A while since my last post...

...I know, I know...

But I'm in a quandry you see. I'm in the process of getting funding for a start-up... or at least putting the initial elements down on paper in order to build a business plan.

So things have been pretty busy.

Be back soon.

Name change!

This is fairly typical of me. But I was never happy with the name I chose for this blog when I first set it up. So I've now changed it. But for how long?

It's been a cutler-three days since I last posted. But coming today... a bunch of thoughts I had whilst playing Hellgate. Bet you can't wait.

What's the point of it all?

I'll be trying to achieve two things with this blog. Firstly, I'll be critiquing games I'm playing or have played, and as a result of that I will then be positing ideas for improvement.

I'll also be doing a third thing, which is talking generally about ideas I have for games.

So for my next post I'll be taking a closer look at Hellgate.

Bye for now.

Mission trees - cause & effect

I've been talking a lot about mission design recently. And I know I'm setting myself up for an example. Don't worry, it's coming. I'll post in the near future a whole mission tree showing how missions should lead on from one another, and how mission success and failure should present different possibilities to the player.

And I'll also illustrate how these mission trees can be generated with a degree of randomness, so that a whole army of mission scriptors need not be employed by games companies.

I'll reveal all, soon.

More on missions...

The thing is, with game design, the more you can create an atmosphere of interaction with the gameworld, the more enthralling the game will be. The more the players will feel like they are directly contributing to the greater outcome.

For MMOs I would say this is essential.

Hellgate doesn't really achieve this. The single player storyline is fairly typical, ultimately contrived, presents no real opportunity of failure and offers a railroaded principle mission stream.

The only vague surprise is Murmur's acquisition of dark power at the end. The game would have been so much more if the missions you achieved or failed altered the necessary direction you could take.

Imagine if one of the arrogant NPCs turned against you, because of your success? But wouldn't turn against you if you failed one of their missions? Just mocked you instead.

That would work well.

Essentially what I'm talking about here is greater degree of cause and effect in missions.

Something I wanted from the GTA3s, is a greater degree of public response to my actions within the gameworld. I'll give you an example. If I kill twenty or more of a particular type of citizen, it would be great to hear a news flash on the radio warning citizens of Liberty City that a serial killer is on the loose targeting whichever type you killed.

The technology is there already, the police radio says things like 'last seen driving eastbound in a blue...' whatever. And this works really well, giving the player an impression that they are interacting with a real living city. My message to Rockstar North: Do it more. Do it more.

Schizo...

Not sure quite how to entitle this post.

A feature of many of my P&P games, and also a number of computer game proposals I have produced revolves around the concept of either switching forms, acquiring new forms, or absorbing abilities.

The longest running P&P game I GMed revolved around the concept of an ancient race, and an ancient, once lost form of magick that involved summoning daemons, slaying said daemons and absorbing their souls in order to take on their powers. This blend of original race, stocked full of daemon souls forever changed the player and turned them into a new being, a creature I called Shafaerinhai. Which - roughly translated from their ancient tongue - meant 'daemons in the blood'.

In a much later game set in the same world a couple of Ages on, I reworked this theme. In this game I had a cult of sorcerers attempt to resurrect Shafaerinhai magick, but fundamentally misunderstanding it. They used spells to summon daemons, and then excommunicate their spirits so that the daemon's corporeal form (which the daemon grew to journey within the material plane) was left an empty shell. The sorcerer was then free to excommunicate his own spirit, ripping it from his body and binding it to the daemon's empty shape.

In this way, sorcerers were able to acquire powerful, monsterous forms. And it made for a great game, even if I do say so myself.

This body-swapping concept I translated into a couple of computer game proposals. In one, the players played a sentient blob of jelly genetically engineered from an organic sample taken from a meteorite. The blob of jelly had the unique ability to blend with carbon-based lifeforms via osmosis and take over the brain functions of the entity, thus controlling it.

In this way the player had free reign to blend with guards, scientists, dogs, rats, birds and even some mutations from the labs as they sought and fought for their freedom.

I used another version of the sentient blob of jelly idea, in a game I called Evolver (later finding a game of the same name already existed - although significantly different) I changed the name to Wild World. Wild World was designed as an MMO with a difference. A vast perpetual world consisting of all manner of flora and fauna. Players start as the blob of jelly and slither around until they come across a creature with powers they want to incorporate.

In this idea, the blog can absorb the DNA of creatures it consumes and then mutate, taking upon some of the characteristics of its victim. In this way, somewhat like the Homunculus Jar, a player can end up with a creature sporting a complex array of different features... bat wings, toxic spines, acid spit, retractable claws, gills and so forth.

The basic principle was to evolve your creature and do battle with other creatures in the environment, attempting to acquire new abilities. There was a secondary thread about evolving an opposable thumb which would enable players to use ancient artefacts from a long lost, technologically advanced civilization, whose ruins adorned the world.

I'm not sure why exactly this theme of changing or utilisng alternative forms fascinates me. But whenever I have used it in games it has gone down very well with players. It breaks the mold to some extent in terms of established genres, but for me it extends still further the concept of acquiring news skills and equipment, and opens up a realm of new possibilities.

Homunculus Jar...

This is an idea I came up with for a P&P role-playing game some years ago. I've used it in several games subsequently and it always provides players with some dark delight.

The idea basically works like this. A lot of games provide mages with the opportunity to summon a familiar (MMOs in particular have developed this idea further, and many classes have the ability to control 'pets').

The Homunculus Jar basically provides mages (in my games, but could be extended to be adopted by other character-classes) with a series of sideline missions or sub-agendas during which they attempt to find useful components for their Jar. Useful components are basically body parts of creatures. These are placed within the jar, and dependant upon the mages power and success in this, the mage can effectively create a 'frankenstein familiar' - magically stitching together components from other beasts to create a unique and multi-faceted entity.

I had one player who took bat wings, venomous fangs, toxic spines, multiple limbs and a goblin foetus to construct a tiny winged, six-limbed goblinoid which poisoned its victims with its fangs and spines.

There have been many and varied examples.

Obviously the freedom of P&P supports this concept wholeheartedly. But a stripped down version could be employed by MMOs.

MMO missions...

...and that's another thing MMOs and RPGs could learn from the GTA games. Variety of missions.

Much of the gaming experience can be enhanced simply by providing your players with more options.

Hellgate's mini-game is a great example of this. Although the realism is somewhat fractured when the reward of completing a mini-game simply showers your character with items which have suddenly sprung into existence. I'd be tempted to have opened a portal into a treasure realm, perhaps the antithesis of the hell rifts, where useful equipment is lying around. For me this helps supports the notion that higher powers exist which are aiding and rewarding your heroism in the defeat of darkness.

GTA fantasy blend...

Something I'd like to see is a console-based RPG using the lessons learnt from the seminal GTA3 series. When GTA went 3D they really blew the lid off the gaming experience. Free-roaming with a multitude of missions you could pick up in practically any order, MMOs and RPGs could learn a lot from an environment which attemps to mimic a living city and its surrounds.

Clearly GTA3: San Andreas was the pièce de résistance in this regard.

I would kill for the opportunity to develop a fantasy milieu RPG in such a setting. With a pseudo-medieval setting rather than a modern one. Crank up the stat improvements and add a diverse skill-tree and you'd have a fantastic single (or co-op online) RPG.

One fault I have with some, if not many of the GTA missions is their 'stepping stone' construction. Steal this car, go to this point, engage these enemies to get to your final objective. In a such a free-form game, allowing players to complete missions in a variety of ways would provide an improved gaming experience. Instead of stealing that car, how about stealing a plane and parachuting into the environment? Or steal a loader and using it as a mobile ramp to jump a fence otherwise securing the environment.

There are many ways to skin a cat and providing players with the freedom to plan their own execution of a mission is IMHO a definite advantage, adding an element of problem solving to the proceedings.

p.s. I'm not sure why the text of this post shrunk. Can't seem to fix it. Sorry!

Battlefield and the evolution of the FPS...

For me the FPS genre - which I love - has undergone significant evolution over the last few years. Tired of the myriad doom and quake clones, Tribes 2 for example, was a breath of fresh air.

For those of you who didn't know, gameplay-wise the Battlefield series owes a lot to Tribes. For me, always looking to push the envelope, and get ever closer to The Game, the inclusion of vehicles and control points was a cogent step in the right direction.

The control points certainly help induce tight gameplay on public servers, and the vehicles provide you with a far greater range of interactions with both the environment and the opposition.

Furthermore, with Battlefield 2142 Dice got the award system near perfect, providing players with a strong incentive to play and play again as they climb the ranks.

Including a similar aspect to MMOs would be useful, for a business model which relies on replayability.

A simple tweak to the standard FPS fair would be to include a third fighting force. The battlefield would indeed be an interesting place if there were three armies doing battle.

Another aspect I would include would be to develop the control point concept into 'areas of tactical advantage'. What I mean by this is, say for example a factory existed somewhere on the map, and by controlling it a team could produce jeeps, or tanks, or whatever. This would be a great way to steer what is often a chaotic experience on public servers to more refined team-orientated play. Which generally contributes towards a better gaming experience.

Defining your look in RPGs and MMOs

I've been dabbling with Hellgate London recently. It's a good game, and has ironed out some of the issues Diablo had (which was still a good game).

My main beef with Diablo was the constant slay, pick up loot, play backpack tetris, head back to town, identify loot, still not find anything worth using, sell items, return to slay-loop. I recall; though it's some years ago, so my memory maybe somewhat erroneous here; that I could sometimes do this round trip a dozen or so times on some of the bigger levels. And this is the grind.

Hellgate London reduces this by the inclusion of several new features, most notably the ability to dismantle items you find in the field. Breaking items down means you can carry far more of their constituent components (scrap metal and tech parts and shards and the like) which take up far less space in your pack and which can later be re-forged along with your current equipment to improve said equipment. Thereby enabling you to subtly upgrade your weapons and armour on a fairly constant basis.

Another improvement is the delux demodifier, which for a cost strips your equipment of all the mods you placed in it earlier. The actual interface is a little annoying, as you have to remove all mods, even if you only want to swap one out with a new one you've acquired. But it is still a significant improvement on wasting goods mods that are stuck in an obsolete weapon a la Diablo 2.

The gimp - because there always is one - lies in the augmenter. A device which enables you to add enhanced, rare or legendary abilities to an item for a cost. Whilst this seems grand on face value I have tried it countless times and rarely get an ability which is of significant use to me.

So how to fix this problem? Well, my suggestion would be to allow users of the augmenter a lucky dip option (essentially as it operates now) far cheaper than the current price; and then a more expensive selection option, which enables you to select from an attribute pool that will be of some value to you. And then finally a very expensive option which enables players to select the exact ability they wish to add. Thus enabling players to effectively craft useful items which suit their play.

Reforging is indeed a feature I have used in several of my P&P role-playing games. It not only provides players with the opportunity to acquire great equipment fit for purpose, but also enables players to 'craft their look'.

This latter aspect should not be overlooked and although many MMOs give a nod in its direction thru the use of dyes etc. it seems all of them still fall short of the mark. Years of P&P gaming has taught me never to underestimate the desire of players to 'look a certain way'. And this may be contrary to the genre norms.

For example, as far as I am aware, in every fantasy-milieu MMO or computer RPG a warrior type character, typically a swordsman ends up dressing in chunky platemail armour. Platemail typically bestowing the most significant advantages in terms of armour. But what if you wanted to be a warrior with the best protection but without the chunky platemail look?

In my games, my solution to this has been through reforging and the inclusion of 'acts as' abilities. So you can reforge platemail into a linen shirt with the ability 'acts as +20 platemail'.

Through this technique, you can have knives that strike like broadswords and ultimately render all your enchanted items into a tattoo, if you so please.

Obviously game balancing needs to be taken into account, but that is essential in any game. Pay careful attention to it.

The great advantage of using a feature such as this is that it gives almost free reign to players to craft their own look. Knights no longer have to look like knights, wizards no longer have to look like wizards and much equipment can be distilled down into a single, awesome artefact. It's worked well in my P&P games, I'm sure it can be translated into MMOs too.

on MMOs: Player Impact...

...just to give you a taster on how this should work...

Data is retrieved in terms of the success and failure of sub-quests performed by players relating to the over-arching story episode.

The game-designers / content-providers / story-writers then use this data to craft the next episode. So just like in a real P&P game, the GM reacts to the outcomes of the players actions and presents them with a new set of possibilities.

And all this really hinges off the revenue MMOs generate. Don't let them fob you off. They can afford to pay people to endlessly create new adventures. They can and they should. And then with the data gathered (as mentioned above) they can actually incorporate the endeavours of key personalities into the stories as they unfold. Giving MMO players an unprecedented level of interation with and satisfaction from the game-world.

This should then provide players with a sense they are adventuring within a living, breathing, mutable world which responds to their actions. And where quests and missions are not repeated, and everyone, whether on your side or not is working within the overall story, and helping to steer its course.

pilch out.
- I bring nothing to the table.

What's wrong with MMOs...

I'll try and keep this brief.

I probably bored you to tears with that last one.

I know I cried reading it. But I felt it important to give some context to the proceedings.

So what's wrong with MMOs? Why, with all the power of modern computing do they, and again as always - IMHO - fall short of the mark?

Well there's many reasons for this, but for me, the single greatest atmosphere destroyer is the questing. What I hate about questing in MMOs is that I can join a game with a new character, grab the first quest from... um, Otto the Barkeep at the Slaughtered Orc - whose cellar is glutted with rats.

The thing is. You're previous character did this mission 6 months ago. And every starting player does this mission.

Hundreds of times a day Otto is paying people to clear his cellar of rats. For me, this destroys the realism. For a start, Otto must be sitting on Fort Knox the amount he pays out for pest control. Secondly, clearly people aren't doing the job right, because seconds later he's paying someone else to murder rats.

Now I appreciate the restrictions in quest generation in computer games. Computers lack the instant versatility of the mind to instantly ad lib an adventure - which any GM worth his bath salts has done admirably many times.

But taking this quest generation as a whole, essentially what MMOs typically present to players is a single player experience of a multi-player world. Sure you see a bunch of other players wandering around doing stuff, but that guy you see over there with the Nike platemail and flaming sword has just killed that dragon you're just about to set off to slay.

The world is perpetual, but the story is individual and endlessly replayed.

So how to fix this problem?

For me the solution is pretty simple. If you think that WoW has somewhere in the region of seven million players. All paying circa $15 dollar / month to play. That means WoW is generating somewhere in the region of $75m dollar / month in revenue.

They can afford to hire more story-writers, more content-generators, more of everything, so that the world they present truly is perpetual, and the story constantly evolving. If you missed that volcano erupt last month, destroying an important town. Then you missed it. If you missed Otto and his rat infestations... don't worry, there's more quests to do.

That's great, but it doesn't really tell us how all this can be achieved, pilch.

I'm coming to that.

So, major stories should be developed constantly and run concurrently across different regions. Each story / region combination creates a subset of quest possibilities.

For example. The Great Goblin Invasion (sorry, I'm making this up as I go along, and being brief for the sake of, um... well, brevity).

Goblins have been using Dark Powers to strengthen their numbers for decades, and now is the time for the uprising. Goblin Corsairs have begun attacking the Scattered Isles (an archipelago of free and accepted peoples).

This major story and region then generates myriad random quests, of the ilk:

action, location, object, item...

HUNT, KILL, RETRIEVE, RESCUE (action); in / from DOCKS, PENINSULA, BLEAK MOUNTAIN, DEEP FOREST, SHADY HOLLOW (location); GOBLIN SHAMAN, CHIEF, FARMER'S DAUGHTER, BANDITS (object) and be rewarded with; 100 Gold, SWORD OF HORIZONS, WAND OF CHICKEN LEGS (whatever, item).

Now obviously some restrictions are required to be imposed on these elements, so the random mission does not ask you to HUNT the FARMER'S DAUGHTER in the DEEP WOODS for a WAND OF CHICKEN LEGS. Though, I never did trust that Farmer's Daughter.

But you get my point. Do you?

By randomly generating quests based upon the over-arching story episode currently running, in the region the player currently is, myriad sub quests can be generated resulting in no player ever having to repeat the same mission.

But all this merely leads me onto (an arguably) more significant point. Player impact upon the world. This is the cause of yet more loss of atmosphere (IMHO) in MMOs compared to P&P (Pen & Paper) role-playing.

In the best P&P games I've played in, or GMed, the players ended up more often than not, having a significant impact upon the world. They began as lowly farmhands seeking adventure, and culminated as leaders of vast armies commanding terrible powers. This concept in my experience is rarely achieved online.

Less than four hours of sleep has addled my brains, so I shall return to this subject later.

My next post will be about how MMOs can provide players with the opportunity to exact a proper impact upon the world, and thus shape its events.

My role-playing past...

Okay, so I'm biased. I know that.

I've been a pen & paper role-player since I was 10. (Yes, I'm a geek, I mean, really geeky.  But I wave my geek card proudly.)

What I love about role-playing is the freedom of action and imagination. It quite simply is the most imaginative gaming you can do.

Like most roleplayers, I cut my teeth on Dungeons & Dragons (basic edition). After that I levelled up with D&D expert rules, quickly followed by Advanced Dungeons & Dragons. Bear with me. There's a reason why I'm telling you this. (Although as no one is reading this, essentially I'm telling myself.)

I owe it all to D&D really. Though I no longer play it. Lord Gygax has a lot to answer for.

Anyway, after my foray into fantasy role-playing via D&D I branched out and flexed some sci-fi muscle with Traveller, MegaTraveller and (some comedic sci-fi muscle with) Paranoia. Which if anyone remembers it, had some great advice for GMs (mainly, make sure you kill the PCs as frequently and gratuitously as possible.

Pretty soon I graduated to MERP (Middle Earth Role-Playing) and ultimated did my post grad with Rolemaster - quite simply the most versatile all-encompassing rule-set ever to be created for role-playing.

Rolemaster is a great system... if you're an autistic savant. I have maybe just over half of the rules - and that stack of books alone consists of probably 1000 pages. Somewhat untenable to game with (unless you're the aforementioned Rain Man).

So some years ago I set about paring down the game system, using all its versatility, but only about 1% of the tables. The result was, IMHO, a slick, swift, flexible system that could be played from a pamphlet. I called it Richmaster, on the account of my name being Richard, and it being distilled from Rolemaster.

Stay with me, theres dick jokes coming.

Unlike some, maybe most, roleplayers, I rarely-to-never used purchased modules (adventures). Sure I played in a few (a lot): Keep on the Borderlands, Lost Tomb of Martek, something to do with Frost Giant Jaal -whatever the hell that is. But what I really love about roleplaying is the freedom it grants you to create your own adventures. I guess the closest gaming (i.e. on computers, consoles etc.) gets is with Never Winter Nights. Although my issue with this is: if you're going to spend that amount of time creating an adventure for your friends, why not go old-school and do it pen & paper style? The atmosphere is much better, the catharsis, second to none.

So historically, as a roleplayer, I have created dozens of worlds, hundreds of adventures, and schizophrenically, thousands of characters. This experience (I will try and avoid the rpg puns) has symptomatically made me somewhat critical when roleplaying is translated into computer gaming.

Sorry for that. You may love WoW or GuildWars or whatever. But really, they don't come close to sitting around a table with your mates, when one of them has just contracted lycanthropy and you're waiting for them to change, but you don't know which one of them it is.

More on this later.

pilch out.

26th level roleplayer
+50 magic item creation
+45 level design
+20 in amateur dramatics

(...and no, I don't wear a cape in RL!)

I'm too tired to write now, right now...

...check back later.

:D

This is not what my blog is about...

Okay, I've fiddled around with the colours a bit. They're okay. The layout will do for now.
I'll sort this stuff out later. I'm tired. You'll probably never read this anyway.
My mantra for now: delete this and start writing about what you're supposed to be writing about.

I sure as hell better be able to delete this...

I'm in my blog, blogging my thoughts.