Wednesday 29 April 2020

Game Design: Roll to Move

I was watching some game design videos and how they complained about 'roll to move' and I just felt like, hang on, where they dissing it because they don't understand it? or just because everyone says that its bad?

Why and When Roll to Move is the correct way to go.

If we look at the mechanics of a roll to move, for example, we'll use a single d6. if both players tokens are standing at the beginning of a 6 spot track. then yes, roll to move is a poor mechanic. The likelyhood of one player rolling a 5 and the other a 1, means that neither player had any influence over the event and so its not fun. 

Sure, Odds are, the 2nd roll might be the opposite, and they both win. And yes, you can extrapolate out, if most people are playing a somewhat fair game, then over the course of 10 rolls, with a roll average of 3.5, the two players, on average will get to the finish line around the same time.

Here we have red, rolling poorly, and blue rolling well. Blue has a lead of 5 squares
Three turns Later, and Blue is even further ahead by 9 squares, so blue feels like he's winning.

Yes, If the Law of Averages comes in.. 
While Contrived, Blue and Red have 12 turns each, and arrive at the end, in the same round.

In such a game, going first, has higher odds of winning, because he's cross the line first.

Yet, there is no point to this.. regardless if you roll once or a hundred times.. you're not making any choices. So there is no game here, its just an exercise in dice and math, which is why its for kids.. to teach them dice and math, and that's all.

NEXT.. If we look at the squares themselves as opportunities.

In many games, a roll of a dice, gives you a table of opportunities, Lets say 1 to 6. You roll, consult the table, then I roll and consult the table. The table, and its choices are the game.


Roll Results
1Take a Coin
2Take a Shoe
3Take a Bag
4Take a stone
5Give an Item to another player
5Swap an Item with another player
Now this game is just about collecting objects, You take turns for a set number of turns, say 12, and you want to get a complete set of all 4 items, which earns you a point.

But it can be a little boring to just roll a d6, and look at a chart.. if instead the chart was on the table, like a board.. we can see it..

Hence why many roll and move games have the 'chart' as the next 6 steps you can land on:
Now we see that while red landed on a 2, and took a shoe, blue landed on a 6, and would need to swap an item (to ensure this works, we need rules about what happens if you can't give/swap)

In Blues Next roll, 1->6 will still equate directly to the chart, but for Red, the order has been mixed up, where a roll of a 1 will give them a score of 3. because there is no modification to the dice rolled, the odds are still the same. (see more below)

Now, we have 12 rolls, resulting on 12 checks on the chart, and the roll->move structure is actually just a timer for how long the game lasts for.

In essence, provided there is enough rounds.. 12 or more, statistically, most players are going to have a fairly even chance of getting each roll once, and as long as you design in the rule to allow some exchange with a player who didn't roll often enough, or rolled too much of, it balances out.

This actually is pretty much exactly how Catan works. just the 'movement' track is in your head, for how many plausible turns until you hit the end of the game.

Roll modifiers.


IF you could modify the roll made.. then we unlock a whole gamut of possibly interesting choices. Since the roll of a 1 in that second turn, equates to a 3 for red, if red had a +1 token that could be used. Red can choose either a bag or a stone as their 'gain' allowing them more strategic choices.

Conclusion

So, when we look at older games, and think, Oh, Roll and move, how wrong. We fail to realise some of the very complex decisions that are likely to have been made to ensure that the 'track' has equidistant effects and choices for players, to ensure a balanced end game.

Wednesday 8 April 2020

Genres and Settings for Roleplay

Wikipedia lumps them together, and that's confusing as much as misleading, as I'll discuss below

What Genres x Settings Exist in Roleplay, and whats missing?

There are 24 genres listed in Wikipedia, Some we can discount instantly, for roleplay, and some, well, they're not genres, they're settings, I don't know why they're lumped together and I don't remember why I seem to have a very strong memory learning them as very separate structures. Maybe my High School teacher had strong, logical reasons and I agreed with him/her on the subject:

You can go to the Wiki List I'm working from:

Genres:


Action, Adventure, Comedy, Crime, Drama, Horror, Mystery, Paranoia, Political, Romance, and Thriller are all Genres, in the more truer definition. They have a distinct set of feelings, we could even cross reference feelings to come up with these.. Excitement, Discovery (location), Laughter,  Discovery(events of dubious nature), Extrinsic Emotion, Disgust , Discovery (events), Helplessness, Machinations? Love, Fear.

This suggests that while there are definitive lines in the sand, Thriller, Horror and Paranoia all stem from Fear of the Unknown, Violence and Control. And Crime, Mystery and Adventure are all subsets of Discovery.

Sagas seem to be a sub genre that, due to the title, historical nature of the story, are just included in genres, that said, Its possibly both a genre and a setting, as to qualify, it needs to be OP stories of Vikings doing heroic deeds. Personally that's just stylistic representation of Historical Adventure.

BUT, you can mix these.

Yes, Its very easy to mix many of these, because they are emotional, Start with some discovery, that leads to fear, causes problems with sickness and is conquered with laughter. But your audience will come out at the end, unable to pinpoint why it was good, IF it was good, Which is why movies stick to one or two of them, and books two or three.

Also, some of them destroy each other if not done right. Comedy done as laughter will bring down the Horror, Paranoia, Thriller and even Mystery. Yet releasing tension with the right dark humour can control the audience.


Settings


So, our Settings are, Fantasy, Historical, Western, Urban/Modern, Science Fiction, Science Fantasy. Even said, Western is technically just Historical,, else should we break out Classical, Medieval?

So, Non realistic and Realistic events before now, now, and in the future? The problem with this, is the purpose of the setting is to evoke an understanding of the culture, timeline, technology and way of thinking of a given people. Fantasy is commonly Tolkienised, with Elves, Fairies, Dwarves and Orcs. While Magical effects added to Medieval History would be Merlin and King Arthur. Which is why Historical Fiction exists as a Genre, too many styles of Fantasy, means the Setting needs to be split to understand which Audience you're trying to connect to.

Magical Realism, refers to magic existing, yet not changing the very underlying world. Harry Potter may have influenced this break away. The Muggle world is our world, and we are unaware of the magic going on. This can also include the Vampire, Werewolf, Mage, Modern Witches, maybe even Cthulhu style games (though, typically Cthulhu is more Late Victorian era)
 
Its Curious, that while Historical fiction, Magical Realism and Sagas are separated out, Punk, Space Opera, Science fantasy and Apocalyptic settings all come under the "science fiction" Setting, Yet, when you say Science fiction, several people will not think any of those genres, instead jumping to Star Wars Styled settings as the 'default.

So, for the purposes of this post, Our Real settings are , Classic, Medieval, High Fantasy, Pirates, Western,  Modern, Post Modern,  and Science Fiction.

How are these not Genres?  

First, we defined that Genres are constructs of Feelings you get from watching a movie, You can have multiple feelings, but to get a real sense of a specific feeling you don't invoke more than a few.

Settings are different, its a set of background rules, an understanding of what kind of people will be in the world, how they act and react, and most importantly, No Cross Over. You cannot have High Fantasy and Western, You can add off world races to western for spice, or you can add gunslingers to Merlin's Castle, but the underlying core is defined, When you say western to 50 people, you'll get several identical key points. Sure Science Fantasy and Science Fiction are well defined, Star wars vs Star Trek, explainable science vs hand-waved science. Yet at the end of the day, spaceships, laser guns, alien races, in space, all say science fiction.

I have heard the argument, but wait, Sailing ships, Blunderbusses, Island Races on the High Sea, all match the underlying theme, which is why Treasure Island so easily ported over to Treasure Planet. Yet state those 4 elements to 50 people, and I doubt anyone will say Post Modern, or Classic.

What of Philosophical? and Absurdist/Surreal/Whimsical, Satire, Social or Speculative?

Speculative, IS roleplay, we are speculating, if a person existed, in a defined world, what would happen if they chose to make a given action, such as explore a dungeon, with a sword. Not to say, that the game can't involve speculation within itself, like a meta inception. See more on this below.

The Same 'could' be said of Philosophical? Are we exploring possible Utopian or Distopian societies to understand ourselves better?

Satire exists as a form which is referenced by real life events, or in some cases, recognized events from an existing story, bent in a way to be different. Yet it cannot exist as a genre unto itself, So its more a modifier of an existing genre. Also In roleplay, since we use memes, references to existing works, understandings of the world through other mediums, such as movies, books, then all roleplay is a form of Satire.

I can speculate, that playing a Surreal Setting, might be fun for a session, a dream sequence, it'll be hard to pull off, explaining to players that they swim through colours, and experience smells as experience points, yet the underlying problem is that a setting evokes an understanding of the world, to make decisions, but a surreal world would be so without proper understanding, it would destroy the fabric of what makes the roleplay game work, and be fun.

And Social is just the Indian term for Modern.

 So the verdict?

Two Genres and One Setting. This would be the most likely definition for a roleplay system. Not to say elements of others are absent, just that to be easily identified to an Audience.

This gives us Seven genres, (Action, Comedy, Discovery, Drama, Political, Romance, and Thriller) with 8 Settings, (Classic, Medieval, High Fantasy, Pirates, Western,  Modern, Post Modern,  and Science Fiction.) giving us a final 64 possible "categories" defined. With the Two Genre Possible structure, and given that not all Genres can go together, it looks like we can have around 500 odd Slightly broader categories.

Some of them, we know exist, Action Adventure High Fantasy = D&D. (Paranoia based) Thriller 1950s Modern = Cthulhu, Action Comedy Science-Fiction = Alpha XXX Blue.

If we went through all 500 Categories, would we find an obvious choice for all? or would it be hard? Would we start reaching empty gaps? and would those gaps be interesting to make a campaign for?

As a random example (as I roll d8s), Discovery Romance Western, gives me Indiana Jones,

So I chucked up a spreadsheet, I got these:
ComedyThrillerPost Modern
DiscoveryActionPost Modern
DramaRomanceScience Fiction
RomanceComedyPirates
ActionDiscoveryWestern
ThrillerActionHigh Fantasy
PoliticalRomanceHigh Fantasy
  • As discussed, Comedy Thriller is going to be hard to do as a roleplay.. Movies, such as, Evil Dead 2 is a tad more comedic, as is Shaun of the Dead, so its plausible some good players and GMs could pull this off. The Comedy aspect, suggests a light system. 
  • Discovery Action, Post modern, might be game plots based on National Treasure, Maybe FATE or Gumshoe could work as a system for this.
  • Drama Romance Sci Fi makes me think of Battlestar Gallactica.
  • Unsure what Romance Comedy Pirates would be as a game, like roleplaying in Pirates of Penzance. Could be fun for a session, but not long term.
  • Action Discovery Western, a very likely scenario. I've run one of these with my system, yet I know there are western style RPGs that do this already.
  • Thriller Action High Fantasy, well, I'm running one of them right now.. so that's obvious.
  • and lastly, Political Romance High Fantasy. I get the impression that Lamentations of the Flame Princess is like this. but I'm probably very wrong. This does like it would be difficult to find such a game focussed on it. 


So, it does indeed seem like there are holes, and the question is.. Is it interesting to explore the gaps


-----==========-----

Final Notes


From that quick little attempt, Its obvious to me that Action + adventure, and Action + Discovery is going to have a roleplay game out there for each possible genre, and likely each sub-genre.

Thriller is also a genre that will likely have a decent amount of games, even if they are all Cthulhu rip-offs.

Comedy, while it happens in roleplay often, because strange things happen, and there are gonzo styled games that try to evoke comedic moments, I think its harder to 'make' a comedic roleplay game.

What might be the genres we find gaps are going to be Drama, Romance and Political, and maybe that's because they don't lend themselves to roleplay as much as we like, or they're tacked on...poorly, by the rule-set being used.

When two combatants go against each other, several factors, such as weapon, skill, armour, and timing come into a turn by turn structure of combat. The outcome are wounds, dismemberment or death, so its vital to understand this and make it as fair as possible.

Yet many RPG system treat the nuances of politics, diplomacy, romance, persuasion, charm, conflict, lies, deception and perception as a single die roll. An entire campaign, hinged on the single arbitrary roll.

This is one of the reasons, I decided that all aspects of roleplay should, if players want it, have a play by play rules for each of the common aspects of roleplay.

I've blogged a little about this, but I think its time to take it further..