Design approachs.

[triqui]

I do believe there is a trade off for realism

While this is true, realism isn't a big concern for RPG for me except for modern day rpg with gritty feeling. Everyone else, verosimilitude is more important than realism.

A thing that surprised me in two games I read recently was allowing the player to decide when they are wounded. Song of Fire and Ice and Legend of Anglerre/Dresden Files both have this perk. Sound interesting

 

[Guest 85555]

While this is true, realism isn't a big concern for RPG for me except for modern day rpg with gritty feeling. Everyone else, verosimilitude is more important than realism.

So far all of our games (except the wild west one in development) are modern, so realism is a concern for us. But in our case, I think taking the simple streamlined approach still got us there, for the reasons I laid out before.

A thing that surprised me in two games I read recently was allowing the player to decide when they are wounded. Song of Fire and Ice and Legend of Anglerre/Dresden Files both have this perk. Sound interesting

These sorts of games are generally not my cup of tea, but interesting mechanics.

 

[triqui]

So far all of our games (except the wild west one in development) are modern, so realism is a concern for us. But in our case, I think taking the simple streamlined approach still got us there, for the reasons I laid out before.

Yes, I supposed so from reading your description. However, it's not only being modern, but being modern and gritty what make realism neccesary for your games. Would you be doing a modern game that is trying to play the Die Hard films, or James Bond-like superspies, or Hong Kong action movies, then realism fades out and believability fades in. . You no longer try to simulate what a bullet would do to a man, but what would it do to James Bond, which is completelly different. A James Bond game where James Bond can die from a head shot is not really believable, even if realistic.


Some more interesting thoughts, from historical point of view:
transition of game rules through history
This comes from a extensive collection of rpg theory

For different points of view, the classical gns theory and a more mathematical approach to dice

 

[Guest 85555]

Yes, I supposed so from reading your description. However, it's not only being modern, but being modern and gritty what make realism neccesary for your games. Would you be doing a modern game that is trying to play the Die Hard films, or James Bond-like superspies, or Hong Kong action movies, then realism fades out and believability fades in. . You no longer try to simulate what a bullet would do to a man, but what would it do to James Bond, which is completelly different. A James Bond game where James Bond can die from a head shot is not really believable, even if realistic.

I agree. A gritty, real-world setting was one of our goals.

 

[Guest 85555]

Some more interesting thoughts, from historical point of view:
transition of game rules through history
This comes from a extensive collection of rpg theory

I think people will be debating the history of RPGs for some time. But I found this section of the article interesting:

"While the problem of "railroaded" adventures is old news to many role-players, it seems clear that the industry is still struggling with finding a solution to it. How do you provide effective support for running adventures without laying out a plot to follow? During the 90's, the approach of providing maps and background had all but disappeared in favor of chapter-by-chapter or scene-by-scene plots. With the revival success of D&D, though, this may be reconsidered."

Something we pride ourselves on is our non-linear adventure design. We've even had a reviewer comment on this aspect of our modules.

 

[triqui]

Linear design has some good points, the biggest one being easier to implement. However, it's true that being able to produce non-linear games is a kind of Holy Grail . Props for you! Would you give a link to the review?

Here there is a good review about a non-linear game.

 

[Guest 85555]

Linear design has some good points, the biggest one being easier to implement. However, it's true that being able to produce non-linear games is a kind of Holy Grail . Props for you! Would you give a link to the review?

I think sometimes there is a tension between the GMs desire to tell a story, and the Player's desire for freedom. When a GM has the necessary background material, and is willing to "let go", the players can have freedom and drama ensues naturally from the interaction of characters and events. That is just my opinion. But I've put it into practice in our module structure:

http://www.therpgsite.com/showthread.php?p=397466

The Most Unread Blog on the Internet. Ever.: Tommy's Take on Terror Network
" Like with their Crime Networks adventures, the railroading begins and ends with "Here is what we know and these are your orders." I love that approach and they do it very well."

 

[triqui]

Yes, that's true. I, as a player, have been frustrated so often from feeling myself choiceless in a railroad, as clueless in a sandbox. I remeber old days in Mage: the Ascension or Vampire:the Masquerade with a DM I used to have, where some game sessions where truly desperating: just wandering without nothing really to do, and nothing really happening.

Your game seem to fight that lack of focus really well, becouse by it's own nature (counterterrorism rpg), it easily put a focus for the players ("ok: we have SOMETHING to do and we have to do it ASAP"), but leave the players the freedom to approach the challenge the way they like. It's a nice approach and very suited for the genre

 

[Guest 85555]

Yes, that's true. I, as a player, have been frustrated so often from feeling myself choiceless in a railroad, as clueless in a sandbox. I remeber old days in Mage: the Ascension or Vampire:the Masquerade with a DM I used to have, where some game sessions where truly desperating: just wandering without nothing really to do, and nothing really happening.

Much of this boils down to personal preference of course (I know players who want a fair amount of railroading so things stay interesting for instance). I think in sandbox adventures, the GM has to be willing to stay true to sandbox (he can't have it be sandbox but only have one adventure hidden somewhere beneath the grains, leaving Players at a loss), and the players need to take initiative as well.

Our Terror Network investigations have some sandboxy elements to them. In a way they are combinations of sandbox, event-driven, and character driven adventures.

We have a pretty simple approach that keeps things fun and entertaining. The PCs are normally presented with a terrorist threat or lead, and they are free to follow that however they wish. We add a timeline of events to that, so even if they fail to solve the investigation, interesting things occur. Also how the PCs conduct their investigation can directly effect the event timeline, and all NPCs are assumed to be adaptive to player behavior as well. I find this works very well for investigations. It allows failure to remain a real possibility, but things are still entertaining.

Your game seem to fight that lack of focus really well, becouse by it's own nature (counterterrorism rpg), it easily put a focus for the players ("ok: we have SOMETHING to do and we have to do it ASAP"), but leave the players the freedom to approach the challenge the way they like. It's a nice approach and very suited for the genre

I think that is exactly right. One of the advantages of characters being federal agents is they are assigned investigations and missions. In Crime Network (our mob game) however, at least when I am running it at home, the adventures are 100% about characters. In my last campaign, the players were all rising stars in a mob family. Granted there is still that hierarchical structure there to prod things along, but CN works best when the players drive the adventure with their own ambition. As a rule, I only prepared NPCs and locations before a game. Never assumed things would go in a particular direction. I just knew that Joey Zito wanted the PCs rubbed out for some reason, or that another gang was plotting against the PCs boss. Down the road I hope to put out a scenario booklet that helps capture this feel.

 

[Crazy Jerome]

I tend to prefer consistency as well. But I guess my point is, as time goes on, and it becomes the rule rather than the exception, the less enamored I am with using it all the time or for every project. I also think it is rare for both approaches to work equally in the same situation. They both produce very different results. Consistency generally makes an elegant design that is predictable (in a good way). Whereas the other approach is far less predictable, far less elegant, but makes it much easier to customize the mechanic for things like probability.

In any kind of model design work, I think of consistency not a technique but as a pool of "design capital" from which you can draw. That is, any decent model that relates to something meaningful to people, there will be some inconsistency ... "suggested". It happens for various reasons, and each one has different costs and benefits. So by default, you make the design consistent, but when you have a good reason not on some particular case, you weigh the cost of inconsistency and decide if it is worth it.

I think of this as "capital" because I think humans process a small amount of inconsistency with no problem whatsoever. We even expect it. But each time you add to the inconsistency, you increase the cost for less and less benefit. That is, ten inconsistent design choices may be individually worth the cost for the related benefits, but the sum of the costs is greater than the parts, while with benefits the sum of the benefits is often less than the parts. So that implies an opportunity cost to every inconsistent element you introduce.

For those of you exposed to relational database design, this is very similar to database "normalization". A perfectly consistent database is in "3rd normal form". However, most real life databases are "denormalized", that is, made deliberately inconsistent in certain parts, because then the model will be more useful, more convenient, etc.

If you make one skill work mechanically differently from the other 12 in the game, because of some vague notion of "realism" trumping your consistency, you may or may not have made a good decision. If you did, it was luck. On the other hand, if you "denormalize" that skill from consistency because you realize that it being different is going to add certain benefits to the play experience, and that these benefits are surely worth that bit of inconsistency, and worth more than other such inconsistency that you could have introduced--then you've got a good decision, and it has nothing to do with luck.