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You've Created A Bad Character. How, why and whose fault is it?
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<blockquote data-quote="Emberashh" data-source="post: 9324693" data-attributes="member: 7040941"><p>That becomes a design methodology issue. </p><p></p><p>My personal approach is to design like I'm cooking with garlic; from the heart. Eg, I just do what feels right to sell what I'm designing. </p><p></p><p>Now what happens when I do that is, I design things are hella wack even for the kind of baseline I'm going for. </p><p></p><p>Take this as an example:</p><p></p><p></p><p>One doesn't need to be familiar with my game at all to understand how a 75 year old goblin getting +75 to their two basic things in combat is kookoo bananas. </p><p></p><p>But, designing this way, I know what I want the ability to feel like. When the time comes to go back through and give this a playability pass and some playtesting to seek out some better values, this is going to get tuned considerably back down, and the end point will be a version that's much more reasonable, but still conveys, mechanically, what the ability represents as a depiction of that particular part of Goblin lore. </p><p></p><p>So when we come back to the topic at hand, if a player in my game is sold on Goblin lore, and explicitly wants to build a goblin that will grow old and be a cantankerous crusty old tree person, their choice at character generation isn't going become useless past a couple sessions or be a trap for them. It gets better with time and is useful at any stage of the characters development. </p><p></p><p>This method goes into pretty much every character option available. Design from the heart > playability pass > test it > settle on a desired approach. </p><p></p><p>The only real shortcoming here is that I struggle sometimes with not inadvertently giving the same benefits over and over. In some cases its good to have some symmetrical design, but especially when were talking something like Races or Classes, having things be too similar goes against what I'm going for. (Also another good reason to have a number of systems; plenty to interact with)</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Emberashh, post: 9324693, member: 7040941"] That becomes a design methodology issue. My personal approach is to design like I'm cooking with garlic; from the heart. Eg, I just do what feels right to sell what I'm designing. Now what happens when I do that is, I design things are hella wack even for the kind of baseline I'm going for. Take this as an example: One doesn't need to be familiar with my game at all to understand how a 75 year old goblin getting +75 to their two basic things in combat is kookoo bananas. But, designing this way, I know what I want the ability to feel like. When the time comes to go back through and give this a playability pass and some playtesting to seek out some better values, this is going to get tuned considerably back down, and the end point will be a version that's much more reasonable, but still conveys, mechanically, what the ability represents as a depiction of that particular part of Goblin lore. So when we come back to the topic at hand, if a player in my game is sold on Goblin lore, and explicitly wants to build a goblin that will grow old and be a cantankerous crusty old tree person, their choice at character generation isn't going become useless past a couple sessions or be a trap for them. It gets better with time and is useful at any stage of the characters development. This method goes into pretty much every character option available. Design from the heart > playability pass > test it > settle on a desired approach. The only real shortcoming here is that I struggle sometimes with not inadvertently giving the same benefits over and over. In some cases its good to have some symmetrical design, but especially when were talking something like Races or Classes, having things be too similar goes against what I'm going for. (Also another good reason to have a number of systems; plenty to interact with) [/QUOTE]
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