practically indefinitely. I actually don't think it's even terribly impractical. Here are a few suggestions:

- Make a BIG deal of global variables that each have many possible causes AND effects. From what I've played, the only thing carrying over from scene to scene is the player's stats. Go crazy with player status effects like "player is all wet", which can be caused by getting caught in the rain, getting knocked off the pier, etc., and affect several different situations. Furthermore, I think the overall appeal of this game will come from variables that say things like, "the orcish faction has been weakened", a flag (or even a "hit point value") that can be modified during several different scenes. Shall I choose the "Assassinate orcish chieftain" scene? "Instigate infighting"? "Rally the dwarvish armies"? "Cause an avalanche in crucial orcish territory"? with stats and prior experiences determining the available options.

- Some have mentioned that the game has no initial impetus (such as a princess being captured). I think this is fine so that there is some high-level story for the curious reader to discover, or at least a cohesive setting which warrants thorough exploration.

- Are die-rolls and game-overs necessary? Are you SURE?

- Don't feel you need an illustration all the time. I think it would be better to use that placeholder more often, and cull your images to a more focussed style.

Hrm. I refused to work for Mr. Infinite and starved to death in a ditch, wondering if the GM was twisting my arm in his usual way, or whether something else would come along. It appears I was just spamming a streetwise roll which must have been well beyond me. However, I find this preferable to the standard, "You fail, nothing happens. What next?"

It seems that the major portion of your effort thus far has gone into the "mechanics" and making them work. You have done a great job. For what it's worth, in Lone Wolf I always enjoyed little contextualizations that made my choices feel substantive. "Because of your foe's thick armor, subtract 3 from your combat prowess unless you are fighting with a mace.", etc. Also, I avoid amateur fantasy writing at all costs, but I'm surprised to say that I don't mind yours at all. Well done!

Please, please, talk all about this. You have at least one eager supporter. I'm going to go re-read "The Caverns of Kalte".

P.S. If you aren't familiar with the adventures of Lone Wolf, they're actually free online now at projectaon.org . Nowhere near as satisfying as holding the paperback, but still a valuable resource.

The global variables are *meant* to be really important, but aren't yet - basically because I've written the bits where you trigger various things, but not the bits where you see the results...

Sadly, I have very little time to write Age of Fable, so it changes slowly.

I think that's really what will make the game take off. Go crazy with them, even if they don't amount to much of anything. "The old lady notices the mud and thorns covering your breeches, but says nothing."

You have a great foundation so far, though. Your system is pretty slick, although you do imitate the conventions of tabletop gaming more than I feel is necessary.

So, I made my way into the Caverns of Kalte and was having a good time with my wily non-combative kai lord (CS 14, no Sommerswerd or Mindblast). After rolling this around my mind, I finally decided that I like the fact that the books are somewhat biased toward combat machines. You can max out your Combat Skill and stroll through the book without even a temptation to cheat, but playing cleverly is more difficult, interesting and rewarding. I.e. you are in fact reading more of the book by finding ways through situations when you could just kill stuff and ignore the other content.

However, I was down to 4 Endurance points (having lost only a few in combat, which was pretty cool!) when I got strangled by the guy stuck in the pentagram who turns out to be a Helghast. Something like : "You feel the skeletal hands of the Helghast close around your throat. Lose 6 ENDURANCE points. If you are still alive . . ."

Well, no, I'm not. So that's it then? I just close the book and tear up my character sheet? Not only is that not fun at all, but it in no way tempts me to go back to the beginning of the book and dive in once more. Rather, it tempts me to cast out the sense of self-enforced "creative honesty" which makes the book exciting and cheat like crazy. Which is the equivalent of playing a videogame in "God Mode" so you can wander around at look at the monster graphics. Gets very old. I didn't check to see if the "back" button works in your game, but if it does, your game will often become a joke after people die. The spell will be broken, so to speak. If it doesn't work, I imagine that people will tend to just get pissed off and quit. Now, I can't imagine a "quicksave" mentality in something like this (MAYBE a "save in town only" mechanic), and neither do I imagine you aiming at the Roguelike community.

For me, it would be much more satisfying to have global variables measuring my achievements. In one Mega Man Zero game, there are a handful of missions available at any time. You can give up on a mission, whereupon a different one is made available. The more missions you give up on, the more the game story changes until eventually, the ending goes from "Save the world!" to "Escape from our HQ before we are annihilated!" Trying to get "the good ending" is something that definitely brings players back again and again. So, if I am taking too long, rather than starving to death, I would rather find out that I was too late to stop the king's assassination or somesuch. Fallout also did this with its modular ending. "You saved humankind. However, the people of Shady Sands all died of smallpox or something." You could even take Sonic the Hedgehog as an example: Yes, you foiled Robotnik FOR NOW, but you won't achieve final victory until you recover all the chaos emeralds!

To put things in psychological terms, character death is punishment. I am suggesting that character failure be met with negative reinforcement, which is much more humane and effective. Compare:

"You didn't defeat the troll king! Bad player! No more game!"

with

"You can have a cookie when you defeat the troll king!"

To put it another way, don't tell an unsuccessful player, "You're out!", rather reward success with increased story power. Unless of course you ARE catering to the Rogue ethic and you want death to be a constant threat. In which case you are basically making the prose equivalent of Dragon's Lair and the only advice I could give you is that your writing better be as compelling as Don Bluth's animation. (Which is not unthinkable, given how impressed I am thus far.)

You could take the easy way out and create an "Adventurer Resurrection Service" which incurs steep debts, but I think this game is better than that. (I have to say I was disappointed by the appearance of a quest bulletin board, a device whose preponderance is shocking given its utter ridiculousness).

You should probably move to the playtesting forum. I would be happy to contribute further.