The must-have features of a next-gen MMO, part I

Here's one of my random posts about MMOs, rather than P&P.

To be honest I love to drone on about this subject, and have considered starting up a new blog for this topic alone.  But one blog is enough for any man.  So I'll restrict myself to the odd meandering thought in the direction of video gaming RPGs.

I'll also keep it short.

1. Rag-doll physics.  For too long MMOs have featured no real physical interaction between PC and mobs. This is most obvious and most disappointing when a PC is in combat against some massive beast.  You seem them, standing at the beast's ankles, slashing away, with totally unrealistic interaction with the beasts massive size.

Take a page out of the awe-inspiring Shadow of the Colossus's book.  The little fella in that game literally had to scale each beast to get to the weak-spot before he could do any real damage.

What I want to see is a dragon knock you flying with one sweep of it's massive tail.  I want to see bodies tumbling through the air and laying in a heap, stunned, broken, dashed.

IMHO rag-doll physics allowing for proper interactions with enemies of disproportionate sizes is a must for a next-gen game.  Admittedly the above examples are somewhat fantasy-focused but its fairly obvious how the same can be applied to sci-fi, horror, whatever.

2. Deformable landscapes.  Spells, heavy weapons, however serious damage is inflicted it should leave a mark on the natural world or unshielded structures.

3. Interactivity with structures.  In many ways this is kind of an extension of deformable landscapes, but what I want to see is a little sneak-thief being able to scale the wall of a building.  Add some of that Assassins' Creed / Prince of Persia virtue into MMOs and have people be able to utilise structures to their advantage.  Dovetailing nicely with rag-doll physics, parties should have to think cleverly about how they approach killing large beasts.  Climbing pillars so they can leap onto the back of a beast, providing an opportunity to hit a weak-spot a la Shadow of the Colossus, or toppling over pillars so they come crashing down on a beast's head.  Rather than the WoW approach of having the party do what often ends up as some intricate dance around a boss - up the ante of such games by ramping up the realism provided by the combination of these three points.

There is obviously a lot more that could be said about this subject, hence the part 1 appellation.  But these points, among others, are at the core of it.

pilch out.

RPG T-Shirt idea...

A picture of a d20 twenty side up, and the words:
This is how I roll.
Made me laugh.  Well, smile a little bit, at least.

The Rosenbaum Frequency

The Rosenbaum Frequency is my basis for my sci-fi genre setting.

My sci-fi genre universe is a little unconventional.  FTL drives haven't been invented, and vast regions of space lay unexplored.  People have managed to populate other systems however, because of a concept called the Rosenbaum Frequency.

Every object has a dicrete and measurable Rosenbaum Frequency ('Rofe' value) which defines its position in space-time.  And simply by physically moving an object, its Rofe will change.  Researchers then developed a device which emitted a field which in turn could influence the Rofe of whatever was placed inside the field.

The net result of doing this was to instantly transport the affected object to the location dictated by this new frequency.  I.e. teleportation / displacement could be achieved without the need for any molecular disassembly or matter transference.  Because the rules of the Rosenbaum Frequency dictate than an object with a Rofe value of X must be in position X.  The trouble is, there seems to be no relationship between locations close in space-time and their corresponding frequencies.  I.e. two people standing next to each other, occupying very close-by space will very likely exhibit vastly different Rosenbaum Frequencies.  And only slightly modifying the frequency can potentially displace an object to the other side of the galaxy / universe / wherever.  And that might well be inside a sun / asteroid / whatever.  So its a hazardous and wholly random process.

So the diaspora of Terrans to the stars in my universe didn't happen by the typical means, but by labs altering the Rofe's of probes at random, and sending them off to places at random, and recording what happened.  In many cases of course they simply recorded dead space, or distant stars, but in some cases they found systems with inhabitable worlds.  And of course in some instances the probe was lost, presumed instantly destroyed.  On rare occassions, alien life was witnessed.

The probes were fitted with pre-programmed Rofe field generators, so they could be recalled.  And communication with the probes was via what I call a Paired Quark Dictor (PQD) sometimes referred to as a Tangle Comm.  Because any force applied to one of a pair of entangled quarks affects the other quark as if it had been directly applied to it.  In physics terms the concept of quantum entanglement.

The concept of quantum entanglement nicely validates the notion of instantaneous communication over any distance.  One quark from an entangled pair is embedded in the PQD housed within the probe.  Any data the probe records is translated into binary and communicated by inducing a simple up and down oscillation of the quark it contains.  Back in the lab, the matched quark oscillates simultaneously in precisely the same manner as its entangled buddy, and thus produces a real-time binary data stream which is re-encoded back into audio/video and whatever mulit-spectrum data the probe is programmed to record.

So in this way tiny (mostly unrelated) fragments of the universe were mapped.  Many probes were lost of course, but by pure chance some systems were discovered which could support human life.  So earth's overcrowding and environmental issues were circumnavigated by colonists who were 'freq'd' or 'freaked' off to distant worlds discovered by the probes.

In some cases wealthy individuals paid vast sums of money to have private worlds located for them, and the race was on for different labs, funded by different corporations to find the most fabulous worlds imaginable.

But sometimes, they found other things....

System vs. Setting

Okay, so something occurred to me recently.

As some of you may be aware I've been indulging myself in a little P&P RPG research of late, and from this two gems have emerged...

Firstly, Ars Magica. This is quite simply a great idea for a roleplaying game setting.  And the first game I have ever come across that makes me want to take their world and play it as it is (and I'm only 30 odd pages into the rulebook).  And that is not my usual M.O. by any standard.  Typically, I flit through RPGs and pick up on little ideas here and there and incorporate them into my own game system or setting. I have a penchant for creating my own source material where possible.  Partly because I live in a dream world, and partly because I don't like my players knowing anything about the setting save for what I tell them, i.e. no 'outside' knowledge of monsters, enemies, places or histories, etc.  But Ars Magica is such a brilliantly simple and fantastically engaging setting that I'm already thinking about running a de facto session, just to see how it plays.  True, I have taken a few concepts I like and worked them into an alternative 6th Age history of my own fantasy world setting but this is only adds further kudos to the game.  It has some great ideas.  It is founded upon great ideas.  And I eagerly await running my first session.  If you don't know about Ars Magica, check it out, you won't be disappointed.  If you are disappointed, check yourself over for lobotomy scars forthwith.

The second game I have purchased recently (yet to be delivered, and I drool in antici... pation) is Changeling: The Lost.  It bears a similarity to Ars in that they are both set in the real world... in a manner of speaking.  Or an alternate version of the real world, where certain fantastical elements are true.  When I read a little about Changeling it reminded me of Suzanna Clark's superb novel Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrel - which I loved - so I just had to get it.  The setting is, again, enticing.

But all this got me to thinking...  System vs. Setting.

I think I'm right in saying that both of these games won awards.  I can't be bothered to check.  If you want to dispute this, you check it.  I know Ars for certain is generally regarded as having the best magic system of any RPG, and worth taking a look at for that alone.  Especially from my stance where I have put considerable effort into making magick as weird and special as I can in my fantasy games, and not simply trotting down the same old tired path.  Take a look at my posts on my approach to magick if you're vaguely interested in... well... my approach to magick (in RPGs).

But for me, system and setting are two very different things.  Yes, there are links.  Of course there are crossovers.  Games like Call of Cthulhu deserve a sanity stat.  Games like Blood and Honour deserve an honour stat.  But generally settings are, and should be, system non-specific.  With all due respect to the authors of Ars, when I play it, I'll be using my own, tweaked, homebrew system.  I'm going to play-test their game setting, whilst play-testing my new system.

The approach I'm taking with my new system is that, like any decent system, it should be IMHO applicable (with admittedly minor tweaks) to any setting.  As I have mentioned before, if I run a horror game, I use my own system, but I drop in a simple sanity mechanic to cover the insanity side of things.  Essential for a good horror game I would say.  But a decent system should be versatile enough to handle anything you throw at it.  And also flexible enough to handle the odd genre-specific mechanic addendum.

RPG systems basically govern the same sort of tasks pretty much regardless of setting: character generation, character development, task resolution, and combat.  That sort of thing.  The system handles how you roll the dice.  Everything else is setting and should never be constrained by the system.  Monitored, moderated, but never manipulated. Setting is first and foremost.