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Focus, Fury, Ferocity, and Fun
🕑 Added 2023-09-26 02:34:58 +0000 UTCSo we went to Gateway 2023 and learned a lot. So much that we pulled apart our resource mechanics and put it back together … about three times.
Hey folks! It’s me, James, back with a new update about resources and more for you all.
Gateway After Action Report
At the beginning of the month, Matt, Jerry, Lord Durok, O’D, and I attended Gateway 2023 and ran a few playtests of the RPG. We had a lot of fun meeting with folks and running our game with people. This was our first convention showing off the new RPG and we learned A LOT about how to better prepare for such things in the future. But I don’t want to talk about the logistics of convention planning in this post. I want to talk about how those tests are changing the game.
Simplify My Hero
One of the biggest pieces of feedback we got from Gateway was that we needed to simplify our 1st-level player characters. That makes perfect sense! Right now our pregens are more a collection of ideas that we want a specific class to inhabit than an actual 1st-level character. We gave each pregen a taste of everything we think a class should be able to do. For instance, our pregen talent had seven different Attack options and two ways to modify them, a Triggered Action, two Heroic Resources to manage (Clarity and Strain), a special Maneuver, two Ancestral features, and two at-will utility abilities. Check out the PDF of the Gateway pregen attached to this post.
The problem is that if you add all those together with the Actions and Maneuvers anyone can take, it creates decision paralysis for many players. Top it off with learning the rules of a new game, and it’s a little overwhelming. Universally people said, “If I got a few more encounters under my belt, I wouldn’t have this issue.” Which means at level 2 or 3 we can get this complex but not right away. We haven’t mapped out the levels of every class yet, but this means it’s time to start doing that.
We want the talent to have Telekinesis and Telepathy and their Again triggered action and a way to modify their powers eventually, but do they need all that at 1st-level? Absolutely not. We can spread out the goodness over the first few levels of play. At 1st level, a talent might choose telekinesis OR telepathy (or something else). Then down the road, they’ll be able to choose abilities from that list again. You’ll get to customize the talent you want to play and the rules will help keep your first session manageable.
Resourcing Resources
If you read this previous post or the one about Dramatic Finishes, you know that we’re having some friction with resources. Our Gateway games and a round of contract testing brought that to the forefront. Let’s break it down now.
Resource Generation and Ending Combat
Folks at Gateway loved the Dramatic Finish mechanic, but they didn’t like that it seemed necessary to stop folks from artificially extending combat. We didn’t like that either! Objective-based encounters and Dramatic Finishes are still a part of the game, but the way the Director can choose to employ them has changed. These are now tools a Director can use when they need them, not something they HAVE to do all the time.
At Gateway, we were still using our old system for building resources: each player gains resources at the end of a round of combat and whenever they use a unique Triggered Action. The Triggered Action was definitely working—nearly every person new to the game commented that the Triggered Action kept them engaged.
The problem with players wanting to extend combat comes from the generation of resources at the end of the combat round. When we first started designing this game, the idea was that your Signature Attacks, which cost no resources to use, would generate your resources for you. We left that behind in early tests. This was when we didn’t have Triggered Actions or any other ways to generate resources, and we didn’t have a cap on resources. That meant folks just constantly used their Signature Attacks to gain resources and then unload those resources in the final fight on the big bad. It incentivized people to take the same turn over and over. “Sure, I COULD push this assassin off the castle battlements, but I won’t because I want more Focus,” was a thing a tactician player actually said in a playtest that made me go, “Oh no.” So we thought, “If you generate resources at the end of the round instead, then folks will feel free to do whatever they want on their turns.”
Well, now we do have a resource cap and more than one way to get your resources, so we’re leaving the “generate at the end of a round” behind. We’re replacing that rule with the old one that Signature Attacks generating resources instead. That means that to get your resource, you can’t just hide during battle or leave a zombie minion alive and build a shield wall around them. You have to be an active participant who is dealing damage. We tested this rule in two different sessions internally last week, and it’s working great. Players feel free to do what they want on their turns and freely spend resources since they have a cap and multiple ways to generate them. All of those generation methods require the hero to be an active participant in combat, which keeps the battle moving.
Starting Resources
Another resource-related rule we tested at Gateway that worked well was having players start with some of their resources already generated. This meant the players were able to start the day with some resources that they could use in the first battle. In our tests this week we turned it up to starting the day with max resources, and it turned out to be too much. Starting at max resources meant that if players didn’t use their resources on the first turn (because they could only reach a few minions after moving on their first turn or they wanted to move twice to get into a good position), they were disappointed when their resource-generating powers didn’t give them something extra. I thought already being at max would be enough of a perk to overcome that disappointment, but it turns out that wasn’t as well received as starting with just SOME of your resources was. So SOME it is.
Do Resources Last?
As many of you know, after we got feedback from the folks at Gateway, we played around with the idea that all your resources would disappear at the end of an encounter, and that then you would gain a number of resources each encounter equal to your level plus the number of successful encounters you overcame. Then you could spend Recoveries outside of combat to give yourself resources. We gave this a try. It worked okay, but wasn’t great. Players didn’t love it if they had built up a bunch of resources to do something cool and then the battle ended. They also didn’t love using Recoveries out of combat to power up their actions because it felt like they were giving up too much.
In thinking about this, we took a new tactic. We still have Recoveries in the game, but we’re back to keeping your resources from encounter to encounter. Resources are also gained as awards for successful negotiations, overcoming deadly traps, or avoiding combat through stealth, clever-thinking, or diplomacy.
Heroes Press On
You might be thinking, “If I get at least some resources after a Rest and all my Recoveries back, what’s to stop me from Resting before every fight to feel fresh?” Good question! Well every time you successfully overcome a combat encounter, negotiation, or other obstacle, you gain 1 Victory. Victories increase the effectiveness of some of your abilities. For instance, a tactician’s Parry now increases an ally’s Armor Defense by the tactician’s Reason score + their Victories. When the Shadow uses Assassinate, it deals an extra Boon Die of Damage for each Victory they have. If you Rest, your Victories reset to 0. (For new folks, Resting in our game is more than just a good night’s sleep. It’s a solid 12 hours of doing nothing, basically having a lazy day off.)
Threat: Too Much to Track
At Gateway we saw that tracking Threat from round to round of combat was a little too much for the GM to handle. We also wanted to give the heroes a reason beyond Victories to press on. What if one solution could solve both problems? It always feels great as a game designer when you can kill two bugs with one stone. Well, call me Alexander, because I’m feeling great!
Here’s the new rule. Every time the heroes rest, the Director gains 1 Threat. It may not seem like much, but the value of 1 Threat is much greater than the value of 1 Focus or Clarity. First, the Director’s overall Threat enhances some creatures’ abilities. For instance, when a kobold legionary Damages another creature with an Attack, that creature becomes Taunted (a new condition that means the target can’t willingly move away from the Attacker and has 1 Bane on Attacks that don’t include the Attacker). If the Director has 2 or more Threat, the Kobold also knocks the target Prone.
Action-oriented creatures (boss monsters) can spend Threat to recharge their Villain Actions. Normally a villain action can only be used once in an encounter. Getting to use one of these things more than once a battle is pretty dang cool!
Threat drops to 0 at the end of an adventure.
A Lot is Working
The big thing we learned from Gateway is that a lot of the system for combat is working. Overall, people like building and spending resources, they like that combat is dynamic and has a lot of movement, and they feel heroic. Sweet!
We’ve now got to roll this system, along with negotiation, out to our testing team and see what they think!
Discord
There has been a LOT of chatter about our game in Discord over the last two weeks. If you want to join in the fun with our other Patrons, here’s a link!
Ex Animo,
James Introcaso
MCDM Lead Game Designer
Comments
NicoTheMediocre
. 5e has a thing I think is terrible design. Like the ranger. You get a list of items, and pick the one you want at first level. And then at 9th level, you can pick the one you DIDN'T want. I still don't want it. I want the thing I did want to work better, like the warlock. I really like the way pf2 allows you to continue a tree path or start a new one repeatedly. I'm just saying, don't just give us a toybox with a schoolyard draft situation. Diminishing returns
the threat mechanic seems wonderfully devious. and it reminds me of soft/hard moves from PbtA games
Josh Garfinkel
so many recent developments!! :)
Tenstorme .
The way you've described Threat working here sounds really amazing. I can easily visualise how not only do my monsters get more powerful, but how the story changes because of Threat. Yeah, sure, the players could've pushed on into the goblin stronghold with almost the promise of some party death, and saved the day. Instead, they rested to maximize their chances, but now the pallisade walls of the town are under siege by a horde of goblin-drive spiders, and the townsfolk the party were trying to protect in the first place have a much more direct threat to their lives! It might seem like an obvious storybeat without threat, but Threat as a mechanic entices the story telling to function like this! It can basically tell us how far along the road to The Bad End our story is: Well my threat is at 3 because the party was reckless, and now some bad stuff is going to happen to the world. I think with this thinking it also gives a concrete idea into the players hands so they can make the decisions! With greater Threat they know for sure that the encounters will be harder, and the world will be more in danger! And! It means that as a DM your dungeons by default get harder the longer the story goes on for, or you can actively write a scale for your dungeon: '3 extra Kobold Legionaries per Threat above 2' for example. Such clean design! Of all the designs I've read so far, I'm both hopeful that this one makes it, and confident that it is agnostic enough to the game system to get there.
Brandon
I'm probably not tracking all the gameplay changes and mechanics properly, but, an idea- perhaps players should have their resources independent of combat (ie like mana refreshed each rest, or received some other way specific to the class), but during combat they all gain "battle fervor"/"focus"/"bloodlust"/"fury"/"flow" whatever you want to call it, that can also be spent in place of their resource except it causes them "strain"/"stress" to do so or some other accumulative deleterious effect. At the end of combat your fervor dies out. OOC you just have to use and manage your regular resource pool. Idk what strain is/would do, but I imagine you'd take it on the most during boss fights as you give it everything you got, even if you risk not being able to use your limbs if you take on too much or something. Maybe you try to rely on primarily on the regular resource pool for the fights leading up, and then mostly rely on fervor/strain for the big boss fight. I personally like having to manage a resource, and make decisions about whats worth blowing in this fight vs saving for the next. It feels very weird and immersion breaking to me to try be ramping up accumulating resource with minifights so that I can fight the big bad. Feels like it'd lead to some weird farming behavior. In general I have some distaste that every class' resource works the same way (gain by damaging enemies, or gain each end of round) just called by different names because it leaves me with the impression that the classes are all the same except cosmetically. Reframing it so that they all have their own resources in their own ways, but all also gain "fervor" or whatever in combat leaves the powering up mechanic but makes it feel like it isn't just a cosmetic difference. They're all getting the same thing for the same reason, instead of all getting "different" resources coincidentally all in the same way. But again, I could be misunderstanding it all.
Kuroshi
I'm so excited to see how the existence of Threat influences monster design. Flee, Mortals is already some of best monster design around, so we're in good hands on that front.
Aidan Boyle
"Resting increases threat" is one of those things that both sounds great mechanically and also seems to make literal sense as a plain English statement, which tickles my brain in such a lovely way
Schoopdoop McGoop
Oh wow, I am loving all these changes! Resources, both Heroic and Threat, sound like they're much more balanced now. The fact that the overall system is working for both the feel and fun, its just the math and specifics that is getting in the way, sounds to me like your rapid iteration process has been a total success.
