Point Buy vs Dice Rolls

What do you prefer?

I've never been a fan of point buying. having to choose something high, something low, I always end up min-maxing for the missing link in the group. No Cleric? I'll min-max my CHA & WIS high, Need a Fighter? Super STR & CON man to the rescue!

I far prefer to let the dice speak to me, if I roll up decent stats for a Warrior, I'll be a warrior. If my stats suck for a Warrior, even if the group Needs a warrior, I'll still choose something that matches my stats, and we'll have to figure out how to play, sans warrior.

Does anyone else feel like re-rolling, is like aborting that life? that person you were going to become, is thrust back into the void? never to see the light of day?

My System:

The Problem with most systems is, the limited stat block. when you only have 5 or 6 stats, the chances of
rolling the right stats at the right time can be small. Mathmatically, you'd be less likely to roll at least 1 value above 14,  let alone 2. So you want to provide the player with some fall back, some way to ensure you'll get whats needed to play something good

Since each of my eight lifestyles only really needs 2 values to be above average, and I have 16 Characteristics altogether, the chances of rolling above average almost negates the chance of getting a dud character.

Then we added the fail-safe.. The Spare Roll. 

At first the spare was just that. Spare. You used it to swap with your lower scores, to make sure that you had some chance of getting the career you wanted. But what happens if your spare was lower that the rest? Its usually going to be a low score.. so now it looked like a nice little point bonus for skills or for background points.

Swap Two, Minus One.

Even after swapping the spare, many players came to the game from other systems which allowed them to swap any and all stats.. blocking players from doing something results in unhappy players.. but providing any and all requests.. at a price.. results in players asking themselves.. is it worth it?

So, you choose, Do I keep the stats I have, or do I pay 1 point from one of the swaps, AND 1 point from the spare to make that swap.. is a 16 Strength swapped with 10 intelligence worth the 15 intelligence, 10 strength and minus one from Spare.. or 16 INT, 9 STR instead?

Why do spare points matter? because the nice little bonus for skills & backgrounds is what makes character creation more fun.. 

Now the spare becomes something you don't just throw away. Some players actually swap a good stat from the Char list, that doesn't match their lifestyle, to the spare slot to ensure more swaps, and more background points because more background points means more background choices, which could mean a starting level 2 skill vs just a few level 1 skills.

Rules Description:

In Character Creation, Each of the 5 Aspects of your characters background, (Race, Childhood, Apprenticeship, Journeyman and AdventurePath) cost Background Points, these are respectively averaged at 0, 4, 8, 12 and 16. Through the process, you usually earn 20-30 background points, so its typical to need 10 background points from the spare roll to make good choices.

When you retired a character (or they die) you (the player) earn Karma Points, which often get spent to buy background points for your next character. Since rare races can cost up to 50 background points, and each of the other 4 aspects can cost 10x the average for the rarer choices, the most extreme character might cost as much as 500 Background points!

GMs can easily create any of these aspects to match their own world, or raise and lower the 'costs' associated to match their world.. High fantasy might halve the magi background point costs, while low fantasy might double it. If Elves are impossibly rare, a GM might allow you to choose an elf, but at 10x the racial cost, while an all elf campaign, might negate the race cost completely. 

Spells, Spellcrafting and Components

This is more of an overview as Andreas raised some thoughts on the subject and I wanted to expand on my ideas, without cluttering his blog discussion.

For World-Builders

First, sorry for posting this in World-builders, not exactly the right group for this, but then I thought, ok, If we preface some points, its still pertinent. So:

Where I say 'you' the player, switch to 'mages in this world', if I'm talking about specific gaming stats, then think of instead as your notes for your characters in your world, I think its important to understand that in your world, that you created, its just as important that you follow your own rules, your canon, your defined reality, because if you break it, your readers (and for gaming, players) are going to break their sense of disbelief, and ruin the experience.

Introduction

My System is fairly robust, As you might know from reading the blog so far, I have included almost every single system that existed in the 90's and amalgamated, I've added all possible styles & types from books that I've read over the last 30 years, Every player who asks: Do you know X-system, or such and such style from this Author, and I say, ok.. describe it.. and the answer is always. Yes that very possible and doable.. So I think its rather robust because no-one has been able to break it yet.

Possibly after writing this, and you read it, you may find a way to break it, upon which the answer would most likely be: I must not have made it clear in my post.. I'll try and clear that up for you.

Spell Casting

When you cast a spell, Depending on how you learnt it, you wave your arms, and/or use ingrediants and/or speak special words and/or commune with nature, demons, elements or 

such and invoke the powers to make the magic happen. 

In Game terms, I use Magic Points.. but I also have sub points called Exhaustion, Persistence, Torpor, Regeneration Rate and Burnout. All Spells have a value assigned to them, typically a Magic Point cost, but any spell can include E, P, T or even Reg as cost too. On top of that, or instead of it, Points can be reduced in their costs, based on external factors, such as gestures, words, components, lost knowledges or gifted aspects from nature, demons, elements or other.. (more on these points later)

Confused? Lets Look at some examples:

Dweguri, Dark Elf Mage, was taught to cast Cave Lights using glow mushrooms, but, if need be, he can summon the inner strength to cast the spell from his magic alone.
Cave Lights, Lvl 1: Magic Points: 3, Component: Glow Mushrooms: Mp reduction 3mp, increases the glow of all cave mould and surfaces by 2 light levels.

NiWalke, Fire Mage, uses fireball as his go-to spell.. he learnt it in the college of fire, and understands its intricate workings, to the point where he can cast small, medium or large fireballs, and throw them great distances on occasion. NiWalke finds himself drained of much of his magic, but facing off against an Ogre, he spots some sulphur on the ground, remembering back to his college years, he manages to scrape together two handfuls of the powder, just in time to throw a great flame into the beast, enough to aid his companions to escape

Fireball (College of Fire, lvl 4: 10 Magic Points Base + 1 Exhaustion: Component: Sulphur -4mp per handful, Coaldust - 3mp per handful) NiWalke, studied Fireball x3 times, reducing base MP to 8 and -2 exhaustion & -2 Torpor) 

While in both cases, I'm using material components, dependant on the school, the culture, the style of your game, any one of these could be replaced with other 'cost reducers'

Spell Crafting

In All Spells, There are basic structures of logic, Whats the basis of the spell, what does it do, outside the normal physical world, then all the nitty gritty: how far will the spell go, whats it do, who/what does it do it to, how fast is it, how hard is it to dodge/resist/unweave.

Then look at Who is crafting this spell. If its a college of magic who have the resources to study this spell and its types, groups, styles, schools, effects, over and over to improve it, get the components right, or more effective, vs if its a Hermit in the woods, who devoted their life to one single spell in one direction.

This usually results in a specific spell value.

Except from my Excel Character Sheet

The Magic Points are related to how much of the physics of the world are being bent to make it happen. Exhaustion is how much power drain the caster is going to feel, (persistance is how much Exhaustion this particular player/character has in store, before it begins to affect him), Torpor is his limit to any given spells power.. a maximum level if you will, and Regeneration, relates to how many magic points he'll gain back after a full nights rest.

Components in Play

So, while you can and probably should use components in some form, it can be time consuming, both for the character, in terms of actions and initiative to get out the components, or prepare them or make them happen, and in battle, you only ever care about MP & time.. Most spells are 'built' with the concept of casting in 1 combat round.. well.. Battle magic is, 

Spells which are far less likely to be used in the heat of battle, will be cast over minutes or even hours.. the better spells, costing hundreds or even thousands of magic points to cast correctly.. impossible in a single round... But.. in a ritualistic manner, reducing the cost to cast (each Combat round is considered a 'component' to reduce MP costs), using candles, materials, and/or including other magi or natively magical creatures, such as fey, demon, elementals or other.. can reduce this 'cost' to a realistic level.. explaining 90% of fantasy authors usage.

I won't go into it deeply, but, using someone elses magic, freely or against their will, your or their blood, or life essence as a component to spell casting, and sacrifice, either willing or otherwise are other aspects of 'components'

So, At the end of the day.. A player decides during character creation, did he get his/her magic from a school, some cult or group, a hermit or is self taught.. (from left to right, with increasing difficulty to create your character, but more freedom of choice) which obviously affects which spells they start with, how they have access to new spells as play progresses but most importantly.. were they taught to cast spells with components.. or just plain magic.

Disclaimer

Disclaimer

I felt it necessary to include this little caveat at the beginning of many of my posts, as the average reply seems to be completely off topic, sure, there are trolls, but I find the average gamer to be more intellectual, so I get smarter trolls!

1. Blogs

When I began Blogging in the mid 90's they were webpages I had to write out the HTML for. It was considered then (and to much of an extent now) to be a log of events by a developer, written on the web for a chosen audience to view (often the dev team, but sometimes publicly).
Later Blogs became more public, more open, allowing readers to identify with the author, wanting to read things they agreed with.. Later still Trolls started to disagree with what was written, rather than just going somewhere else.
I wrote my early blogs as tech manuals for my player base, but for this Blogger site, I've rewritten them into a kind of diary about what I did back 30 years ago, when gaming was still viewed as a 'nerdy satanistic unhealthy thing'
I hardly ever edit what I write, If I wrote "thought of the day" expect it to be brain vomit of ideas about a topic, often unresearched, which I admit does entice trolls to come puke their own thoughts.. sometimes I learn something new from their 50 hour long posts on why I'm wrong.
I do use click-bait titles, because, quite honestly, I've always done that, even in real life I start topics with a more controversial way of thinking about things, I get more honest answers out of people that way. I'm not doing it to gain readership, because this blog is for me to ensure I get it out of my head and onto (e)paper, and maybe, just maybe one person might benefit and their gaming will get better.

2. Dungeonworld is a World Simulation Roleplay Game.

It concentrates on the ideas that a good story can be told in a way that doesn't need to break the existent universe they are in. Dice are used to measure the degree of randomness in a world, yet they should not make the world random, they should merely indicate to the GM & players, in which direction should the decision be, and how 'strong' it should be.
Dungeonworld core mechanic is an open 2d12, 1's and 12's modify the result for 'extra' boosts. We also use Open Ended d100s for more realism.
Dungeonworld is a far more realistic Roleplay System, health is based on real life health, pain, wounds, diseases, infections, stress etc, Players will have to think, not only about how to take out the creature, but how to survive the trek back to camp. Much Pain has been taken to ensure that the realism is as close as a roleplay game can get, and yet, still be fun to play.
Dungeonworld is a more complex game, because complexity gives players more choices, takes away the heavier thinking, compartmentalises the aspects of play so that you only use what you need to use and get into the game & plot and adventure without worrying if your character is min-maxed to perfection.
Dungeonworld is supported with an Online World, allowing GMs to sit back and relax, think more about the situation they are in, rather than figuring out the complexities of an entire world every session. Players can be more relaxed in the knowledge that their GM isn't going to miss out on something critical, because the Online world will cover that.
Lastly, Dungeonworld is a Live World, if you kill the goblin hoard in the forest of thieves.. other players won't be able to.. their already dead. The actions of players have consequences on the world.

3. Dungeonworld(tm & r & c)

Dungeonworld(one word) became a name in 1992, I trademarked it then and have owned it since then. Australian Trademark & Copyright laws state that I have full ownership of that name, and anyone publishing in Australia would be in breach of those laws.
I have only recently become aware that a UK based games company is publishing under the name Apocalypse World: Dungeon World, I have written to them to express how this violates my trademark, they did not write back, but instead threatened the two other Dungeon World companies that exist in the world(and failed).

Game Jammin'

When I arrived back in Australia, after 10 years abroad, It came as no surprise to me that I had no social life anymore. My friends had moved on.

So I had to start again, find out groups, people, places that did things I (and my wife) liked to do.

As I was studying IT, Games and Entertainment, I of course gravitated towards Game Design, and I saw a poster for Global Game Jam 2014.. what was it? Game Jam?

For my former English Students: to Jam, to put as much as possible into one thing. quickly, messily, but done.

So Over 48 hours, you create a Game, based on the theme.. be it board game, card game, computer game, roleplay game, you make a game. The Theme is revealed on the day, Friday Night typically, and by Sunday night, you present your game to the world.

Doesn't sound too hard right? If you look online at what people have done, I've seen some amazing works, and when you say.. "wow, that was all in 48 hours" you think.. I could do that.. and you can

If you Prepare

So thats what this blog is going to be about.. not a Proper Game Dev write-up.. just a home brew blog on MY personal opinion on how to do a game jam.

Why do I feel qualified to speak on this topic, other than "the internet"

So a few months earlier, I'd been asked to head up the Game Development Club at UniSA, and it turned out, there was no official club.. So I had to create it.. and in the process, I found out that we needed to run events.. and After participating in my first Game Jam, I understood one thing..

I Need Practice!

So I asked the club, how about we run game jams, monthly, and get some practice in..

So we did.. and now, a year on, I've run 12 Game Jams, and Participated in 3.

The first Question you ask yourself is

Why would you do it? 

Well, for starters, Its a sense of accomplishment, you may not make a polished game in the time allocated, but you get something done, if you're close to finished, you might add a few hours, if the theme suits you.

In anything in life, getting started is hard, making something is hard, and actually deciding that you've finished is very hard. Having a concrete end date to work against, forces your hand. and takes the psychological issues away (for many people)

Then there is the feedback. Once you complete a game, and publish it, there are thousands of people, like yourself, Game Jammin, who'll play your game, and if they like it, they'll want more.. that creates motivation to finish it, and publish it..

The Experience itself. In a room of 20 people, all working to a similar goal, having the same troubles as you, creating friendships through hardships, it creates a vibe like none other. I cannot explain it.

So, finally.. my hints and tips

* There are many things you can do before the Jam, such as installing the latest engines/builds/browsers etc before the start date..   I saw 2 teams lose several hours on day one, because they didn't have everything set up, and encountered problems,

* If you're running a team, then get your team organised. If you have already got your team together before the Jam, great, but that's not all Jammers do, some come along on the day and hope to join an existing team. If that's you, then make sure you covered the 1st point.. again, I saw a guy arrive to join up on the day, didn't bring anything, had to go home to get a laptop, then had to install git, chrome and unity.. didn't get started til Saturday afternoon, felt like he hadn't been able to contribute, and quit.

* Get an idea of what you can do within 48 hours. If you are making a board game, would you have time to print a board, carve miniatures, print cards AND design the rules.. probably not, So figure out what can be done and do that.. I had a proffessor sit down with our team and draw up a list of what games could be made, from scratch, within 48 hours. Platformers were out, as were 3D, too much engine creation needed. 

* Pre build what you can. If you're doing a card game, bring 250 blank cards, or cut them out from card-stock, bring note pads, coloured texters, Pens, Pencils. For a board game, bring pieces from other games to use until you design what you'd use, you won't know the theme, so it matters not what you use in testing. If you are making a computer game, its not a bad idea to pre-build an engine, or have one ready to use.. if you want a platformer, make the entire platformer engine weeks before you decide on whats going on IN the platformer. For myself, I had an idea for a map control game, Hex grid, Isometric and I was going fantasy themed, regardless of the Jam Theme, I'd make it work.. so I already had a mini-civ style game engine built, and downloaded hundreds of iso tiles and icons..

* On the Day, Form your ideas fast, throw around hundreds, brainstorm it sideways. If you want to stand out from the crowd, thing of what the obvious answers are, and don't do that. If you're here for the first time, just think of something doable, which matches the theme.  

But don't spend too much time.. every minute you think of something, is a minute of your game creation lost. My rule of thumb is 1 hour for a 48 hour jam. 

* Write down a document of what you have time to add. If you have 20 graphics and your graphics guy has 20 hours left, then you need a minimum of 1 an hour each, Do you have levels? how long will a level take? can you make more than one level? 

Remember, you're not making a complete game, you're making the components and just Jamming them together..

* When you have a big list of all the things you want to add.. cull it, put it to one side as reference and ask yourself the first big question.. What is the core of the game.. minus all the fluff, the pretty pictures, the design of the minis or characters, what is the basic core of the game.. THIS needs to be done first, and it needs to be done within the first 24 hours..

I'm very serious on this point, If your core cannot be completed in the first day.. you will struggle to get a game done by the 2nd. I saw game after game after game, which could not be played, could not be tested, was so horribly broken, 4 hours to go to deadline, and only then do they begin to cull the project, 

My First Game Jam

The Theme was "We don't see things as they are, we see them as we are" which probably sounds nuts.. So for about 20 minutes I wandered around asking about people, who had teams, who needed an someone like me.. newb to the experience, and found 4 others who had no teams either.. 2 artists, 1 GameMaker programmer and myself.. So we got a whiteboard and wrote up the theme, we talked about what it meant.

Firstly, we wrote it on our whiteboard wrong, instead we had  "We don't see them as they are, we see them as we are" so we assumed the whole thing was about camouflage.. which turned out ok.. but this took us 2-3 hours. we designed levels, we designed 12 major characters, we had map structures, game flow, logic puzzles, storylines, so much, and then it was like almost midnight, so I went home to sleep!

Day Two, I got there at 9am, the team has already started. GameMaker can do some nice things quickly, but its hard to collaborate. So our programmer had to do everything, I drew up levels, maps, and pixel painted tiles. We needed around 200 tiles or so.. and I thought I could do that, they only took 5-10 minutes each.

Our Artists drew up characters, simple, easy, 8 frames per animation cycle, 8 directions for each of the characters...for 12 major characters, and some others for minor NPCs.. they seemed to be ok with 1 per 15 minutes

By the end of the day, we had our basic mechanic, when you move, you appear as a soldier, and when you stand still, you appear as an alien.. and we had trees on a grassy field, and a path, and 1 alien and 1 soldier and they fired bullets.. so that worked.. sorta.. again, I left before midnight.. last bus..

Day Two, Sunday, Arrived earlier.. one artist was burnt out, we only had the graphics for 1 alien, 1 soldier half of a map, and some broken machanics.. so we had a breakfast meeting about how to scale the game down to just 5 maps, with 3 characters, no NPCs and only 3 terrain types, field, forest and village... 

with 4 hours or so to go, we scrapped this, and went for 2 characters, 3 maps, scrapped the village and got some splash screens, and Menus together instead.. Oh and sounds.. always forgot sounds..

How insane... 

As you can see, I learnt a lot since then, You can pretty much see where we went wrong, but how better to learn than by doing.

Hopefully, this little blog helps you to make some better choices in your Jam future, so you'll get a game done in time!

Play it Cool.

 

Good Game Design in 2014

This is more of a set of notes, than a post, at some point in the future I'll come back to this and re-write it after contributions from readers in the comments section.

Meta Game is very important in modern game design, the game above the game, upgrades between levels. One aspect I like, is the idea of your success % relating directly to your upgrades. some games use the 3 stars as upgrade currency, you can probably pass the first 2-5 levels with 1 star, but to get 3 stars needs skill. The upgrades cost stars, so the better you do in each level, the better you can do.

Meta game spoiling the game. Like Pay to Win, I'm not keen on games using the meta game as a requirement to win the game. There is a fine line here.. and I will need to rethink this though on the difference between meta game, and game mechanics.. but in essence, I belong to the school to thought that the game should be fun & playable, & winable without the meta game.. but as though its on hardest difficulty. only the best of the best can do so. the meta makes the game easier so its more casual.. but when the game is impossible unless you buy $1.99 worth of purple crystal, or you 'churn' level 14 over and over to earn purple crystal.. this is just bad game design.

And Yet, this seems to be the prevalent style of game design right now.. churn your players into quitters or payers (and the rarer 'must win without giving you one red cent' gamer - like me)

Game Dev: Upgrade Clicker Madness

Ahh what sad times we live in, where a game consisting of only the most elementary system, Clicking your mouse, and upgrading the abilities of that click, has become a genre unto itself.

I take in point 3 games: Must-a-mine a more recent edition to these style of games, and two quite popular versions in online game communities: Clicker Heroes and Adventure Capitalist

Must-a-mine is a bit of an interesting case, in that its broken. I'll get to that later, but lets first look at Clicker Heroes to get a feel for some underlying mechanics.

In CH, You click on the creature to damage it, based on your main Hero's damage. that's it. no retaliation, no HP, nothing else, just click to damage. when its dead, get cash, use cash to directly upgrade your hero.

Once 10 creatures are dead in the region, click the next region over, harder creatures, with more HP and more $, after 5 rounds, you are presented with a boss creature which has incredibly high hit points, you must defeat him in 30 seconds, or he heals back to full, and you cannot progress further until he/it is defeated.

At first I felt like I was playing the core basics of a Dungeon Crawl, kill monster, get reward, buy upgrade.

the 1st Boss Monster was easy, the second, nigh on impossible, I could not get enough cash to get enough upgrades to click fast enough to kill his 10,000HP in 30 seconds.. a quick calculation revealed I would have to kill 200 odd creatures in a previous level to gain enough gold to gain enough upgrades to beat the boss.. OR I'd have to upgrade the hero Helper..

The Helper (which comes along in many forms in other games) clicks for you. So instead of having to click 300 times myself, I could click 200, and my helper would click the rest.

Many Helpers don't actually click, they merely do a damage per second (or minutes, or hours.. more on that)

So, Helper in tow, I now defeat the 2nd Boss.. Levels are a grind, but my helper clears enough of them, and with enough upgrades for him/her, I can actually stop clicking....

I stop.. clicking... which is the whole point of the game..

So they've dumbed down the very mechanic that the game is based around.. your finger is too sore to play on, so instead of proving your endurance, your ability to click faster, or more than the average joe, no, we introduced the element of not needing to even play that part of the game.. it was there just to get you interested..

Is that what is happening in games? we're taking away the difficulty until it doesn't exist? why not just go watch a movie!!!

Adventure Capitalist makes a point of this, sure you begin clicking, with the lemonade stand, 2-3 clicks to upgrade, but its not clicks for the sake of clicking, the clicking means something, like any game, click the menu, click the button to activate, click on the monster, click the healing potion.. no AC is a different game again.

in AC, you don't click for the sake of clicking.. you click only to get the first few upgrades in place, once you have two or three managers (Helpers?) to do the clicking for you, you just make decisions of what to upgrade.

The Upgrades increase your income, each choice gives you more income, be it a new business venture, Investing into that venture to improve your takings, buying upgrades to improve profits or speed of said profits.

Anyone with any nonce, maths or just plain intuition knows delayed gratification is usually more profitable. and this game teaches this.. sure you could spend 2 billion for the 300th Upgrade to lemon stand, but that brings a meagre $7.50 increase to the stand income (seriously? 2 billion for a $7 increase?) or the same can be spent on your sports team for a 20 million dollar increase... but there are smaller aspects too.. get 25 upgrades to the lemon stand and double all profits! yet again, do the math, and you'll find that its always cheaper to buy the most expensive item

If you can stand waiting... 

That's the core to the game, can you wait? Its a test of your ability to wait for the best prize, vs go for the (seemingly)cheaper boost, because you know, it might just help you get to the bigger prize faster.

Sure, you can be like me, and write up a massive spreadsheet to determine if clicking the 81 billion upgrade to Oil Rig is going to be worth the same 81 billion spent on Doughnut shops.. its not, but if you cross reference the x3 multiplier for hitting 100 upgrades + the fact that you'll get 3515 payouts of 15 mil, before you get that one 500 bil payout.. then sure, those come once every 10 upgrades...

See what I mean? Who else other than a fellow sheldonite is going to go to that degree of trouble.

So, we come back to Must-a-mine.. who attempted to monetize the game.

There is a strange kind of problem with these multi-billion clickers.. When would you spend money? At the start, you don't realise how big the game gets, trillions, quadrillions, septillions, .. luckily the Americanized version, 7 sets of 000 + a 000 thrown in for good measure, and not the classic 1,000^7 as I was trained. If you spend $10 at the start of the game, you'd be likely to buy $1,000,000 with 10 of your diamonds.. worth $0.75, and think you were going to burn this game... to discover after 3 hours, that you'd be earning $1mil every 10 seconds.. or worse, after 24 hours, getting a billion every 10 seconds..

Its all just Big numbers.. and that's probably why people want to see it.. that little inner billionaire wanting to see the big cheques. 

So MaM added equipment, unlockable chests, and more upgrades.. I won't bore you with the maths, but you should either spend $40 at the start of the game, buy all the platinum chests, chew through 300 hours of play in roughly 10 minutes and ignore the whole equipment system or play the 300 hours, and realise that you'll never get enough of anything to resemble any kind of worthwhile bonus to offset the rising costs of all the other mechaMoustaches in the game and know that you just wasted 300 hours for no real reason.

But then again, thats what games do right? waste excess time? But this is worse, it makes you WAIT to waste that time.. you need to get another game, to play, while waiting for the ability to play this one!

Its a test of your sadomasochistic mental state to see how far you'll go before you give up.. (just one more click, maybe it'll unlock the next big thing and I'll chew through the level faster and get to the end?)

Some quick googling reveals, there is no end... all these games have a meta game.. when you're tired of waiting.. or when you get close to the end, or when you get all the upgrades, self reset and earn special bonus angels or tritanium or treasure chests, and play again.. with a 5% speed booster!

Seriously?

Game Dev: Upgrade Games

Improvement or Upgrade Games involve the player starting on a stage, a problem, a way to solve the problem, which cannot be done first attempt, but each attempt give you some kind of currency (information, cash, whathaveyou) which allows you to improve the stage/solution to be better at each attempt. Usually within 5-15 minutes, you've played it enough rounds to win. Your Meta Goal is to play again and beat your previous score. 

The Interesting thing about such games, is that the Upgrade is a component of bigger games, but has been simplified to just that one aspect, upgrading. Usually though, upgrade games involve an actual game task, as simple as it can be, from just clicking (Must-a-mine) steering (Hedgehog Launcher) Timing (Berzerk Ball) or 

How to Monetize?

Upgrade games are time wasters, which typically means a player is very unlikely to waste money on it as well. That said...

Upfront cost would require the user really wanting to play the game (word of mouth or competitive challenge) or the game having some further reaching goals.

Theoretically, a pay to win formula might be to have some far reaching trophy goal, one that you could achieve by playing a million times, or by paying $5 worth of upgrades, which unlocks the trophy.. you get to see the content which you paid for with your $5.. or someone without the means, with their million plays (maybe they should have different endings)

Microtransactions, Potentially the game could be far more fun if you use special upgrades that don't change the game play, but add a different style for the paid gamer.. again, if they know they are paying for the different graphic content, they might be more likely to buy into it.

This line to be edited, when I post the "Pay to..." topic in the future.

Game World Religions & the Biggest Problem

Sketching on the bus to Uni, I wrote about a religion which believes in a heaven/hell concept. They world as they knew it was a coin, but since no-one (they knew of) had ever traveled to the other side and returned, it was reasoned that the other side was hell.

The Religion is known as the Coynerites. They follow the concept that in the beginning, the world was flipped like a coin, as a bet between good and evil. If the coin lands (in the distance future, or maybe tomorrow) on any given side, its because its the heavier side. that side will be crushed, all who reside will be destroyed, and good & evil will know their place in this world, i.e. part of or banished.

So, in order to be the winning side, its imperative that the good side must make as many people bad, without being bad themselves, so that the bad side becomes heavier, and thus squashed, so the good side will be the inheritor of the world.

Mixed up logic.. but logical in its process (as any religion would be) and theoretically its right.. except that as creator of the world, I know that its not.. but that never stopped any religion before, from believing that its right.

And I begun to think.. hang on.. I don't ever remember reading about a gaming religion that had it wrong.. most of them, believe in a god, and that god exists, and they know it, because occasionally he does things and can be seen & heard. Clerics ask for powers, and receive them, so they know their god exists (albeit, the reasoning for the god might not match what the followers believe)

Does a religion, based on faith alone, belong in gaming? can it exist?

I've done a little research into different worlds, different gods, for the most part, its always true (cept some planescape) each religion believes in a god/power that exists, as such there is no real faith, its all choice. 

Ill Gotten Gains

Something that my players may or may not be aware of, but most likely should be at some point, is the idea that you are watched..

maybe not always,

maybe not specifically,

but if you notice your neighbours, a new car, new paint on the house, doing up the garden, maybe some expensive looking things, coming and going.. fridges, washing machines.. you cast your mind back to before it all happened, and they were having some big party, late into the night..

could it not be likely, they just won the lottery?

So, in a medi-eval town, where no television or radio exists, and the most common entertainment would be gossip. Everyone is watching, and talking and comparing notes..

Everyone.

They watch, they talk, they whisper.. and word gets around.. who lives where, what do you think they do, what have you seen them doing, do they display means of wealth or are they poor as dirt, do they have manners, or are they drunkards (or both)


So, if you lived in a medieval city, and you acquired a few thousand gold, even without spending.. the sheer joy and fear of having that much, would surely be noticed...

The Citadel of the Shadowlords Part 1

TL;DR: An introduction to the situation, backstory, catch up and where we are when we began.

The Citadel of the Shadowlords

Introduction

In 1990, I ran a campaign with maps, I really go into my maps, to make sure players could visit places more than once, I wrote a bunch of index cards, Major Cities, Smaller cities, Villages and Hamlets with details such as population, major industries, major locations of interest. On the green cards were those locations of interest, and the pink cards were meant to be NPCs of interest..

I'm not 100% sure why I never really filled them all out, maybe I wasn't such a studious GM as I am now, maybe the work and effort seemed too difficult for a 15yr old.. Anyway I managed to write out around 30-40 cards.

After opening a gaming club, writing a new game system, traveling the world and returning, I started a new gaming group at uni in my spare time, but instead of going to a lot of effort to start a new scenario as I did in Moscow, I wanted to test some new rules, but didn't want to mess up the new world with rules testing, so when I unpacked all my roleplay things in '12, I found this box of cards.. and thought.. hey.. thats interesting!

Curiously, I had added a land called RUASHA and a city called MOSKVAAR as parts of the lands, years before I had a thought to go there, but I guess I did watch a lot of bond movies in my youth.

Before I left Australia to travel, I wanted to bring my roleplay plots to a nice close, So I built an adventure about a secret cult that wished to destroy the world, and claim all the souls for their own purposes. One of the players was a spy for the cult, and through him, the evil shadowlords managed to do what they set out to do. All characters, the whole world, all destroyed..

Meta-plot I had enough of trying to write a roleplay game, without any real world experience, I wanted to make a decent system, a proper world, but this was before prominent internet in our lives, so I was going to do things old school. Travel.

Now, 2013, I'm testing the 4th edition of my system, I have all new players and I have this world to use.. but when I'm almost ready to publish, its time to port the characters over to the 'real world' and follow the original plot of the old world.. its destruction..

Yet the players have decided to thwart the GM, and save the world...

Backstory

In one group,There are six Uni students, they know my world is dark, dangerous and difficult. They also know that I have had seven GMs and over 100 players play in this world, live, and sometimes when they bump into other characters, such as heroes, they can't quite be sure they're not dealing with other PCs from another game.

So the players are always trying to mess with the world, so their 'marks' will be seen by other players in other games.. If that means making new forms of magic, or screwing with local guilds to never accept adventurers again.. so be it..

Knowing full well, that their current campaign is set in a 'past plot campaign' and that at some point (31 Dec 2015) the world is going to be destroyed, they decided it would be fun to mess with this too.. by stopping it.

So, There are five groups, Three run by myself, Two by two other GMs all in the same area, all players with the general knowledge (from multiple ways of in story exposition) that someone, somewhere is trying to destroy the world, and the flow of magic seems to centre on a site within the forests of Eastern Alexer.