RangerWickett
Legend
In the context of me longing to use the pandemic to write my 'perfect RPG,' some friends and I got talking about deep, base reasons why certain games we've played have satisfied or not satisfied us. We're fans of narrative and drama, but we enjoy game mechanics that let you actually play through combat, and have your decisions matter.
These are the six items we came up with.
1. Ludo-Narrative Consonance.
The effect of an action in the game mechanics and the incentives they provide should make narrative sense. Five-minute adventuring days made mechanical sense in D&D 3rd edition, but they made for bad stories. Magic item treadmills encourage you to throw away your family's ancestral blade when you find a random +1 weapon. Even hit points can cause mild dissonance if not implemented well, like if a monster's attack always 'impales' a character, yet the damage it causes can be 'healed' by an inspiring word.
2. A Clear Aesthetic.
We really appreciated Legend of the Five Rings for leaning heavily into the 'five elements,' which let you use the same skill in five different styles - sneaky, indomitable, reckless, mobile, or serene. It made playing the game feel different from your normal kitchen sink fantasy setting of D&D. Dark Sun, likewise, had rules of magic that set a strong mood, because most magic killed plant life, which made it both precious and terrifying. Gamma World 4e was intentionally bonkers and made chaos rewarding rather than annoying.
We generally like games that have a small suite of meaningfully distinct options, rather than myriad options that all blur together. In Pathfinder there are so many spells that can do anything, so if you see a wizard, you don't know what you're getting into. In Avatar: The Last Airbender, there are four elements, each of which has maybe 5 different tricks it can do, so each of those things feels cooler.
3. An Appreciation of Tabletop Pacing in Character Creation.
In 3e, a ranger who leveled up basically got to pick some skill points and every few levels could increase their bonus with a favored enemy and get a feat. The choices came too slowly. In PF2, when you gain a level you might get a feat that lets you avoid critical failures on Profession checks. The choices are too insignificant. And many games act like getting a +1 bonus to some stat is interesting; it isn't. Numbers untethered from narrative are meaningless. These things are fine in video games where leveling happens quickly, and in the span of 4 hours of gaming you can rack up a variety of small perks that amount to something meaningful. But if you've been playing for weeks before you level, what you get needs to be interesting.
As an example of what we want, we liked how in New World of Darkness or Warhammer 40K Rogue Trader you'd get XP after each session which could buy small increases in skills.
4. Balance of In-Game Choices and Pre-Game Choices.
You often have tons of build choices that let you become really good at one thing, and then when you actually play the game it becomes foolish to do anything but focus on your one trick. The rules have all manner of combat maneuvers - grabs and shoves and trips and disarms and dirty tricks - but the mechanics usually make it much better to always just hit for damage. We want more useful choices in combat.
As an example of what we like, 4e had interesting tactical powers where you'd pick between a suite of options based on the situation. And the video game Horizon: Zero Dawn gave you 7 or 8 different weapons that were useful against different sorts of enemies, but nearly every enemy type would switch through 2 or 3 different attack styles, which would adjust how useful the different weapons are.
If all you need to do to win a fight is get rid of your opponent's HP, then you direct all your choices toward maximizing HP damage. So a game should have a way to require more than just damage to win.
5. Action Should Keep Everyone Involved.
If someone's turn takes 5 minutes to resolve, everyone else checks out. We want action to either go through each turn quickly, or give players reasons to pay attention when it's not their turn, such as with reactions or with the ability to influence each other's turn.
For instance, in the new Legend of the Five Rings, your dice pool determines both success/failure and potential 'opportunities,' which you might spend to inflict negative status effects, or grant a bonus to an ally's check. It felt like it could have used a bit more time in the oven, but it kept people attentive.
And we're intrigued by how different initiative systems can keep people involved. AD&D 2e style initiative had everyone state their actions at once, and then you resolved them. Yes, the planning might slow down, but once you start resolving the turn there's a clear narrative that keeps everyone engaged.
6. Teamwork Without Dog Piling.
This sort of goes with the above point. For the sake of having dramatic confrontations, you want characters to be able to meaningfully work together - for the whole to be greater than the sum of the party's parts.
But on the flip side, in many games teamwork just amounts to a confluence of status effects, which completely negate the tension of a conflict. It's a tough game design challenge, one where tabletop RPGs don't have as many big-budget video game examples to model. If enemies are designed to be balanced one-on-one against a single PC, then a quick gang-up on one foe will take them out and tip the scales of the encounter. Worse, you might have something like a boss enemy getting tripped/blinded/immobilized/weakened all at once, so all of a sudden Darth Vader is on the ground crying for his momma.
5e doesn't have much teamwork, though it does pay dividends to have multiple spellcasters put 'concentration' spells on one PC. 4e had lots of teamwork but it took years for the designers to overcome the dogpile threat for solo foes. PF claimed to have 'teamwork feats,' but they were incredibly niche with a high opportunity cost of forcing everyone to devote several levels to making them useful.
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What sorts of root design elements do you most want in your games?
These are the six items we came up with.
1. Ludo-Narrative Consonance.
The effect of an action in the game mechanics and the incentives they provide should make narrative sense. Five-minute adventuring days made mechanical sense in D&D 3rd edition, but they made for bad stories. Magic item treadmills encourage you to throw away your family's ancestral blade when you find a random +1 weapon. Even hit points can cause mild dissonance if not implemented well, like if a monster's attack always 'impales' a character, yet the damage it causes can be 'healed' by an inspiring word.
2. A Clear Aesthetic.
We really appreciated Legend of the Five Rings for leaning heavily into the 'five elements,' which let you use the same skill in five different styles - sneaky, indomitable, reckless, mobile, or serene. It made playing the game feel different from your normal kitchen sink fantasy setting of D&D. Dark Sun, likewise, had rules of magic that set a strong mood, because most magic killed plant life, which made it both precious and terrifying. Gamma World 4e was intentionally bonkers and made chaos rewarding rather than annoying.
We generally like games that have a small suite of meaningfully distinct options, rather than myriad options that all blur together. In Pathfinder there are so many spells that can do anything, so if you see a wizard, you don't know what you're getting into. In Avatar: The Last Airbender, there are four elements, each of which has maybe 5 different tricks it can do, so each of those things feels cooler.
3. An Appreciation of Tabletop Pacing in Character Creation.
In 3e, a ranger who leveled up basically got to pick some skill points and every few levels could increase their bonus with a favored enemy and get a feat. The choices came too slowly. In PF2, when you gain a level you might get a feat that lets you avoid critical failures on Profession checks. The choices are too insignificant. And many games act like getting a +1 bonus to some stat is interesting; it isn't. Numbers untethered from narrative are meaningless. These things are fine in video games where leveling happens quickly, and in the span of 4 hours of gaming you can rack up a variety of small perks that amount to something meaningful. But if you've been playing for weeks before you level, what you get needs to be interesting.
As an example of what we want, we liked how in New World of Darkness or Warhammer 40K Rogue Trader you'd get XP after each session which could buy small increases in skills.
4. Balance of In-Game Choices and Pre-Game Choices.
You often have tons of build choices that let you become really good at one thing, and then when you actually play the game it becomes foolish to do anything but focus on your one trick. The rules have all manner of combat maneuvers - grabs and shoves and trips and disarms and dirty tricks - but the mechanics usually make it much better to always just hit for damage. We want more useful choices in combat.
As an example of what we like, 4e had interesting tactical powers where you'd pick between a suite of options based on the situation. And the video game Horizon: Zero Dawn gave you 7 or 8 different weapons that were useful against different sorts of enemies, but nearly every enemy type would switch through 2 or 3 different attack styles, which would adjust how useful the different weapons are.
If all you need to do to win a fight is get rid of your opponent's HP, then you direct all your choices toward maximizing HP damage. So a game should have a way to require more than just damage to win.
5. Action Should Keep Everyone Involved.
If someone's turn takes 5 minutes to resolve, everyone else checks out. We want action to either go through each turn quickly, or give players reasons to pay attention when it's not their turn, such as with reactions or with the ability to influence each other's turn.
For instance, in the new Legend of the Five Rings, your dice pool determines both success/failure and potential 'opportunities,' which you might spend to inflict negative status effects, or grant a bonus to an ally's check. It felt like it could have used a bit more time in the oven, but it kept people attentive.
And we're intrigued by how different initiative systems can keep people involved. AD&D 2e style initiative had everyone state their actions at once, and then you resolved them. Yes, the planning might slow down, but once you start resolving the turn there's a clear narrative that keeps everyone engaged.
6. Teamwork Without Dog Piling.
This sort of goes with the above point. For the sake of having dramatic confrontations, you want characters to be able to meaningfully work together - for the whole to be greater than the sum of the party's parts.
But on the flip side, in many games teamwork just amounts to a confluence of status effects, which completely negate the tension of a conflict. It's a tough game design challenge, one where tabletop RPGs don't have as many big-budget video game examples to model. If enemies are designed to be balanced one-on-one against a single PC, then a quick gang-up on one foe will take them out and tip the scales of the encounter. Worse, you might have something like a boss enemy getting tripped/blinded/immobilized/weakened all at once, so all of a sudden Darth Vader is on the ground crying for his momma.
5e doesn't have much teamwork, though it does pay dividends to have multiple spellcasters put 'concentration' spells on one PC. 4e had lots of teamwork but it took years for the designers to overcome the dogpile threat for solo foes. PF claimed to have 'teamwork feats,' but they were incredibly niche with a high opportunity cost of forcing everyone to devote several levels to making them useful.
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What sorts of root design elements do you most want in your games?
