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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Nakander" data-source="post: 8470957" data-attributes="member: 7033133">One of the first aspects of this game that I'd like to talk about is the happiness system.I'll spare you the details of how many failed versions of this system I've tried to make work over the years and why they've failed or only partially been successful, but what's important is why I wanted it to work.There's two basic ideas behind this system. First, your character is going to logically want to eat good food and have fun or else he'd be depressed and have no reason to do what he's doing. The second is how do you make it worthwhile for your character to spend good money on luxeries or entertainment. It's not like you're going to get any of that in the real world, so why bother?So that brings us to how do you incorporate those into a game like this? I'm glad you asked.First, as part of your character creation you'll take a BS personality test that I made up with no relevant education to assign a personality type to your character. (Those players that were not very familiar with RPGs loved this part of the game, by the way.) Each of the personality types have lists of likes and dislikes for your character that include foods, entertainment, and general quirks. There are 9 personality types with names like Oak or Thistle and other plantish names that I've written lore and backgrounds for. I wanted to come up with something original to denote personalities and it was way harder than you might think.Okay, so you have your personality type. Now on your character sheet you have a happiness rating that will decrease as your character is caught in crappy situations (like adventuring, eating rations, and camping in the wild). When you have an opportunity to go to a town you can take advantage of the recreation and good food that is offered there to raise your happiness (if you wish). There's a bunch of other ways this can be done that would take too long to list here.So what are the benefits or penalties of being aware of your happiness? Happiness is a statistic in this game that will get checked at certain points in the quest as well as randomly. Then, successful checks will confer real bonuses or penalties that the player will actually care about. This system also added an interesting facet of players caring where they camped and what city they were in because they wanted to go where their favorite food or "other" favorite things were located.I'll add that It tested wildly well in my last run. Watching players being choosey about their food and adult companionship was some of the funniest things we've ever seen in years of playing.And that's it in a nutshell. Thank you.</blockquote>

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