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Decisions and Revisions Which a Minute Will Reverse
🕑 Added 2023-03-13 18:33:35 +0000 UTCAnother playtest and a whole new set of problems and ideas! But first, a story…
I was working on a video game years ago and the artist I was sitting next to suggested we should implement a very complicated new feature.
We’d been working on this game for years at this point and I pointed out, we had tried that, we had half the team working on that exact idea for six months and they couldn’t make it work.
“Well, I can imagine it working,” he said, and then went on to suggest that maybe they hadn’t been given enough time.
Now, this was someone who was good at his job, smart, professional, he’d shipped games before, this wasn’t his first rodeo. But he wasn’t a designer.
He’d worked on lots of games, but he’d never been responsible for the design, and so had no real idea how design works. If I’d had the presence of mind, I would have said “well, I can imagine a Ford Taurus in my mind, so I should be able to draw one right?”
Any feature you want to implement starts with some degree of inspiration. That inspiration might come from some other game you’ve played that had some cool feature, or it might just come out of nowhere and you don’t even know “did I just think of this, or was this in something I’ve played before?”
And that initial inspiration, which happens in your imagination, is what propels you forward. “I can imagine it working.” Well, good! Because if you can’t, there’s not really any point in moving on to the next step! 😀
But there IS a next step and regardless of whether you’re a designer in video games or tabletop (or any of the dozens of genres of games contained within each) the next step is usually some version of Writing It Down.
You write it down for a couple of reasons. First, and most directly, you’re probably not working alone. Other people on the team need to understand how your new feature works if they’re going to help implement it. Writing it down, in this case, is called making a Design Doc and every designer on every video game does this, even though they know no one will ever read it and they’ll just walk up to your desk and ask you how it works. You may get annoyed that they didn’t read the design doc, but that’s ok, your idea has changed quite a lot since you wrote it down, so the doc is out of date anyway. 😀
If you are working alone, you’re probably in tabletop but you still expect other people will at some point try to play the game and in this case writing it down is called making a Rulebook.
But there’s another reason you write it down and that is; we do not tend to imagine new ideas in the most rigorous fashion. The inspiration tends to focus on a specific implementation of an idea, or really, a moment. You imagine this moment in the game where something cool happens because of this new feature.
But that moment doesn’t exist in a vacuum, whatever feature you’re imagining is probably dependent on other features, and there are probably lots of ways your new feature COULD be used that you haven’t thought of.
The act of writing it down is the act of taking this vaguely formed but exciting idea, and supporting it with a rigorous explanation that imagines all the inputs and outputs to the new feature. Does this new feature require some resource? What is it? How do you get it? While Player One is using this cool new feature, what are the other players doing?
Example: Hacking Data Terminals
If you were a designer in an Open World Video Game set in some kind of Sci-Fi world, you might invent the idea that the world has Data Terminals the player can run up to and hack. And you’ve got this really cool idea for a Data Terminal Hacking mechanic, maybe a whole little minigame and you can imagine it and what you’re imagining excites you. It’s that excitement that motivates you to push forward with it.
This is the first of three hurdles. Because it’s possible that even at this early stage you realize “nah this isn’t gonna work.” This becomes more likely the more games you work on. You develop muscles that are good for imagining all the different ways your cool new idea might interact with the rest of the game and as you’re turning it around in your mind you remember some other feature the game relies on that would break your cool new Data Terminal Hacking mechanic.
It’s nice that our example is an Open World Game because there’s usually about a million ways to break any new feature in games where the players can go anywhere and do anything. Especially if it’s multiplayer!
Now this is not a perfectly cut and dry thing. You might imagine ways in which it could be unbalanced and broken, but you’re not sure so you figure “why not try it and see?” This is a reasonable idea.
But let’s imagine you get past hurdle one; you’ve imagined your new Data Terminal Hacking Mechanic and it’s super cool and you think it’ll work. So you start writing it down. This is a MUCH more rigorous process than just imagining it. You need to imagine all the ways in which this data terminal could be used, what it can do. How other players in the world might interact with it. Is it free? What happens if you need to hack it to unlock something, but you fail the minigame. Are there other ways to make progress? Or did you just lock the player out of something they need to progress in the game?
This is the second hurdle. Many new ideas die on the vine here because you’re a professional game designer and this is basically your job. You’re sitting down and writing a design document and just the process of using language to express the idea you had in your imagination gives the idea structure. Rigor.
And as you explain how this will work, you might run into a problem. “Hang on. What if someone starts shooting me while I’m using this data terminal? Can I disengage from the terminal in the middle of the minigame? Should that happen automatically? What if the player is almost done and is willing to take the damage in order to finish the minigame? Should you be able to DECIDE to disengage from the Data Terminal? Well, that would be nice because then the player can decide to keep hacking and take damage, or break off and return fire.
But that means we need a Disengage From The Data Terminal UI. We don’t have that right now, obviously, and I dunno if the UI team has time for this (spoiler, they don’t).
Will it save my progress? SHOULD it save my progress? What about my character’s animation? My new idea is going to require new Using A Data Terminal animations, but we’re ALSO going to need I Just Got Shot While Using A Data Terminal animation. So you go talk to the Lead Animator.
The Lead Animator, who you just interrupted from her work, patiently explains that the technology to do what you’re suggesting doesn’t exist in the engine, and that’s why everyone agreed at the beginning of the project to put any interactive feature like that inside “safe rooms” where the designers can be certain there’s no one else in there to interact with you. “Put your Data Terminal in a Safe Room and it’ll work.”
Well that’s disappointing, the whole point of your idea was that you could put these data terminals in the world, in interesting or dangerous places. You already knew you could do all this in a safe room, that’s not very exciting.
But let’s imagine none of that happens, the engine, animations, UI will all support this and in a few hours you have a completed design doc. Hurrah!
Now you move on to the third hurdle; implementation. Someone actually has to make it work, build it, or even just set up a playtest and try it. Tons of ideas die at this stage! Because this is where you discover all the shit you never thought of! Yeah and it’s a LOT. If you’ve worked on a few games, you may be disappointed that it doesn’t work, but you probably won’t be surprised. You’re a pro, you’ve already thought of ways it could fail, but none of the scenarios you imagined were guaranteed to play out at the table, or once you have the controller in your hand.
But even at this late stage, there is a fourth hurdle. A sort of hidden hurdle.
Is It Fun?
Because it turns out a lot of ideas that might get you excited to try, once you actually implement it…it’s just tedious. It’s like…yeah, it works, but does anyone enjoy doing it. Or did you just invent a new way to annoy your players?
This is one of the hardest things to model back in the beginning when this was just a cool idea you had. It’s what my artist friend had never done, and so did not know. From his point of view, if it worked in his head it would work in the game!
But actually implementing an idea means changing it, often a lot, from what you imagined so it plays nice with all the other features in the game. Your idea can leap effortlessly over all the previous hurdles and then fall flat on its face right here at the finish line.
I can’t tell you how many players I’ve seen online who behave as though any idea they have MUST be possible! They can imagine it working! Surely game engines come with a dropdown menu with a “make it fun” button? Right??
Nope! It doesn’t matter how clever or elegant your idea is, if it’s not fun the players won’t use it and it will get cut.
Every game I’ve worked on had ideas that made it all the way to implementation, and then got cut. Just normal game development. In fact, one of the reasons we use Rapid Prototyping (i.e. hack it in quick & dirty just to test how it feels) is because it helps us discover whether a new feature is fun and usable before we do all the work to make it real.
At this point you might be thinking “well that’s video games, surely TTRPGs are different!” Ah, not really!! At least, not in my experience. I’ve worked on card games, wargames, RPGs, three AAA video games, a couple of phone games, VR games. The process is the same. Of course, this is only my experience. Other designers might tell a different story.
Debuffs and Saving Throws
All this leads us to what we learned from our last playtest. We learned a lot! This is probably the last test for a while as we got deadlines looming for both Flee, Mortals! and ARCADIA. But once those deadlines are passed, it’s all hands on deck for this project and things are really going to start moving.
For this test, we deliberately used the same players, playing the same characters, with James directing. The goal here is to reduce the number of things that are changing from session to session as much as possible, so we’re not ALSO trying to learn new classes or teach the game to new players. This is a critical part of testing.
We picked up where we left off with the Kobold Adventure so that was fun. There was negotiation and some cool lore James made up and eventually our party was on the way to stop a kobold necromancer from resurrecting a dead Storm Giant and using her giant thrall to wreak havoc on the humans who killed her people.
But along the way we are ambushed by an Ankheg! It was a cool battle, but I want to skip to two things that happened which kinda caused us to pull our entire dice system apart and put it back together again. 😀
Debuffs
If you’ve been following development you know the game does not use attack rolls for your basic stuff, aka your Signature Actions. They just work, and you’re rolling to see how well they work. There are other rolls that have to be resisted or opposed, but for this issue we’re focusing just on your Signature Attacks which do some damage (assuming your opponent’s defense doesn’t absorb it all thereby triggering a counter-attack) and often apply a debuff. 4E vets will recognize this design.
Well, currently you can use your action to Recover (instead of attacking) and automatically get rid of one debuff.
You might be able to see the problem. Lars’ Conduit debuffed the Ankheg, and the Ankheg used its action to Recover. Sure, it had to spend a resource, but from Lars’ point of view, it was very anticlimactic. No roll to hit to apply the debuff, no roll required to get rid of it. Hmm!
In the session, all that happened was Lars said “huh,” but we all noted how weird and unsatisfying this felt. 4E’s system for this is, in my opinion, very elegant. Attacks can apply a debuff, but you have to hit. So it’s not automatic.
Then the debuff lasts all of the target’s next turn at which point they have a chance to save. The save is a straight, unmodified d20 roll and you’re trying to get a 10 or higher. It’s almost like flipping a coin.
This is great because A: the debuff came off an attack roll, so the target feels like you had to succeed at something in order to apply the debuff, B: it automatically lasts all of the target’s next turn so the person who applied the debuff has the satisfaction of seeing their debuff affect the battle somehow and then C: getting rid of the debuff is pretty easy and predictable. The designers know any given debuff will last, on average 1.5 rounds. It MIGHT last longer, but that’s an outlier. And very dramatic!
Well, that’s not how debuffs work in this game. But we’d like a solution that is as elegant. So after the playtest we started thinking about how debuffs should work and this led to some really interesting ideas, but as I was thinking about it I started to detect a larger problem with our dice system.
As of last Friday, the system used three basic dice.
The proficiency die. Very low standard deviation (aka ‘high reliability’), only Successes and The Crit. Rolled if you are proficient with whatever you’re doing.
Attribute dice: Medium reliability. Has successes and surges. Whenever you do something, you roll a number of these equal to your attribute rating. “Reason 2” means anytime you do something using reason, you roll 2 attribute dice.
Impact Dice. Low reliability, only has successes. The only die with a Blank result and also the die with the highest number of successes on one facing. Used to “power up” certain abilities. Also I think we were using it for Advantage?
Currently, we pick the two stats important to your character (say Might and Reason for the Tactician) and grant you proficiency any time you use those stats. That’s not how the real game will work, the real game will probably have weapon proficiencies and skills, but for now it gets the job done.
But thinking about how debuffs worked I realized something alarming.
IF you are making a save (or whatever) with something you’re proficient in, you’re adding the Prof. Die AND your two attribute dice! That’s three dice.
If you’re making a save with any other attribute? One die.
In other words, our system was pretty binary. Pass/Fail. You’re either making a check with three dice and generating a lot of successes, or only one die and very few successes.
This triggered, basically, an overhaul of our entire dice system. At one point I said “I’m not sure your stats is where Randomness should live.” I suggested making proficiency and attributes flat bonuses. But James made the point that, right now, the proficiency die is where the Crit lives and did we want to put all symbols on one die? Well, we thought about that! But we like breaking out the Crit and surges.
So James pitched something else; he pitched keeping the Proficiency die in its current form, making attributes flat bonuses like weapons, and instead of rolling a number of “attribute dice” equal to your attribute score, we have an “action die.” It has successes and surges on it, you roll it any time you’re doing something that uses your action (as opposed to your maneuver) and it functions basically like a damage die except not as swingy as a normal numbered die.
Your signature actions probably use one action die for determining damage, the abilities you use that take a few of your Class Resource (like ferocity for the Beastheart) do two action dice of damage use two action dice, and abilities that take a LOT of your Class Resource would do three action dice of damage. (“Why not just call it the Damage Die?” Because you also use this die for everything else, from grappling to mind controlling. Any action.)
Well that seems pretty straightforward. Let’s try it! But this didn’t exactly solve our debuff problem! How does one “save” against a debuff in this system?
Clearing Debuffs
I had this idea, which seemed cool but the more I think about it, the more I think I’m overthinking it. But we’re gonna try it.
What if debuffs had a strength? Or a rating? Like if someone cast slow on you and it said “slow (6).” Slow is an effect, it’s always the same (whatever it is!) like maybe your movement is reduced to 2.
Then, at the beginning of your turn, you make a Resistance Roll based on whatever stat slow targeted. Maybe Might? See if you can ‘break’ out of it? Or maybe resisting magical debuffs is always Insight (formerly Intuition)?
In any event, you make a resistance roll, generate some successes, and that reduces the strength of the debuff. If you roll 6 successes or more, you reduce the debuff to 0 and you clear it. If you roll, say, 4 successes, you reduce the debuff to 2 (6-4=2) and you have to live with the debuff another round at which point you’ll get another chance to clear it.
“6” would be a number we mathed out, but it would probably be standardized. So at 1st level, most if not all debuffs were strength 6. If you get a stronger debuff, it’s probably from a higher-level enemy.
This idea appealed to me for a couple of reasons. It’s relatively straightforward to understand, it means we can have debuffs with different ‘strength’ which gives us more ways to make characters and abilities different, especially at different levels.
But also it gives you and other characters more interesting opportunities to interact with debuffs. A Censor might have an aura where everyone around them automatically clears some of their debuffs equal to their Insight. Leader-characters like the Tactician might be able to use a maneuver to point at someone, shout at them, and let them clear some of their debuffs. “Shake it off!!”
This would mean tracking more stuff, but I’m not allergic to that. “More” is not automatically “too much,” it’s just something to try and actually I tend to think of “how many things am I tracking?” is a UI problem. Something a good character sheet could solve.
But there are other problems I can see. These problems aren’t automatically dealbreakers, but still concerning. Like: does this mean our game is now about Debuffs? That is certainly not our goal.
I like making the roll at the beginning of your turn, so the first thing you do is Make Progress. This makes sense especially if a Signature Action can debuff you. Signature Actions just happen, you can’t do anything to stop them, so it would maybe not be awesome to spend your turn slowed and you never made a save and they didn’t need to roll to hit.
A properly mathed system would allow a character to clear a debuff before it even affected them, but that would require a really good roll. So the player who debuffed you doesn’t feel cheated, they feel like you got lucky, or rolled well, or used some resource to boost your roll. You earned it, in other words.
It may sound like I’m describing a competitive game, and our RPG is not competitive. But it needs to be fun for the players and the Director. So when I say “the player who debuffed you,” that could mean a monster debuffing a PC, or a PC debuffing a monster. Both are controlled by players. Game has to be fun for all players.
I pitched this “what if debuffs had hit points” idea to James and Hannah and they were interested enough to try it. But like I said, I can see problems with it. I just don’t know if they’re major or minor. In the end, there’s no point trying to solve a problem like this in your head, just try it and see.
So we’re gonna try it and see!
Situational Bonuses
Something else that’s come up a few times is how the game handles situational bonuses. What would, in another edition, have been a +1 or +2 bonus, or advantage/disadvantage. How does our game handle this?
Well, up until now you’d use an Impact die, but that only worked for bonuses, not penalties, and the impact die was a LOT (that was its intention) and so was a poor tool for a minor, temporary, situational bonus or penalty.
James suggested using a new die! Why not, we just cut the Impact die and morphed the Attribute Dice into the Action Die. He suggested we have a Boon dice and a Bane die, which is basically how all dice work in FUDGE, but also something from Shadow of the Demon Lord, a really well-designed modern RPG. So two new dice! Except presumably these are the same kind of die, just the Boon has successes and the Bane has some new symbol? A skull! Or something, we’re just using emoticons now, the art team may have oPiNiOnS about what these symbols should look like. 😀
We have no desire to go overboard with symbols, we’re only inventing those we think we need. But I also have no aversion to More Cool Dice or even new symbols that do cool stuff, as long as they’re filling a need.
The Director can award boons or banes (or whatever we end up calling them) depending on the situation, And they cancel out so if you’ve got 3 boons and 2 banes, you roll 1 boon die.
How will this new dice system work? How many successes? Skulls? We have no idea! Already this new design is causing ripple effects in how your Defense (the amount of incoming damage you ignore) works. I’m sure there are more hurdles to overcome.
Speaking of which….
The Fall of the Cosmic Die
At one point in the last playtest, the Ankheg grabbed Matt O’Driscoll’s Tactician and basically ate him. 😂 This caused me to suggest I take my turn next (the initiative system is still intact) because if I roll the Cosmic Die and get Law, I have an ability that might save the day.
Of course, if I got Chaos, the Ankheg would get to use some equally cool ability and we might all enjoy spending the rest of the playtest as guests in the Ankheg’s stomach.
But! I rolled LAW and so grabbed the Ankheg with my MIND and hurled it off the edge of the cliff we were on. “I never got to use my third villain action!” we heard it cry as it fell to its death. 😀
Ok so that was cool, but thinking about it afterwards, it felt very anticlimactic. It didn’t really feel like I did anything, I just rolled the Cosmic Die and got lucky. James had already come to the same conclusion. “It’s cool if that moment happens because of the resources you’ve built up, it’s not cool if it’s just the Universe’s Randomness swinging in your favor.” I agreed.
So I sat and thought about the Cosmic Die and what it’s for. If you’ve read all the posts so far you already know this, but the whole point of the Cosmic Die was to give our game some generalized mechanic (meaning all players could dip into it, regardless of class or ancestry) that reinforced the fact that this game is set in a fantasy universe. A world where Magic and the Gods are real. Where, if someone calls out to their ancestors in a moment of desperation their ancestors might answer.
In other words, a wizard can cast spells, ok. But that is not a generalized mechanic. If you had a team of all Tacticians and Furies and Operators, could you tell this party lived in a magical world? Or would it just be the 13th Warrior with a Mech Driver? 😀
As I thought about this, I realized we already had that mechanic. Surges. It’s the whole point of surges. Crits represent a moment of skill. If you don’t have proficiency? You can’t crit. But you can get a surge any time you use the action die!
Surges grant extra movement (busts of speed, or new maneuvers) or power up your magic, or your magic items, or your weapon. For a brief second, suddenly your character is in The Matrix, and surges let you break the normal rules of physics and do something heroic that a character bound by gravity could not do.
So maybe we don’t need the cosmic die? Yeah, let’s make sure surges provide robust options, and we just ditch the cosmic die for now. If we discover some future need? Well, we’ve got this Cosmic Die mechanic we could bust out again.
Charts?
While we were chewing on this in our discord, Hannah raised her metaphorical hand and said “hello yes, I would like to be able to roll on random charts. How do I do that please?”
Ah. Hm…yeah. That…that is a good point, how DO you do that in a system where the dice just say “three successes?” I…I don’t know!
Talking about this on twitch, folks in chat mentioned that the Fantasy Flight Star Wars RPG (which uses very funky dice, much funkier than ours) includes percentile dice (very much NOT funky…although they are the only non-platonic solids in the regular set of polyhedral dice, so a little funky. Herbie Hancock funky, not Parliament funky.
So, maybe we need some regular polyhedrals for rolling on charts? Charts and random events are useful for a lot of reasons. Hannah actually said “or we could have a spinner!” I’m not sure she was being entirely serious, but…I like spinners! No one doesn’t like using the spinner. Nuclear War comes with dice and charts but no one ever uses ‘em. They always use the spinner.
Spinners may seem gimmicky but I’m not sure why that should be, it’s just a random result generator implemented in a slightly more fun way than rolling a die. I don’t think we’re seriously considering a spinner but A: we need some way to roll on charts and our current dice don’t work that way, B: spinners can be interesting because you can map multiple outcomes onto the same spinner. Like you can put the numbers 1-20 around the edge, but ALSO have 5 bands of colors. So one roll could give you 5% increment results, or 20% depending on what kind of roll you’re making.
We’ll see where we end up, my gut says we’re gonna end up pressing the d20 into service for this, but I don’t really care. Any solution is just there to give us a good range of random results for any charts we need.
That's it folks! A lot is happening with the RPG. New dice to try! The Stamina idea seems to be a hit, but lots more testing needed to determine if using one resource for both damage mitigation, and maneuver options is balanced, but that's just normal testing.
Again, we may not do any playtesting for several weeks, maybe not until next month as we push Flee, Mortals! across the finish like and continue developing ARCADIA but I think we'll find some other fun stuff to talk about before then. :D
Peace, out!
Comments
Martin Goldschmid
Action die simplicity seems really cool and simple. Everytime I run for new players they just can't manage buff / débuff (I usually play 4e now). I don't know how to solve this problem but the boon / bane dice seems to be promising, what about just give those dice to a player, if he has them (physically in front of him) it means there's an effect and a roll to be made. I always thought debuff buff would be simpler if there were physical dice handed to the player so thats easy to track and remember. I wish you all the luck and inspiration for this, can't wait to test it at the table. Cheers
Dave the Effable
>>> I tend to think of “how many things am I tracking?” is a UI problem. Something a good character sheet could solve. I can't overstate how frustrated I get with TTRPGs that are overly flush with character and enemy abilities that grant status buffs/debuffs or status effects that you have to keep track of, but the game doesn't give you an EFFECTIVE WAY to actually keep track of those things. In the FFG Star Wars RPG, lots of things would grant characters boost dice or setback dice, and when playing in person that was as simple as handing those dice to the person in question. Trying to keep track of it in a VTT, though, was much more difficult.
GubDM
Man I don't like debuffs in 5e, there's too many! And too many of them just say "this is like this other one but with this extra stuff." Much prefer something like status conditions in pokemon. Very small set of debuffs, each one is significantly different from the rest (and in pokemon you can only be affected by one status at a time! I don't hate that either. As a DM, that would make my job a lot easier if each baddy I'm tracking can only be affected by a single status at a time)
Caleb Cairns
Desiging resisting debuffs is an interesting problem to think about. If there is a single action to break it, its anti-climactic. If it's a resistance roll, then it could be binary of low stats keep it while high stats dont. The debuff it points seems interesting and opens alot of design space, while possibly adding more tracking as mentioned. I wonder if the tracking/effectiveness could be rolled into one roll like attack and damage rolls. Say a creature attacks a PC with a debuff. The PC could either make an opposed roll against the creature's ability or maybe the effect itself has it's own DC. Either way, the difference could be the number of turns the debuff is in effect. PC rolls a 2 vs. A 4, they have the debuff for 2 turn, removing them at the beginning/ending of their turn.
Francesco Passero
This was a great update! And I say this as an artist, so I'm taking all your sarcastic pokes about us with quite a deal of sportsmanship 😂 With the testing getting a hiatus, I want to express how much I enjoyed the previous lore posts: maybe they could be a good idea to fill up the gap? Pretty please? 😌
Reformed Hillbilly
Finally able to be a patron and I am so excited for this game. Getting the Beastheart, switching to MCDM monsters as they came out, and now reading through the development posts has given me a lot of confidence in the MCDM team. My players want a game where they can be epic heroes and I want one where it doesn’t take an enormous amount of work to make their characters feel that way or have the monsters be interesting. This is looking like that game. Even jut the concept behind the classes (Beastheart, Talent, Conduit) match my players so well it is as though MCDM is making this game for my table….. How long have you been watching us? Haha
Steven Hamilton
One way that I've seen some game systems in the past (that primarily use d6s) do big random tables is with a d33. Basically, you roll a "tens" d3, and a "ones" d3, so for ex: 2, 3 = 23. 3, 1 = 31 This sort of chart/dXX system could work with your dice based on successes, a "tens" success & "ones" success
Jason Maciolek
I like the cosmic die. Is there a way the cosmic die happens less often? In Cypher system, you pass out Cyphers that can sometimes break an entire encounter in favor of the players. That is okay because they are one use items. It would be the equivalent of getting a vorpal sword but you only get to cut the guys head off once and then the sword disappears. Could the cosmic die be more rare to get? I know you say that pushing the ankeg off the cliff was anticlimactic, but I think it was incredibly climatic, you saved your friend from being eaten. The dice tell the story and in this case they were in your favor, it could have easily gone the other way.
Joe Auerbach
My understanding is that the thing you build up are class resources (right now). I don't THINK there's any final design decision about whether surges are among the things that help you build those up. (it would be built into the class design if so, is the impression I have)
Anaximand
Do you build up Surges? That is, can you make some Law aligned actions through combat and after some rounds get Law points and then use them up to summon an attorney?
Joseph Macdonald
Really cool to read this. I am probably in the minority here but I prefer quicker reads. You guys might be able to get more mileage out of your content if you split this up into 2-5 different articles sprinkled every few days or something. That way its like a nice quick read every other morning.
Luca Mita
It's always an educational read! I'm a Cosmic Die believer, maybe there's a way to earn a roll or a cost that comes on top of it besides the result? The randomness and the flavour are fantastic imho. Nonetheless this is your game and I believe in you guys most of all! 🦾
JJGYET
"Writing it down, in this case, is called making a Design Doc and every designer on every video game does this, even though they know no one will ever read it and they’ll just walk up to your desk and ask you how it works." THIS. THIS. THIS. Okay now I'll finish reading ahahah
Aidan Boyle
While I loved the flavour of the Cosmic Die, I understand why it has to take its leave (for now). As described, it always seemed a bit arbitrary, since there's no difference in outcome regardless of who rolls it, it's just "do we feel like changing the battlefield in some way?"
Dave
The discussion of the creative -> practical design process is top tier.
Dhavaram
This would also allow ANYONE to make their own random charts.
Mattamue
I'm going to use "I can imagine X in my head"
Gavin
On the Hancock/Parliament Funk Scale, where does Dee-Lite's "Groove is in the Heart" land? You've got Herbie, you've got Bootsy, do these effects cancel each other? This is yet another example of side effects.
Dhavaram
If you do a spinner, you could have one like in the classic baseball boardgame All-Star Baseball where the spinner is clear plastic and has a slot to put paper/cardboard discs for each baseball player. This lets you have different size pie slices for different probabilities and different discs to replicate different random tables/charts. Here's a link to a picture of the board with each spinner holding discs for the players on each team: http://keymancollectibles.com/Gamestoys/images/img34.jpg
Shane Blake
Was interesting reading the top section on the design process. Am wondering - do you use methods like Epic-Feature-User Story from Agile-based software development to write those "design docs" as it sounds like they would be an excellent way to articulate your design and thinking
Roman Penna
Wow that was a lot of testing there - rapid prototyping for the win!
dittrich04
Each time a player starts their turn they could roll to reduce debuffs, but rolling against each debuff would take a long time. Instead a player could roll against multiple debuffs and reduce all their debuffs by "n" on a single dice roll. This would also allow support classes to stack on +1/+2 mods in aura or as a reaction on their turn.
colour_crusader
Wow, so much insight, i liked the section with the design process, so you can mostly write before you even formulate one single mechanic? that seems wild and practiacal, i should try that! and damn, whats fun? Is that a trick question? everything I come up is fun for me. Anyway, great post!
JUST WHATEVER, IDK
Consider this: Cosmic Spinner
Kelby B
Nice post. Great insight into the design process as usual. Watching with interest as to where it all lands :)
Quantum-Mechanic
I can logically understand why the cosmic die has to go from a mechanics and gameplay standpoint, but there is something so flavourful about it. I hope that the spirit of it comes back in some shape or form. I know that it’s still miles away, but I feel like the UI/character sheet for this game is going to be very interesting.
Lev Vaesinis
It really tickles me how this game might use almost exclusively funky dice for the core gameplay, but you might still need regular dice to keep track of resources/debuffs in pen and paper by incrementing/decrementing them. Just a character sheet covered in math rocks like some weird abacus.
Randall Dorn
The Star Wars FFG didn't even *come with* the percentile dice. It assumed you already had some lying around. I remember looking for some that would fit the theme and not replicate any colors in the FFG set, to match the dozen or so sets I'd acquired.
Scott Davis
I think the core to takeaway regarding the spinner is a need of a *centralized* randomizer. Something each player needs access to, but not necessarily need to have one of their own (unless they want to...merchandising opportunity there) nor would it be wholly DM owned gear. It would just come with a set of a game. Beyond the d20 and looking at other ones, many common kid-level board games have some game item this in various forms. A spinner is relatively common...but not one I prefer . Unless its that higher-quality one you got with LIFE back in the day. That one is cathartic. Like your own little mini Wheel of Fortune. Laminated paper square and flicking at an arrow? Not so much. There's Trouble with its bubble die, which also is a nice tactile experience but doesn't really give the desired flexibility of overlayed outcomes. I guess utilizing a deck (shuffled) would be possible but doesn't provide much different in experience as compared to a d20? Unless there's something else that can be added to make the cards robust in usage like most of the other objects already in use at this stage of the game's design.... Forgive me as I am going to go a little backwards in this and start with the takeaway sentiment I wish to impart: What if each player of the party provided a (equal?) portion to the centralized randomizer? And those portions can also inform on the type (or the likelihood to?) of randomized that effects can occur? So that it can play its role in providing the 1-5/1-20/1-100 roll, but in a different scenario can inform on, lets say, what the magical side effect will be? Or other things informed by the player party, their characters, or or their equipment. For context, thinking on this reminded me of a short-lived toy/game line called Xevos (I didn't realize its by Hasbro until looking it back up for this post). In which a player's figurine decked out with different bodyparts/accessories would provide different abilities/attacks. These abilities and attacks would take effect in a match (1v1) via a unique hexagonal die, which the player would load with different triangular prisms so that the ones facing on the outside coincided with the kit equipped on the figurine. These hexagonal dice would be rolled to determine the combat result in a given round. So I can imagine that in the case of cards, each player would provide cards from their own class (everyone gets 20(?) but choose 5 to submit to the common deck at the beginning of session, in which would create a comprehensive set for the random range but also can "flavor" the random outcome. Things like if the player who activates it gets one of their own cards gets an additional benefit or perhaps can add the described effect on the card to mix to the previous established outcome. Or if its a multiple card draw type of thing for each random event, the complexion of the cards (3 red (Tactician), 1 blue(Mage), 1 green(Beasthard)) can also inform on the outcome on the chart. Mostly I am curious on the two ideas of: 1, Allowing the centralized randomizer be something that compliments the unique composition of the party and that the player interacts with more than a roll/flick then read off a static chart. 2, having that randomization event be in some unique form. A deck is possible but that hexagonal die or something similar, where the player "loads up" its slots for a given session is something that resonates with me.
Nick Rowland
That took me so many different directions I don't know where I landed.
Nolan
A surprise to be sure, but a welcome one!
Nolan
Hah, this is quite funny, as I believe someone else said, its a reference to T.S. Eliot's The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock, "In a minute there is time For decisions and revisions which a minute will reverse" (I think). The funny thing though is that Eliot was referencing/inspired by Hamlet (whom I assume you are referring to, and is what I assume you have picked up on). Even more funny is that the title seemed to me a reference to Rush's "Double Agent" song. "So many decisions, a million revisions". I've yet to read Hamlet, I actually just read the Eliot poem twice in the past week (after getting into his poetry this past month), but the Rush song is definitely the thing (art?) I attribute most to that phrase. Really cool to see all the connections tho. I would not have noticed the Eliot one if someone hadn't pointed it out in the comments, nor the Hamlet if you hadn't said anything :). Really cool community for this to happen in though :D.
Sean Westberg
If debuffs are common I might not like tracking a bunch of debuffs coming online and offline. It *might* work if debuffs stack and you go first in, first out, so Slow 5, Blind 3 stack on top of each other and blind doesn't come off until slow does. That way you're keeping track of basically one trackline. The downside I see here is that you could lock down a character pretty hard by just chucking debuffs at them constantly.
Page Sparks
The spinner there reminds me of The Morrow Project with how you could plot what got hit, and by what type of bomb(nuke, chemical, viral, etc).
Matthew B
Y'all might want to check out dice drop tables as well. (No, that's not me trying to do an sql injection attack.) You have a bunch of effects listed in different sections on a sheet of paper and then you drop a die on the paper - where it lands is what you get (works best with a box), and maybe the number showing is a modifier. They're fun to use but hard to use online unless you do the work of converting it to another die type (or coordinates) ahead of time, which kind of defeats the purpose.
Mark Skipper
I use the same system for debuffs. This also grants you the option to either remove a debuff with a resistance roll, or and opposite buff. So if you have slow 6 on you and the mage casts haste 5, your only slightly slowed. It also limits unfun spells like hold person which remove a players ability to play. So a slow spell slows you, but if they get it to slow say 10. Then it functions as a hold spell. This take turns to do so is telegraphed.
Michael Warsop
T. S. Eliot? In my Patreon Dev Update Blogs? It's more likely than you think.
Ormus Erebus
Amazing read. Bring back the fidget spinner and press it into service at the table!
Clark Nichols
Good post! The only spinner I've ever liked in a board game was the spinner from The Game of Life. It's a really nice tactile thing, although I think calling the Game of Life a "game" is generous. It's mostly just a random number generator you play with kids to pressure them to do well in school. Also: Shakespeare reference in the title?
