Three Hits from Death

To really appreciate change, humans require the change be at least 20% different. Less than that, and the change doesn't feel impactful. On the flip side, huge swings of 50% or more can often take us aback, feeling too dramatic. Three, one third, and 33% are very happy mediums that are both noticeably important and yet not overly powerful.

This 33% change can be seen in all sorts of successful games. In the Zelda series, each boss requires three hits to defeat. This makes each successful hit feel like tremendous progress, without having the challenge be too easy or beaten by luck. In D&D, old school dungeons would have players die with the drop of a single die roll, no matter how powerful they were or how well the players prepared. In the most recent 5th edition, each character now has three death saves that must all fail for the character to truly die. This keeps the intensity of each roll high without causing the frustration of a single stroke of bad luck.

A good starting point for any RPG design is giving each hero three health points (in whatever form is appropriate to the game). This keeps them three hits from death at any point, producing immediate intensity from potential danger, while maintaining a heroic status of being able to take a few blows. From there, designers can tweak the formula based on their specific mechanics; but from full dungeon grinds to the most treacherous stealth missions, it's important to find the perfect balance of success and failure. Games should maintain the 33% pattern unless they have a very specific reason to deviate.

Three hits from death is close enough to be weary but far enough to be adventurous. From Pokemon to Dark Souls, it's easy to find the 33% pattern in many of your favorite games!

Tales from the Loop: A Dice System Analysis

Twisting and manipulating odds are what RPGs are all about. Sure, there are characters, stories, and memorable events at the table, but where the game really kicks in is through whatever random device the players use to generate the unexpected. A good game system uses interesting chances to produce fun.

Some of us analyze these systems with tools like anydice.com, plotting data and generating graphs so that we can see the science behind our enjoyment. After listening to a lets-play podcast of the Tales from the Loop rpg, my initial impression that the game is hard. In the game, players roll a number of d6s based on their skills, and are looking for at least one six to get a success. From what I've gathered, players have an average roll of about 3 dice, and they are failing more often than not.

By looking at this system's anydice, we can see that as soon as the characters start hitting 5 or more dice they start to tip the odds. Whether the players are just low level right now or if the game is just skewed towards failure on purpose, it's good to know that we can pop the numbers up a bit to get us to a nice average curve. There's a few mechanisms like "luck" re-rolls and "help a friend" boosts that swing the chances in our favor. Not bad.

Now, in order for extra, interesting, or unexpected things to happen, players need to roll two sixes or more! At face value, this seems crazy, and in practice it certainly doesn't seem to come up that often. But once again we can look at the anydice graphs for this, and surprisingly the chances for these extra effects are actually quit fair. They come up more with increased player skill, and even at 4 dice come up more often than the standard D&D 1 or 20. Cool!

I have two nit picks for the system, both of which can be ignored for the type of game it is, but not when we're doing a full analysis. First, there doesn't seem to be any way to succeed with consequences (unless thee group is in an extended test, but that's not often either). Second, there's no way for the GM to "increase the difficulty" of a task. But, for a fast, light system, it still does well to generate enough interesting outcomes.

With me getting all excited about dice systems again, I was inspired to create a new one, mixing a little of Tales from the Loop with The Great Ork Gods. I've dubbed it Skulls & Crossbones! Take a look at the anydice and see if you can guess what madness I have planned :D

Cheers!

Party Building in Hostargo

I've talked about why and how different play styles take form in RPGs. Each game usually picks one and focuses on it. In Hostargo, I will instead present the players with three unique styles to choose from (or blend together in some fashion).

These styles manifest through party building, where the players first decide what type of game they want to play. This dictates why their characters are teamed up, even before they begin character creation. The party can choose to be:

1) Working for a corporation, tackling problems as the GM presents them.
2) Collaborating as a crew, taking on jobs the GM creates, but adding in their own scenes to fill in the details.
3) Living as a gang, pushing their own agenda to change the world. The GM rarely pre-creates content, instead focusing on reacting to the players as the game progresses.

Corporation

Working for a corporation isn't as bad as it might sound. Corps are always on the bleeding edge of technology, and there's little to worry about except whatever threatens the corp's agenda. 

This game type requires heavy investment from the GM into making the interesting mysteries, threats, people, and events that surround the players as they would otherwise be living a normal life in Hostargo.

Using a simple game loop, corporate play has the GM leading the party from one scene to another, pausing only to have them spend XP and to advance their tech through sponsored R&D.

Crew

Collaborating as a crew requires a bit more grit than being a bunch of corporate monkeys. Now the party has to seek out the jobs that earn them a living, advancing in technology only when they have the money and connections to do so. They must also be weary of their reputation, since that's what keeps the clients coming in.

This game style strikes a balance between GM-led stories and player-inspired details. The GM creates jobs that an NPC is willing to pay the PCs for, and then the players decide exactly how to go about doing it.

The game loop for crews includes a period of legwork, where they set up details for their mission by talking to contacts, preparing tech,  scouting locations, and otherwise greasing wheels. "The plan" includes three stages: get in, do the job, and get out. When "the plan" is all ready to rock, there are a series of party rolls that tell us exactly where the plan goes wrong. Then an action sequence is started at that point, and the game plays out normally from there.

After each mission, rewards are dealt out in money and reputation, and the characters choose their own tech advancements through their earnings and contacts.

Gang

Living as a gang can be a rough life, working out of weary tents in the city's dusty outter layers. But if you can survive, start a movement, stick it to the man, or otherwise "earn" yourself a fortune - your family might just be the ones sitting at the top of Hostargo's high-rises.

This game style is perfect players who want to have a major influence on flow of the game. It requires little to no GM prep, but is by no means an easy game to run. The GM must play reactively to their players, coming up with most material for the game on-the-fly.

The game loop is more complex for gangs. It starts with the gang deciding what agenda it wants to push on the world. The players decide how they're going to push that agenda, and start forming a plan. Meanwhile, the GM decides how the world responses to this agenda, whether that be pushback from a corp, rival gangs, or even just the people of Hostargo. The ultimate goal of the gangs is to gain sources of power in whatever form them come. The GM provides the players these opportunities, and the game flows between structured scenes and the gang's agenda phase.

Besides money and reputation, players now have to worry about their heat level from the governing forces, and protecting their sources of power. If they expand their turf (a source of power), they can increase their tech levels, public support, and general defensive power.

While clearly more involved, the gang style gives a party the freedom to run the exact game they want, in the world that they shape with each and every session.

Questions for you!

So what do you think? Do any of these options excite you? What style of game would you or your group pick? Do you think you'd attempt a mix or hybrid of these styles? I'm interested in collecting feedback on this idea, since it might be the make or break point when someone is reading my book!

Different Ways to Play

There is no one RPG that rocks everyone's boat. Some people like stories steeped in intrigue and mystery, where others could care less what it takes to get into a good brawl. The perfect RPG, if one would exist, would allow for any and all of these styles of play.

Focusing on one style, on the other hand, has made a lot of indie RPGs very popular. Apocalypse World, Fiasco, and Blades in the Dark are all great examples of games doing one thing particularly well. Considering the ever-growing population of RPGs being created, it is considered sound advice to pick a style, find your unique niche, and focus in on what makes your game special.

But I've found that while this encourages people to try your game, and often sucks them into a good session or two, it rarely has the staying power of larger, more robust systems like D&D or Genesis. These systems grant the players more opportunity than a single type of experience, and allow for flexible, long-term campaigns.

I plan on having three distinct modes of play described in the Hostargo book. Each will cover a popular way to tackle campaigns, one-shots, and various player styles. It will be a challenge to cover these in a meaningful way, but I hope to lay out enough groundwork for players to find their own unique way to play that is best for their group: they will anyway!

Weekend Game Jam

Letting an idea sit on the back burner can feel like wasted effort. If it sits too long, it can run out of gas and become a dark corner of your mind you may never see again. But if you keep it lit just long enough, you might just get a slow-cooked, pulled-pork style BBQ.

This past couple of weeks I've been pulled back into a fantastic card game, Android: Netrunner. I haven't played seriously in about a year, but I got a glimpse of new cards and got sucked back in. The deck-building is an incredible puzzle to think about on your off-time, and once in the game it's always a brilliant challenge of prediction, planning, and execution.

Unfortunately, I quickly got deep enough that I remembered some of the reasons I pulled out in the first place. There's a few major problems, not really with the core design but with the competitive meta that makes the game less interactive and more of a combo race, which just isn't my style. So being the designer/tinkerer I am, I remember that I had set off to create my own version of netrunner at one point.

Luckily, this idea had been shoved way in the back. The first time I had designed it, it fell apart pretty quickly, and I couldn't get past some of the core issues. But with enough time past, I was able to shake away those pre-conceived ideas and come up with new solutions to old problems. Over the weekend, I was able to completely rip out and replace the problematic core mechanics of the game, redesign all new cards, and get that to the printer for my first play test!

Well, the printer is actually my good friend Gray and we'll hopefully get to test this upcoming Thursday, but regardless. This post is really just to remind designers that it's okay to put ideas away for a while - it'll often turn out better when you revisit it! Cheers!