Forked Thread: GTS 2009 D&D Seminar - 4e video game

[hong]

When there is some kind of trigger that needs the player decide just stop action make the character glow. You need but a click to decide if you pull the trigger or not.

You can very easily add some info about what the trigger does on the PCs selection icon that would lie somewhere in the interface.

Hm, that's not a bad idea. At worst, if you really want to interrupt someone, you might mash the Spacebar. But the game can always ignore that if you don't actually have interrupts available.

 

[xechnao]

make it a very tactical game, akin to Jagged Alliance/X-Com model.

Cheers, LT.

Yep, that's the problem IMO. With 4e you could easily make a game of this sort but you would have a hard time to make a Baldur's Gate.

 

[Cadfan]

There's no reason that exploration games require resource management related systems akin to earlier editions of D&D. In fact, those systems were some of the most awkward bits of earlier edition computer games.

In Never Winter Nights, for example, your daily resources included all of the usual 3e daily spells and abilities, plus hit points. What did this accomplish? Well, it created a time tax on the player. Right before every major fight you had to press the "Rest" key, and sit and wait while a bar filled. That was it. It contributed nothing else to the game. Your abilities were ALL functionally per encounter, except that you had to waste some time to make them work correctly.

In comparison, look at a game like the Avernum series, an old school series of adventure games made by a small studio. They're probably some of the highest quality adventure games out there, if you leave out graphics. Each one has an incredibly rich plotline (ok, one of them doesn't, but of the 6, 5 have rich plotlines). And their combat is completely, 100% tactical and grid based. Each episode of the game uses slightly different rules as the designers refine their system and their techniques, but its a perfect example of a small studio getting things mostly right with a tactical rpg with heavy elements of exploration.

So what makes exploration such a key theme in Avernum?

Plot design. Plot design and nothing but plot design.

In Avernum 5, which I've recently played, here's a rough spoiler free summary of the first 1/10 or so of the plot.

You start out in a town. You adventure outwards, and reach another town. The areas away from the road are dangerous to you, and you may die if you go there. You are given quests, which require you to foray into these dangerous areas. At first, you need to stay carefully on track with your quests, because the danger elsewhere is too great. Eventually, as you complete quests and gain skill, you can start to control your own destiny, and you learn that the area you are in is quite vast, and filled with all kinds of weird hazards. After you've mastered the region you're in, you venture further into the depths of this world, and come to a coastal town. Here you receive a boat, which opens up all kinds of new options for you. Most of these new options are too dangerous for you, but if you're careful and stick to the water and the one island with a friendly town that you'll find as you explore, you'll be ok until you learn to handle this region of the game. Etc.

That's right. Its points of light.

Its all about the plot. Not the resource management technique or the combat style.

 

[xechnao]

Well in Baldur's Gate you could not rest whenever you wanted. There was some risk to consider for resting in various areas and this played a major role in the exploration approach in the game. The game was designed with this in mind among the other resource management things: Christmas tree development and management was also a part of the game (scrolls, potions, trading etch: do I keep the scroll to write it down in the spellbook when I go to next level or do I sell it to buy something else?).

Along with the open environment it was exploration (or plot) development you, as a player had a number of significant options to develop yourself.

What you are describing Cadfan does not give this number of options. But for the sake of this discussion let's think from what we know from the tabletop game. What published adventures do you think could translate easily in a video game using 4e rules and be very fun to the video game player? Hook him down for the long run, engaging him in a continious mode with a structure of ways so that he does not feel bored but rather excited to go on to the end (say x number of gameplay hours: the bigger the better)?

 

[Cadfan]

Well in Baldur's Gate you could not rest whenever you wanted. There was some risk to consider for resting in various areas and this played a major role in the exploration approach in the game. The game was designed with this in mind among the other resource management things: Christmas tree development and management was also a part of the game (scrolls, potions, trading etch: do I keep the scroll to write it down in the spellbook when I go to next level or do I sell it to buy something else?).

Along with the open environment it was exploration (or plot) development you, as a player had a number of significant options to develop yourself.

What you are describing Cadfan does not give this number of options.

But what does that have to do with whether the game creates a sense of exploration? Multiple trees of character development is an entirely unrelated matter.

But for the sake of this discussion let's think from what we know from the tabletop game. What published adventures do you think could translate easily in a video game using 4e rules and be very fun to the video game player? Hook him down for the long run, engaging him in a continious mode with a structure of ways so that he does not feel bored but rather excited to go on to the end (say x number of gameplay hours: the bigger the better)?

None at the moment. Published adventures are far too short for a computer game, which can typically be played at a much, much faster pace than a tabletop game. Keep on the Shadowfell was an alright start, given the way it began with a town, gave you reasons to adventure out from the town, but also reasons to return. To really make it work, at the end of KotS you'd want the player to move to another region, but still, on occasion, have some reason to return to the KotS region. The return trip emphasizes how far out he's gone into the wild.

 

[xechnao]

But what does that have to do with whether the game creates a sense of exploration? Multiple trees of character development is an entirely unrelated matter.

Well, as you make the point yourself in the second paragraph of yours, the player must have reasons to explore or alternatively exploration must be connected to some reasons. These multiple trees of development is what exploration must be attached to in the game.

If they are multiple you have this open ended exploration game feel.

 

[hong]

Well, as you make the point yourself in the second paragraph of yours, the player must have reasons to explore or alternatively exploration must be connected to some reasons. These multiple trees of development is what exploration must be attached to in the game.

If they are multiple you have this open ended exploration game feel.

Exactly. Which has nothing to do with resting for 8 hours every day.

 

[Hexmage-EN]

I'd expect a 4E video game to be similar to Dungeons & Dragons: Tactics. Daily powers would simply be reset once you end a delve.

 

[Cadfan]

Well, as you make the point yourself in the second paragraph of yours, the player must have reasons to explore or alternatively exploration must be connected to some reasons. These multiple trees of development is what exploration must be attached to in the game.

If they are multiple you have this open ended exploration game feel.

Alright, looking back, I thought you were talking about multiple paths of developing your character.

Technically you mentioned multiple paths of developing yourself as a player.

So its possible that my earlier comments weren't relevant to what you were saying.

But now I have no idea at all what you are saying. I completely fail to grasp your point in any possible way. I don't even know what multiple paths of development as a player even means.

For the record, in case people got the wrong idea about Avernum, there are significant plot branches, multiple endings, and each individual character in your four person party can be developed in a wide variety of ways through the use of a point buy system that rewards certain types of specialization, and allows for emergent properties to occur when abilities are gained in certain combinations.

 

[avin]

Too bad Troika is dead... =/