I finished a game!

Shadowrun: Hong Kong - 9/10

I don't finish very many video games, largely because there's just too many to explore.  I like digging in, seeing what's up, and then most of the time simply moving on.  It's not that most games don't compel me to finish, it's usually that there's the next great thing waiting for me.

This blog isn't supposed to be about video games, but due to this game being Shadowrun: Hong Kong, I felt it was a necessary tribute.   I had a blast, and everything from the character progression, battle mechanics, and story kept me playing.  I could write a couple page review, but instead I'll just hit on some highlighted thoughts I had while playing.

The Good:

• The individually crafted 'runs' is what makes this whole game tick.  There's no generic fetch-quests, no kill-20-things, and no grind-for-gold anything.  Every tick of the game was specifically made to be awesome.
• Hacking required actual quick-thinking and pattern recognition, which felt <right> in an otherwise slow combat tactics game.
• Choices made during beginning runs seemed to have an effect on the end game.  It was really cool!
• The computer game is actually less complicated than the tabletop version, with less to keep track of and roll for.  That says a lot >.<
• Very interesting and diverse characters.  I liked that the game let you pick broad strokes of level-up for them, but you didn't have to micro-manage their skills or inventory, letting you focus on yourself.
• Money was always <just> tight enough. Well done on the economy side.  I honestly felt like a semi-poor shadowrunner, going job-to-job trying to get new tech.
• Goul-Samurai are bad ass.

The Could-Have-Been-Better:

• Unfortunately, the biggest disappointment was that the character relationships didn't matter a single bit.  It didn't matter if you talked to everyone or not (other than getting each runner's own story mission).  I'm not talking romance (although that's always amusing in bioware games), but that whether you were a dick or not to your teammates, the game plays the same.
• Because of the lack of mage or physical adept on the team, it seemed a waste to play pretty much anything else.  Of course, I still played a sniper...
• Final boss was slightly disappointing, but I understand I could have fought it at a much lower karma level.
• No astral-projection/astral vision, which is weird since they included the matrix.
• No hacking of people's guns. Oh well.
• I felt nothing for Duncan... he was kinda just whiny. Then again, me as the player knew - and wanted - that we were going to be shadowrunning.

Fate of the Norns: Ragnarok

Frigid ground crunched beneath fur boots as the hunter stalked through the forest's eternal darkness.  His eyes burned, open wide to the cold, intense wind, ever vigilant in their search for his prey.  The soft, constant slither of fur against bark and brush rippled through the air.  He could feel it.  It was close.

A puff of moisture expelled from his lungs as he spun.  Without looking he heaved the axe upward, and in an instant a mist of blood erupted from the snake's jaw.  He dove, two giant fangs piercing the ground where he had stood only a moment before.  A fistful of fur helped him swing up onto the snake's neck, where he plunged his sword deep within the back of the beast's skull.

No really - there's a fucking giant furry snow snake as a monster in this game.   

That's badass, and the game is too.

Fate of the Norns: Ragnarok is the latest of a series of viking games (all "Fate of the Norns") that received a fairly sizable chunk of kickstarter funds.  With a focus on combat, it pitches the players into the viking world of Ragnarok: a period of time where there is no natural light, and a three year winter before the end of the world is at the forefront of humanity's worries. It's indie, it's unique, and it's complicated as all hell.  They may have blown all of their cash on art though, I'm not sure.

Pros:

• Violence & Gore - good old viking style.
• Hundreds of pages of full color, gorgeous, themed artwork.
• More setting ooze than most setting books (to be fair, it's basically a viking mythology textbook).
• Extremely unique gameplay that uses NORDIC RUNES instead of dice or cards as the randomizer.
• "Rune Chains" let you manipulate your character's actions and powers, customizing their effects to the situation at hand.
• Extreme customization in character building.
• Extreme customization in monster building.  This is probably one of my favorite parts.

Cons:

• Terrible book layout. It's hard to read, understand, and reference.
• Overly complex in some areas (e.g. character sizes), but falls short in other areas (e.g. tactical hex combat).
• Action economy ends up being more frustrating than actually fun.  When you have to spend runes to do anything, each rune sacrificed to minor actions, defense, and condition care feels like a huge loss.
• High amount of GM prep required.
• Requires tons of extra printed material on top of the books.
• High cost-of-entry with the books + physical runes.  Even the PDF is expensive.
• The math of the basic resolution mechanic doesn't add up...

If you dig in, Fate of the Norns can be your dream game.  It's got everything: an epic setting, angry gods, lore beyond lore, monsters, bar fights, heroics in life, and heroics in death.  It starts the players as heroes, turns them into legends, and finally brings them to a demi-god state where they fight with divine powers, all to prepare them for the final battle of Ragnarok.  Everything in this game is unique, except maybe the actual setting itself... but even the way the viking world is presented is unique, given that it focuses on exactly what players of the game need to know.

First, players build their characters with only two simple stats: essense and destiny. From these you pick specific nordic runes and assign each to a variety of powers.  These powers are accessed in a grid, such that when you pick one power it unlocks all of the adjacent powers to be chosen next. Each character class's grids are connected to each other in the corners, so cross-classing is handled smoothly and elegantly.  What you end up with is characters so unique that you could play the same starting class twenty times and have completely different strategies.  There are 10 classes, each with 3 specializations, and each with three 5x5 grids of unlockable powers.  That's a lot of options - making it a very fun and engaging character building system.

And you do this with monsters too.  No two monsters will likely ever be the same.  With random rune selection, even monsters that choose the same set of powers will play differently.  The GM could spend hours creating and tweaking the next session's monsters!  The only issue is... the GM must spend hours creating and tweaking monsters.  Even though it's fun, and trust me it is, this game requires heavy GM prep, rivaling the prep time for similarly crunchy games, like Shadowrun.

That said, let me re-emphasize how awesome combat actually is.

Like any good viking game, the mechanics center around being in combat.  So much so, that even the standard action resolution mechanic changes awkwardly when in combat.  But, the basics of play are fun, and the shifting of runes around your play mat feels a lot like Magic: The Gathering.  Combat even has four phases, that include "draw" and "upkeep".  But it's MTG where you can choose to smash spells together to form unique effects while fighting on a hex grid, and the end result is something so epic that you can almost forgive the game for it's complexity.  Almost.

One of the biggest issues I have with the game is it's core mechanic: draw runes out of a bag to determine success.  Basically speaking, it's ass-backwards from what it should be.  Because you draw a number of runes equal to your destiny, and the number of runes in your bag is equal to your essence... that means that as your two stats increase (from gaining levels), the variance of your character's actions and outcomes increases.  Worse yet, if you choose to gain more essence, all you are actually doing is messing with the chance to pull a given rune type.  So let's say I had 3 physical runes, 3 mental runes, and 1 destiny. I have a 50/50 chance of drawing either rune type.  But let's say I leveled up, and gained 3 more physical runes.  Now, because I became stronger, I have less of a chance to succeed at drawing a mental rune.  That's nonsense - I'm not actually leveling up, just diluting my chances one way or another.  But the absolute worst part is if I always chose to increase destiny to it's maximum; I could have something like 5 runes and 5 destiny.  In this scenario, I always draw every rune I own, meaning there's not a lick of randomness to the game: I will always know if I will succeed in an action or not.

The Rune System for basic action resolution is straight up broken.

When it comes right down to it, I want to love this game.  My friends said they want to love this game.  There's just so much of this game to love!  But... wow is it hard.  The rules are written in a minimalist way, yet it's a game about very specific actions and mechanisms.  The result is a book chalk full of more questions than answers, and a game that screams for more attention.  I have faith that, if we put in a good amount of time and effort (and house ruling), that the payout would be amazing.  But it's hard to get that buy-in when the initial cost is so high, and that's unfortunately where the game falls flat on it's face.  It's beautiful, lovable face.

Flowing From Initiative

There's an age-old problem for games:

Who goes first?
What comes next?
I don't know, says the designer.

Turn order, first player advantage, and last player advantage are serious design hurtles for games, and RPGs are no different. Like our good friend Han Solo, whoever shoots first usually wins; so it's important to have a system that works, and works well.

Luckily, every RPG designer has had to think about it at some point in time (assuming their game has combat), and we have a huge variety of options because of it. They come in all shapes and sizes, from literally no turn order (e.g. Apocalypse World), to complex speed rating systems (e.g. Shadowrun). From my browsing, I'd say that actually, almost all of them work.  Which is rather a bummer when trying to steal the best ideas *cough cough* I mean build upon the foundation of others.

So it once again comes down to the game-specific feel.  For Hostargo, I want it to be quick.  So action points, rotating first player tokens, time wheels, and initiative rounds are all out.  I also want it to be as simple as possible, so specific turn order systems are also out.   Basically, I want the action to start off with a bang, and then flow smoothly from there.

The one initiative system that I've heard a lot of agreement from others, is "team turns".  Players go, then bad guys go.  Rinse and repeat.  Just like board games that have a simple turn-by-turn gameplay, once the game gets going, things just flow. After a while, you rarely remember who even started!

It's so simple, yet it can still start off with that intense "roll for initiative" that sings nostalgia for me. Players roll their initiative against the enemy as a whole; those that succeed get to take a turn before the enemy.  Then the enemy takes their turn. Then all of the players, with those that failed their initiative roll taking their first turn at this time.

The only issue I've seen with this strategy is that if all of the players are too polite to want to go first, or all too eager and they all jump at it at once.  Either way, this puts a little bit more pressure on the GM to sort things out.  Fortunately I don't think it's too difficult to control.  If no one is speaking up, just go around the table clockwise (you can even sit your players in "speed" order if desired).  If everyone speaks up, just go around the table clockwise (or in whatever order you want).  Often, I let whatever's most "in the moment" take the first go in any given round, based on the story at hand.

This is the by far the easiest initiative I've seen implemented that still has the players randomly go before/after their enemy.  But my experience only goes so far... so what's YOUR favorite, most elegant initiative system?

Armor vs. Padding

Even the chainmail bikini usually gives an RPG hero a boost in "armor": that generic value of how protected a character is.  In a lot of games, there's no reason not to want the highest protection, and in others, the trade off is a simple protection vs. speed.  In order to have more interesting choices in armor, we should look at different types of damage.

Many others have contemplated the various armor styles in RPGs, and they boil down to three distinct effects against incoming damage: evasion, reduction, or absorption.  Evasion armor helps attacks miss you (e.g. D&D: a sword bounces off of plate), reduction negates the damage altogether (e.g. Shadowrun: lowered damage total), and absorption transfers the damage from one source to another (e.g. FATE: from physical wounds to stress).  There are pros and cons to each, but the reality of armor is that it usually does all three.

The main issue with straight damage vs. armor is that there are multiple different types of attacks that are effective against multiple types of armor.  A dagger slips underneath the platemail, but gets slowed by a layer of padding.  A bullet slams into a body vest, knocking its wearer off their feet. Most attacks have some effect of wearing down their target.

In order to more interestingly simulate armor in a game, and without making it overly complicated, some games have given armor bonuses against the "core" types of attacks: slashing, piercing, and crushing.  But these are very specific, and don't work well as generic damage types.  Instead, I'd like to suggest using "lethal" and "non-lethal" damage types.  In some games, non-lethal damage is an add-on mechanic only used for fist fights or the occasional status effect.  However, if we define every type of attack with both lethal and non-lethal properties, we can come up with something very interesting.

Lethal damage is the cutting/piercing power of an attack.  It's the damage that, given no protection at all, drains the life force from blood-bag humans.  Non-lethal damage is the force behind an attack.  Most attacks have it, but it hits in a different form than lethal damage.  It generally hurts more (I thought about calling it "pain" damage...), and it saps a character's energy, focus, and balance.

For this to work, we have to assume two properties in our RPG: "health" and "energy", or some version of it.  Lethal damage gets through to health, and non-lethal gets through to fatigue.  A sword swing, for example, may have 5L and 5NL damage, an arrow may have 7L, 3NL, and a hammer may have 1L, 10NL.  As you might expect, once a character is out of energy, that damage starts rolling over to health.

If we have these two types of damage, we also need two types of protection: armor and padding. Armor will reduce the damage from lethal attacks, and padding will reduce the damage from non-lethal attacks. I think this best simulates both the evasion and absorption properties of protection by completely negating the effect of low-damage attacks and splitting the possible effects of attacks with this dual-type system.

Let's look at some extreme examples:

Plate vs. Blade: The high armor of plate protects it against the cut of the blade, but not the swing of the metal.  A hammer would be more effective, but the sword swinger still slaps a bit of wind out of the wearer.

Plate with Padding: "I didn't even feel that."

Bullet vs. Body Vest:  The body armor stops all of the "lethal" damage behind the bullet, but the force of the impact still hurts like a bitch.

Boxing: The attacker's gloves acts as padding, turning a bone-on-bone situation into a pure 'force' attack.  This lets the competitors beat the crap out of each other without fear of getting actually injured (obvious exaggeration, but that is why they wear gloves).

The line of "overly complicated" is blurry, and very much open to individual preference.  To me, that line is crossed whenever a system introduces hit locations or weak points in defenses (for the players - at least).  I much prefer critical hits and misses, to keep things exciting while simulating that "perfect hit".  In this type of system, the attacker might have a choice for critical hits either A) increasing damage total, B) bypassing armor, or C) bypassing padding, or some combination thereof.

The straightforward Lethal -> Armor -> Health and Non-Lethal -> Padding -> Energy damage system I propose here could be what I use in my upcoming game Hostargo.  But I can't help but feel that, while this has solved my gripes about damage and armor in other games, it's going to be too much.  The extra definition of each attack, plus the additional subtraction and rollover of damage means that this would add quite a crunch to whatever system it's implemented in.

What do you think?  Does it make sense? Is it too complex?

Player Options: What's your style of "fun"?

When gamers click, it's not just because they're gamers.  On the contrary, a lot of us can get on each other's nerves, simply because we have opposing opinions on the games we love; even when we agree on the games themselves! So what exactly differentiates one gamer from the next? The people over at Quantic Foundry have put together six "gamer styles" that break down different types of fun we have playing games.

This isn't just another internet quiz. This group is really trying to get some science behind their categories, and so far it's the best one of these types of tests I've found.  No, it's not perfect, and due to their fairly short quiz it's not going to be completely accurate. But at the very least, it's something to seriously think about, not only when you're talking to other gamers, but when attempting to analyze the games we love.  I highly recommend checking out each of the category breakdowns in their quick reference chart.  The full gamer profile has more details on each, so I also encourage you to try that out.

I was labeled as an action-oriented, spontaneous, relaxed, social, immersive gamer.  I couldn't agree more, and with my "style" it's no wonder why I've been so drawn to RPGs: equal parts fun-with-friends and bad-ass-action, with creativity and immersion thrown in to tie it all together.

But Quantic Foundry goes one step further and breaks each of their six categories into two distinct types of fun.  In the interest of RPG game design, I'd like to take a good look at what types of fun a tabletop RPG can offer.  Specifically, I want to explore player options that we can implement to allow any type of gamer to have fun in our game (e.g. through character abilities).  Obviously different games will offer different things, but I'm going to try to be as generic as possible given the games that I've experienced.  Feel free to tell me things that I've missed, any extra examples from other games you have played, or if you disagree with anything I discuss below!

How do RPG mechanics give the players' options to have their style of fun?

Action

Almost every RPG out there has combat as either a main mechanic, or at least described in some detail.  Besides combat, there can be intensity in danger: deadly traps, crumbling bridges, or a fragile political gathering.  If there weren't obstacles to overcome, we wouldn't be playing a game!

Destruction

Not even all combat-oriented games satisfy the destruction gamer.  These people really enjoy "collateral damage": giant mechs stomping on buildings, a fireball that explodes the whole bar into flames, or that single bullet that splatters the alien's guts up and down the wall.  This is something that mostly falls to the GM to describe, but I think it's neat when games include specific options for this style of play: the chaos wizard, the grenadier, the bloody mess perk.  These are mechanics that let destructive players employ chaos, despite what's going on in the rest of the game.

Excitement

Twists in the story, the thrills of the setting, and the dangers that the players find themselves in are all elements of story that 'excite'.  I think this is almost a purely feel/theme based category, meaning it's mostly up to the GM. Some people will really enjoy the adrenaline of a good chase scene, while others prefer the deep exploration into social encounters. Besides equipping the GM with the issues and dangers of the world, are there any specific player options we can include in our game for the player to employ... excitement?

Social 

Social interaction is one of the foundations for <tabletop> role-playing, and even the most crunchy, combat-oriented games still require a group of friends sitting around a table.  That said, there are certainly ways to avoid the social aspect of these games, including playing a solo game.

Competition

This one is incredibly difficult to include in tabletop RPGs.  Specifically in cooperative settings, it's hard to appease these types of gamers without disrupting the fun of others at the table.  IMHO it's unfortunate to have these types of people in your games, but... they are not wrong just because they have fun this way.  It would be brilliant to come up with something that will make competitive players happy, not at the cost of the other players, but I'm not convinced it's even possible.  Instead, I've been trying to limit mechanics that encourage competitive attitude: the "I'm better than you" mentality because of superior min/max character builds, or the "look how cool I am" attention hog.

There are also, of course, fully competitive RPGs, and I've even created one, but this is a completely different style that deserves discussion all on its own.

Community

The problem I have with some games, like Shadowrun, is that everyone is too specialized.  Everyone "has their time to shine", but we're all more or less taking turns being in the spotlight.  We're not in it together (we are - just not actually - "together").  I think this is why combat is such a central part to a lot of RPGs: everyone is participating in the same encounter area.  It doesn't have to be, it's just an easy way to get everyone involved.  No character should want to get injured or killed, after all, and even the weakest member can usually still contribute a good punch or two.

Don't get me wrong; Shadowrun is still working together, and every bit of it oozes the teamwork/community we're talking about, but when it comes down to the actual mechanics of the game, the decker is the only one who actually interacts with the matrix (for example). The final result is that they hack the security system, and the team can proceed; sure! But for a while, they're just playing by themselves, with no engagement from the other players. Shadowrun really shines when the decker is hacking while the mage is banishing while the rigger is driving the getaway car.  I do love Shadowrun... when it works.

Community is huge for me.  I love "support" characters because they have direct game mechanics that pull in other players.  I really want to highlight this in my games, and I'm going to try to include such mechanics, even in the "front line" type characters (e.g. D&D's fighter being able to protect allies with a reaction).

Mastery

This one really made me pause and ponder.  In RPGs, we spend so much time focusing on how characters progress, we sometimes forget to think about how the players are going to progress.  Unfortunately, there aren't many mechanical things we can do here, except to start adding more and more complex options for players to play with.

I think the untapped recognition of mastery is through setting.  In D&D, the rogue player's intuition of where there may be traps helps him protect the party through the dungeon.  In Shadowrun, the leader's tactical prowess matters more to the lives of the Shaowrunners than usually the dice do.  Mastery over the system is one thing.  Mastery over a setting, I think, can bring more to the table.

Challenge

It's not difficult to roll a die.  A very interesting discussion of this can be found over at the story-games forums.  The challenge of RPGs is mostly due to the story, and whatever problems the GM throws at the players.  Are there other ways, mechanically, we can challenge our players?

Strategy

Both with the system and setting, strategy is what a lot of players get out of RPGs.  It's turn-based, it's generally tactical, but really it's the fact that we're presented with a problem, and we're putting our brains together to figure it out.  It's good to have character options to increase the players' ability to employ strategy: just don't go overboard, or too focused.  Remember D&D 4e?  Some people love it - and I'd bet they are strong strategy gamers.

Achievement

In a traditional "adventure", there are clear goals defined.  When the goals are met, the game is over, and a new adventure can begin.  Some people may ignore distractions and head straight for the end.  Achievement style players will likely explore every room, finish every side quest, and eventually push the boundaries of the GM's area of control.  But when we throw them into a purely sandbox style world, some of them just... sit there, not knowing what to do with themselves. Very interesting indeed.

Completion

Despite the main goals of the RPG itself, I think there is a lot we can do with completion gamers.  They have fun through completing quests, so give them mini 'side-quests' within the characters themselves.  For example, Dungeon World's "bond" system is a story-driven way to both mechanically increase in XP, but also consistently check off that little box that says "complete"!   Another option is in combat: mechanics that require triggers and setup I think tickle just the right spot for completionists, because they're working towards goals even when they're working towards goals.

<insert obligatory yo dawg meme here>

I am not a completionist gamer, so maybe I misunderstand.  Is it the final act of being finished that satisfies these types, or is it the quest for questing, as I suggest?

Power

Not every game has character progression (through items/levels/money/abilities/influence/whatever), but I think to keep power gamers happy, it's almost a necessity. Hmmm... but what other options are out there?

I personally like starting at "max level", because I want to feel powerful right off the bat.  To me it's a drag to have to start at the beginning.  But to a power gamer, it's all about the path to power, and the effort required to get there, no?

Immersion

While it's up to the players to read the books, there's a reason that some of the best sellers out there have hundreds of pages dedicated to setting, stories, and pre-made adventures.  Not every gamer cares for the finer details, but those who do will notice it's absence.

Fantasy

I think this is why we're all here.  We want to do cool things that are not feasible in our normal lives.  By nature, RPGs let us take on the role of someone else.  So what can we do to further increase the enjoyment of these players?  How can we draw them even deeper in, mechanically?

Story

Some games hit this right on the money.  The Cortex system, for example, has a specific mechanic for players to alter the story.  FATE also has options for players to drive the story in one way or another.  But even games like D&D, with 5e's backgrounds, have started to introduce more interesting mechanics that support 'story'.  I do wonder, however, how such mechanics would work if they were only part of one character's options (e.g. a 'fate lord' character class).  Would this character have too much control over the game?

Creativity

In theory, RPGs should shine here.  The most obvious example is the GM player, who must create things constantly before and during games.  However, most games do not have specific mechanics for the other players to really express creativity.  Even most crafting systems are constrained enough that they are considered 'fixed' or 'solved' systems.  But how do you open it up to creativity, without letting it get out of hand?

Design

People love customizing their characters.  They want to be unique, even within the 'classes' or 'tropes' that games provide. The more, interesting, and diverse options a game has, the better.  Of course, when we get to the Pathfinder level of content, it can become quickly overwhelming. There may be a hard line for some players, but in general, I think more is better, no?

Discovery

Exploration is one of the major "pillars of roleplaying".  A lot of games describe movement, travel, and perception as game mechanics.  But some of them miss a very important (and easy) discovery mechanic: secrets.  The elf is better at finding secret doors.  The rogue is better at finding traps.  The rigger has scouting drones.  The steampunk cowboy has special glasses that let him see ghosts.  The trick is to first have secrets hidden in the world. Then, give the players the tools to discover them.

The Perfect Game?

Gamers' styles directly affect which games they like, and we have a huge library of games to choose from because of it.  If you haven't found something that works perfectly for you, chances are that one of the thousands of games out there hits a little closer to home.  For me, I'm looking to design my own - and while I clearly have grand delusions of "the perfect game" that makes all gamers happy, that doesn't stop me from trying to get there.