Giving Players Tools, Not Roles

Sitting down at a table with some of your friends, bullshitting around with a story, and making badass characters thrive is only a shallow perspective on what we actually want out of RPGs. That's a problem, because it's hard to pinpoint what makes the games we all remember so memorable.

The base design of any good game should always answer some core questions: what is this game about? What is it trying to accomplish? What is it trying to get the players to think, feel, and experience? For Hostargo (and RPGs like it), heroics is a possible answer. Awesomeness could be another. But really, playing an actual roleplaying "game", and not just participating in a storytelling experience, requires meaningful, interesting choices to be made by the players.

The key here is that the adventure, not the system, is the most important aspect for creating these interesting player decisions. What that means for system design is that a good system should simply exist to aid in the design of interesting adventures. That means it should facilitate the creation of the characters, plots, environments, and situations that the players will find themselves in.

A system that has things like "classes" and character progression should really aim to be a toolbox, not a means to an end. I've been doing this wrong lately while trying to think of what "roles" characters should play in Hostargo. I might even be so bold as to just scrap the idea of "roles" from "roleplaying" all together, in favor of giving players an interesting toolbox, and having any players in any scenario feel like a "good player" for solving the problems at hand with their customized toolset.

Of course, we want a focus on teamwork, and giving every player an equal opportunity to shine. So, we need to tread carefully with our classes. Give players the generalized tools that make their character both unique and useful, but don't shoe-horn them into such specialized roles that they don't have the freedom to overcome obstacles that aren't in their pre-defined "wheelhouse".

The games that fail in this regard are almost obviously too rigid in their designs. Games that use the combat-triforce of tank/heal/dps clearly shoe-horn their characters. That can be valid for a video game, or even a tactics/war tabletop game, but it doesn't lend itself well to merging story into the action. On the flip side, this idea can also result in an overwhelming sense of "sameness", as we saw in 4th edition D&D. It's technically a great game, and there's a lot of enjoyment to be had, but when everyone starts to feel like they can do everything just as well as everyone else, you loose the sense of "team" that really makes TRPGs a shared experience.

The games that implement this idea the best, in my opinion, are Powered-by-the-Apocalypse. Each character playbook gives players unique tweaks and abilities that make them feel special, but when it comes down to the wire, the system is there to resolve players' decisions, not give them a limited set of useful choices as a predefined "role". This is one of the reasons the "rules get triggered" idea is so brilliant. The players make choices, the rules come forward to resolve those choices, rather than the players making choices based on the rules.

Brainstorming on Personas

Interactions with NPCs are some of the most enjoyable and memorable scenes in any role playing game. As many other games have described it, social interaction is one of the three pillars of roleplaying (along with Exploration and Combat). Characters who are connected to the world setting through NPCs are more alive, and therefore more enjoyable to play.

This holds true in some of the world's most famous RPGs. Not only do we like meeting some of our movie heroes in games like Star Wars or Firefly, but we also enjoy meeting new and interesting characters, which is why Bioware games like Baldur's Gate, KOTOR, Dragon Age, and Mass Effect have been such a huge success. From tabletop, we can definitely pick out adventures and campaigns where we met and interacted with incredible characters, such as Meepo from the Sunless Citadel.

There's been a few successful ways of tying characters into the world through NPCs.

Shadowrun takes the approach of specific connections which have a certain loyalty and usefulness ratings. These NPCs are fun because they "belong" to you, but are also not for certain going to be the answer you need at any given time. However, these NPCs are rarely fleshed out or much more than couple numbers on a piece of paper, so GM-Player interaction with them is limited at best.

The Burning Wheel, GURPs, and Mistborn are systems that have options for family members, close friends, or other NPCs built into your backstory. If explored, they can be very rewarding. But, this type of approach forces the GM to shoe-horn in NPCs where they might not otherwise belong. It also hogs the spotlight for certain characters whenever those NPCs are in the scene, meaning the GM has to balance everyone's NPCs.

Instead of these types of what I'd call "hard-coded" connections to the world, I want to take a more "loosely-coupled" approach. One of the neatest things about Bioware's video games is the different dialog options that appear based on your character's past choices, their public image, or even just what they're wearing. Playing off of this, I'd like to explore the possibility of giving players "personas", giving them 2-5 "persona points" at character creation:

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Personas

Personas are your character’s different faces to the world. Donning a persona can give you otherwise unavailable opportunities to interact with NPCs. These interactions can lead to special information or access to goods/services. Each persona has a “fame” level (1 persona point per fame upgrade) and a “defining feature”. This feature could be a gang tattoo, corprate signet ring, some secret gesture or phrase, or an article of clothing; anything obviously recognizable will do.

Level 1 Persona: Can be verified as belonging to the group.

Level 2 Persona: Commonly known as part of the group.

Level 3 Persona: Commonly known by those who have relations with the group.

Level 4 Persona: Commonly known in the region as associated with the group.

Level 5 Persona: Commonly known worldwide as associated with the group.

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I can see players taking on Personas of different corporate, gang, or political organizations. This type of thing would allow a player to play a movie-star or famous author without sacrificing any combat or other general 'usefulness' features. Really, it might just be that the shopkeeper is a big fan of your books, so he shows you his secret stash, or the club you need to infiltrate lets you in right away because of your street cred.

There are plenty of opportunities here, where players can inject their personas into the world at the time they see fit, and the GM can respond and create interactions accordingly, without having to plan ahead of time. What do you think? Any serious issues? Think you'd have fun with it?

Mechanics for Both Sides of the Table

Game Masters do a lot of work. They are the ones doing the prep, adjudicating fairness, and roleplaying a whole world, while players show up to game day with a character sheet and some dice, there to relax and have fun. So, with Hostargo, I want to take as much pressure off of the GM as possible. But recent playtests have shown that is it possible to go too far in that direction.

One of the main mechanics I was excited for in Hostargo was the crash. When players failed an action, this was an extra die roll that they made to determine -by how much- they failed. This was a fantastically arbitrary number for myself running the game, as it gave me some input on how to describe the outcome of failures. However, its arbitrary nature also aggravated the players, because regardless of their initial roll, their character's skills, or the current situation, the crash roll was an independent determinate of their fate.

This simple but prominent mechanic has stuck around in Hostargo for longer than it should have. It had a clear negative effect on the game, but I was dragging my feet in changing it because it's purpose was really to make the GM's life easier. I couldn't really see, from only looking at my side of the table, how much of a problem it really was. It was under the players' skin. Not everyone could even pinpoint what they didn't like about it; after all, it made otherwise "nothing" rolls into "something interesting probably happens". After enough feedback, however, it has become clear that this (and some other mechanics like it), need rework.

There are plenty of ways I can deal with this mechanic. I can address its symptoms, or rip it up from its roots. The more important lesson here though, is that I need to pay closer attention to how each of these mechanics is affecting both sides of the equation. Especially since Hostargo is an asymmetrical game, there's plenty of room to ensure each mechanic not only does its job, but feels good to the people at the table.

Working with Feedback

Playtesting is a lot like playing an RPG. Each time you see your carefully laid out plans in action, there are feelings of pride, excitement, and anxiety. But just like the most carefully constructed strategies - there's always a wrench that comes flying from some portal to a plane of existence you didn't account for.

A strenuous amount of effort is required to level up in the RPG of playtesting. The reward cycle is long - from creation, to execution, to the extra analysis that is required to really dig up and polish the gems you're actually looking for. Along the way, you'll encounter a variety of challenges that you aren't always prepared to handle. This comes in the form of players, and the extremely wide variety of opinions that they hold. In order to deal with this variety, it is paramount to remember: not all feedback should be taken as a call for change, and just as importantly, no feedback should be fully ignored.

I will reiterate what I'm sure a lot of you have heard a million times before: do not take every piece of feedback you receive, good or bad, and treat it as gospel. You must keep your own design goals in mind; for mechanics, for flavor, and for feel. Do not let any single piece of feedback steer you away from a "bad" idea or solidify any idea as "good". Each piece of feedback must be taken:

• In context of the playtest (the adventure, the group dynamics, the general mood).
• In context of the player (what other types of games do they like, and why)
• In context of your design (how does the idea in question apply to your design goals)

Beware - do not let yourself easily dismiss a player's thoughts and feelings. Listen to them, talk it out with them, and gather as much information as you can. Make them feel validated in their opinion in order to receive it in it's raw, pure form. While small, each playtest is the the only sample data you have. These are the players that chose to sit down with you at your table and play this probably broken contraption you've constructed for the sole purpose of giving you feedback. Do not let that go to waste.

Even if you take absolutely no action based on the feedback of a player, at the very least you need to understand where the feedback came from. Find out what the player was thinking and feeling at the time. Find out what else was going on. Find out from the other players what they thought about the same situation; it's important to get different perspectives. All of this allows you to analyze the feedback against the contexts mentioned above. With it, you are better equipped to handle your game in environments where maybe it doesn't fully shine. Better yet, you may just be able to let go and realize what does actually need to change in your game for you to achieve your initial goals.

Learning when and where to act is the key to successfully incorporating feedback into your games. With each playtest comes experience. With each experience point you will grow in power. Do not let that power get out of hand - use it to adapt to the world you live in in order to mold the world you are creating.