I'll skin you alive!

Well, that got your attention.

The thing that annoys me about skinning / butchery in MMOs is this: the type of skin you get off your beast is based on the level of the beast, not what the beast is.  Which is quite frankly preposterous.  I've posted before (I think) about how beasts / critters should be handled, so I won't dwell on that aspect here, but what I will do is spend a moment talking about skinning.

Essentially, skinning should be based on the type of beast being skun. :-) NOT the level.  Shark skin is different to bear skin is different to cow skin is different to the delicate leather obtained from elven children.

Most MMOs take the route they take for the sake of simplicity.  They don't want low level characters getting access to high-level skins and leathers required for making high level recipes.  But quite frankly its all a lot of overly simplified nonsense, and we the sophisticated gamer - or I the self-proclaimed voice of the sophisticated gamer demand more!  Even if it means I have to make the damn game myself.

In the Mother of all (fantasy) MMOs skinning will be handled more like this:

Different skins will be required for different recipes.  And different skins will also apply a slight magickal bonus (with the right recipe) to enable different crafters to make subtley different variants of their recipes.

For example:  A backpack which warps space so that it looks like a small bag on the outside, but provides the player with 32 slots - or vast amounts of storage space, or whatever unit of measurement takes your fancy - requires the skin of a particular demon.  By hooking the recipe to such a specific creature, we as game designers can restrict who can make the item, to a certain extent.  The demon itself might be rare, may only spawn in certain locations, or may require someone to summon it, and will be of sufficient level to ensure that not many people can easily slay them, making the bags quite rare.

We can also make standard item creation a little more interesting by providing certain skins with the capability of imbuing small bonuses to the items they go toward making.  Make a cloak from wolfksin and gain a non-magickal  +1 to armour, endurance and charisma.  That kind of thing.  But provide some rationale behind it.  Something which is all too often missing.

Delicate leather (that obtained from humans or elves or something similar) may confer a small magickal bonus when used in the creation of spellbooks for certain types of dark spellcraft (demonology / necromancy, for example).

Basically ensure some cognisance goes into skinning.  Heavier leathers are obtained from heavier beasts.  More than one 'piece' of leather is obtained from larger beasts.  Certain beasts convey certain bonuses, and so on and so forth.

All this dovetails very nicely with my post on crafting... which I'm just about to write...

Now!

Playing female avatars

In another 'aside' post - I am often flamed for playing female avatars in (video) games - gay!  you're gay! (since when has that actually been an insult anyway?)  ...I'd say, when presented with the choice, about 98% of the time I'll end up rolling a female, and there are two distinct reasons for this:

The first is somewhat Machiavellian.  In my experience one frequently receives more beneficent reactions from other players when they believe you to be female.  I'm not going to bother with the whys and wherefores of this, the psychology behind it - I think its largely obvious. But its true.  In not a few cases I have received gifts from other players (and even been chatted up a few times) just because they believe I'm a girl gamer (obviously VOIP tends to pretty swiftly ruin the illusion, unless they think I'm a 200 a day smoker I guess). 

The second reason is simple: If I'm going to play a game for tens or hundreds of hours, I much prefer watching a woman run around the screen!

In fact there is a third reason: and that is; I actually gain some pleasure out of creating a female alter-ego for myself - just to make my illusion of being a girl-gamer a little more compelling.  And I guess this reveals a little of my roleplaying roots - and I suppose also hazy insight into my character that I enjoy this deception.  I do take this alter-ego quite far in that I avoid using typically male phrasiology when chatting in-game.  And I have a robust backstory for my female persona should anyone ask me any personal 'out-of-character' questions.  Essentially I'm roleplaying two characters, I'm playing a girl playing a .

Maybe there's a fourth too.  Maybe somewhere in there playing a female enables me to psychologically express my desire for female empowerment.

Chances are it mostly a voyeuristic two though.

Big Sims Brother

Here's an idea I'm just going to throw out there.  May have already been done - I don't know - as it involves a combination of two things I have little experience in.

I don't watch Big Brother, I have less than zero interest in it.  I'd definitely watch it if they had hallucinogenics and weaponry in the house and the contestants were not so much voted off as it were survival of the fittest / luckiest / sneakiest / craziest.  I'd defo watch that show.  Anyway, just for the record, and I have to state this out loud in a public forum in case the universe thinks otherwise - I don't watch Big Brother.

I also don't play the Sims.  Perhaps I should.  But that's beside the point.  I've just watched Will Wright's (creator of The Sims) 2003 talk on game design, and thought that a Sims machinima of a Big Brother situation would probably be very entertaining indeed - with the right writers onboard.  Let me know if anyone's done one.  I'm off to check www.machinima.com/ just in case. :-)

Existentialism and Roleplaying...

“Everything I’ve learned about human morality and duty, I’ve learned from roleplaying” – Richard Hayden

- I don't think its pompous to quote oneself when one is taking the piss... ...it's almost everything...
:-)

Mounts in MMOs

I'm not even going to apologise for this, yet another post about MMOs rather than P&P.

So mounts in MMOs.

My issue here - in the typical way mounts are handled is sixfold.

1. Mounts should be more than a mere speed-boost for your journeying around.
2. You should be able to store equipment on your mount (granted the tragically flawed Fallen Earth allows you to do this).
3. You should be able to fight from your mount. ...this also gives rise to the notion of your mount being damaged or killed... and;
4. Your mount should have skills and abilities.
5. You should be able to modify the look of your mount, in terms of appearance.
6. And you should be able to equip your mount (different from storing equipment, as I will explain....

Okay so point 1. above is really my overall gripe, and the other five points how you get over it. So I'll begin with 2.

2. Noting my earlier post on how to handle backpacks, mounts should come with a certain amount of storage - modifiable by upgrading the saddlebags.  This is not on realistic, but would also prove very useful and may provoke a choice in what sort of steed a player goes for.  Do they opt for a slower pack style animal with lots of storage, thus reducing the need to go back to a town and unload so frequently?  Or do they go for a fast mount, or perhaps a tough mount with some combat skills?

On usability, one shouldn't have to transfer equipment from your mount in order to sell it.  I would simply handle this by, if your mount is nearby, when you open your bags you get one window with your combined personal storage, sortable in all the ways my previous post about backpacks suggests.  And you get another window - sortable in a similar way, for your mounts storage.

3. Mounted combat should be a skill.  Or at least there should be modifiers on certain combat skills which can be used in the saddle.  This would allow for the player to go galloping into battle swinging a long sword, and perform hit and runs - i.e. gallop past an enemy, striking them once and racing past severely limiting the chance for them to retaliate.  This will serve to make combat far more interesting, which it really needs to be, as lets face it the vast majority of MMO combat is merely a series of number keys getting mashed in sequence.

Imagine the scenario where a friendly is engaged in combat at some distance as you ride up... you go into a charge (probably a mount skills in its own right) you bear down on the enemy, strike them with a powerful mounted blow, which should probably stun them too, and before they have time to react, your past, out of range and turning your steed for another go.  This would make certain combat situations far more exciting / realistic / engaging.

But you also need to cater for the downside.  i.e. getting unseated in mounted combat needs to be handled effectively. I'd suggest here you need an animation for tumbling into the dirt and landing stunned on your ass.  Getting unseated should leave a player stunned, damaged and prone to attack, hence providing a risk to the advantage of mounted combat.

But if you allow for mounted combat, then you must also cater for the mount being targeted, and thus damaged or killed.  This simplest way to handle this I'd suggest is to think of the mount being a bit like a hunter's pet.  They can be healed, they can be killed, they can be resummoned if killed, and in some cases they can attack....

4. In most MMOs in the fantasy genre the gameworld presents the players with a variety of mounts, of varying speeds, and that is all.  But once we have considered the notion that perhaps a mount can fight back, i.e. its a 'war'mount of some kind, then we can really put to use some of the fearsome appearances of those fantasy beast-steeds.  Take the Namjok from Rift for example.  Surely an animal like that would be capable of doing a little bit of damage to a target?  And once we start thinking of mounts in a similar way to pets, its natural to start applying some beast-specific abilities, like ram, gouge, trample etc. which your mount could use almost independently in combat, giving it a style and life of its own.

5. and 6.  Considering all of the above it then only seems natural that a world which provides such beasts for transport and combat also makes equipment for them.  Some of which, in its simplest form will merely change the appearance of your mount in some way, but ultimately you should be able to equip a mount with enchanted, barbed armour, increasing its defensive ratings, providing a little auto damage to melee attackers etc, consumable and permanent speed boosts, the options are numerous, varied and pretty much write themselves at this juncture.

Caveat: I do appreciate that delivering mounted combat will necessarily force a change in what has become the established, pedestrian, vein of typical MMO combat.  But then I'm a huge advocate for this change anyway.  As I have mentioned in a previous post, MMO combat really needs to change, to become more sophisticated, and mounted combat is just one way in which this could be achieved.

Enhanced physical interactions with the gameworld

Okay, okay, so how many of my posts start with 'Okay, okay'?

Okay, okay, I know its been ages since my last post.  (How many start like that?)

Okay, okay, sorry but this blog has become less about pure P&P, and more about game design in general.  As this next post concerns MMOs not over-the-table shenanigans.  How many more posts are like that?

Well, the above are purely rhetorical questions of course.  Stuff your answers.  I'm trying to run a business and this eats into my recreational blog time.  I have also threatened repeatedly to start a blog purely about MMO design, which I will no doubt do at some point, but right now I barely have enough spare thought for one recreational blog let alone two, or three or four (as I'd ideally start blogs for MMO's; sandbox action/adventures; FPS etc. etc.).  Seriously, I intend to do this in the future.  I intend to launch a mother-of-all game design blogs and break it into sub-blogs covering design parameters / initiatives anent my favourite genres. I may even be so arrogant as to call it the The series... i.e. The MMO, The FPS... etc. etc.  And it will be about lessons learnt in respective game design re those genres, with notable examples.  And also about evolving genres, improving gameplay, etc. etc.  But all that's going to have to wait, I have a business to run.

So I'll keep this short and sweet.

I've been playing Rift recently.  I like it.  It's like WoW but better.  It's a good distraction from the trials and tribulations of reality (a little too good at times, exerts quite a pull, like the gravity well of a collapsing super-giant).  Anyway, enough to say it is still HEAVILY FLAWED.

As I have mentioned previously I believe (at least I've said it in my head enough times) that a major evolution in MMO game design would be enhanced physical interactions with the game world.

It is not enough to roll out the same tired old formats.  And there are a few directions that need to be followed before we see a serious evolution in the MMO genre.

Firstly, take a lead from Shadow of the Colossus - if you're going to portray massive monsters, make players hacking away at their ankles futile (unless you want to pay homage to Achilles).

Secondly, get some real physics in there.  Even if you have to compartmentalise the world - instance it - in order to cut down on the processing power.  But provide real physics and real interactions with the physical world.  Which segues nicely on to...

Thirdly, let players dextrous enough, with light enough gear (cloth or leather in typical Fantasy MMOs) climb up structures, cliffs, buildings... and enter into skylights, chimneys, holes cannons have made, whatever.  I'm fed up with my 68th level rogue with 3000 agility being unable to scamper about on rooftops or evade capture by taking 'The Thieves' Highway'.

With such enhancements to the physical interactions of the game world we provide for situations like: throwing enemies off of tall buildings / cliffs / ledges.  Many fantasy MMOs have spells and abilities with a 'knock-back' function, and I hate it - HATE IT! - when they cannot be used to send an enemy off a cliff - or similar high castle.

I appreciate some of the mechanics and gameplay behind the reasons why - but largely don't agree with them.  If you as a player mistakenly send an enemy over a ledge into a volcano where they are consumed by lava and are thus unable to retrieve the object you wanted for a quest (which they had on their person, and took to their fiery grave) then you're an idiot.  And you fail the quest.  Simple as that.

When my 68th level rogue with 3000 agility is confronted by a rocky cliff of seventy degrees (which is actually a barrier between zones) I should be able to climb the damn thing!  It makes no sense that I can't.  There are other ways to inhibit or prohibit journeys which don't break down the verisimilitude of the gameworld.  How would I do it?  Let the character climb the cliff if they have dexterity and gear suitable for climbing.  But if you don't want them to succeed - or rather you want to make it very, very hard - have the cliff be home to some terrible flying beasts which will literally pluck the player from the cliff face and fly off with them, dropping them in a nest of ravenous hatchlings!  And that's just off the top of my head.  How cool would that be in a game?  To have your character a) unable to fight (or severely impaired and limited to weapon types) when climbing - perhaps just short one-handed weapons like knives, and they must remain static whilst doing so... and b) have monsters which are literally capable of picking them up and flying off with them!

Water rarely holds much of a threat for players (despite a minor breath issue).  Yet in real life water is a potentially terrifying place because you can drown, you can tossed around by currents, and its home to myriad things that are far more agile and dangerous in water than you are.  Capturing this kind of reality - or at least moving closer toward it in an MMO - is a must-have step toward inducing fear and tension and thus creating a sublime gaming experience that far outstrips that which is currently available.

This post has been brought to you IMHO.

Endless Sea...

I'll share this with you.  I'm fixated with this notion of a flooded world.  Like the polar icecaps melt and 90% of the land is lost underwater.  I think it'll make a great setting for a game, both p&p and computer.  I have these images in my noggin of airports flooded, patrolled by prowling sharks and of whole towns underwater, where survivors dive to reclaim drowned artefacts.  I think players swimming through submerged sitting rooms and school buses has a nice feel to it.

I feel the moisten bedrock of a scenario emerging.  We'll see where it takes us.

Just thought I'd share that with you....

Crimecraft

Sorry, I know, I've been away too long.  A combination of work pressures and chicken pox has held me at bay.
But I'm back!  Well, at least in convalescence.

The bad news is that I'm back talking about MMOs again.  There are two reasons for this.  I'm not playing any P&P stuff at the moment. I'm trying to get a little group together locally, as I'd like to play-test my new system, but finding people who admit to being roleplayers is hard enough, let alone anyone actually committing to a regular date.  I honestly think the world has got its priorities wrong.  Well, not the world, but the vast and terrible majority of its vast and terrible inhabitants.

Anyway, two swelling paragraphs of digression is enough.

Crimecraft!

I've been playing a little of this game here and there, during my pox-ridden convalescence.  And I'm really enjoying it, I have to say.  Sure there's plenty of room for improvement.  But most of what it does it does well.

For those who don't know and can't be bothered to click a link and read a little (and I feel for you, I honestly do) let me tell you, Crimecraft is a free-to-play (which is always nice) 3rd person shooter (which is often nice) MMO (which can be nice, has a lot of potential, but often goes awry).

Its refreshing to step outside the fantasy genre from time to time.  There is only so much eldritch blades, daemonic curses, and sorcerous prophecies that one can take (especially with so, so much of it being so, so hackneyed) that every now and again, just slamming a clip of HEAP rounds into your riot gun and letting loose on a few pixelized strangers is something of a well-deserved catharsis.  And its something that Crimecraft delivers pretty damn well.

I heartily recommend checking it out, for a bit of ballistic light relief.

Actually, far more than light relief... perhaps ballistic heavy petting would be better?  No, try ballistic orgiastic bliss.  Yes, that just about covers it.

Being an MMO (essentially the online world's appellation synonymous with 'roleplaying') you can craft your own weapons, or ammo, or mods to your weapons.  You can cook up your own combat drugs.  There's quite a lot of customization possible, both in the look of your character, and in their skills, so it does float one's MMO boat quite well too.

One thing that has started to frustrate me a little is the fairly regular need to replenish your supplies of Ammo and Boosts - the latter being the drugs you use in combat to enhance your performance.  And I love a good performance enhancer, in practically any form.

But the good news is, the developers provide forums to which the players can submit their ideas.  I made my first post today, on the subject of how to get around the need to constantly find a gun vendor to buy new ammo or a chemist to buy new boosts... how to automate that process a little.  If you're interested, you can read my typically eloquent and elegant solution here.  :-)

(btw, I jest with that last line, in case you were thinking I really am that narcissistic).  You can never be too careful.  The number of people that take what I say seriously.  Seriously!

peas.

Dungeon Bash turned on its head

Ah, its feels good to be back in the P&P driving seat after a couple of random posts about MMOs.

So without further ado...

Dungeons.

You gotta love 'em.  

Though, that said, the tired old dungeon bash (or Dungeon Crawl as they are oft called) has really had its day for anything but the most rudimentary of games run for the most novice of players.  And even then I'd say you could do something more interesting with it.

Award-winning P&P game designer John Wick, whom I have referenced numerous times in prior posts, has a pretty interesting concept with his Dirty Dungeon.  Which he describes here on You Tube.

As with most of Wicky's ideas, they certainly give you food for thought, but I tend not to take them up wholesale, rather pick bits out of them, mush them up a little and turn them into something else.  Which is precisely what I intend to do with his Dirty Dungeon concept - and make it more of a collaboration rather than something almost purely player prescribed, which whilst an interesting idea - goes a little too against the grain of roleplaying for my delicate palate.  What I'd like to see players do, is actually roleplay the gathering of the information.  And so you as the GM come to the table with a rough background for why the dungeon is there.  And a modular design for the architecture, and as the players do their research in libraries, talking to old adventurers, and generally listening to rumour and gossip about the place, you think on your feet and use their discussion and the ideas that emerge to build your dungeon on the fly.

Anyway, that's not what I came here to talk about.  That's all intro.

The following idea is something I developed a few years ago, inspired by the Bulldog Productions game Dungeon Keeper. I started it once with a group of players but never got to finish it due to the encroachment of RL into the fantasy world I prefer to inhabit.  It might be interesting now to redevelop it in conjunction with the Dirty Dungeon idea above.

The idea is fairly straightforward but ultimately turns the classic notion of the Dungeon Bash on its head.

In a distant region of the world, a little off the beaten track, a town has been periodically besieged by the denizens of a nearby dungeon.  And periodically the town strikes back by sending off the odd group of heroes and adventurers to seal the dungeon, and its fate, once and for all.  Obviously this hasn't worked, and none of them have ever been seen or heard of again.

The PCs are hired by notables in the town, or the local Venturers' Guild, or just because they want to make a name for themselves.  Whatever reason, some townsfolk tell them about the dungeon, and they stride off (after researching the legends and making suitable preparations one hopes) to go bash it.

But this is an 'evilpilch' game, and they don't call me that for nothing.

The dungeon is in fact the lair of an ancient and potent Lich, far more powerful than the combined forces of the party.  And this is important.  Because at some stage (not prescribed, we allow the players to penetrate the dungeon to a degree) but one by one, they come a cropper and fall foul of the dungeon's traps and undead denizens.  

But this is not the end of the game.  Far from it.  The players, after their demise are reawakened en masse, on a series of cold dark slabs of stone, much like sarcophagi.  And on a shelf before them they see what they suspect are their own hearts in dangling from a chain within glass jars.  A corresponding crudely stitched wound down their breastbones.  They have been reanimated as Wights.  Undead that retain the memories of their former lives, and their skills, but are at the behest of their reanimator.

On so begins the game proper.  With the Lich tasking the players to defend its lair against intruders.

The Lich also has a series of special tasks for them, kidnapping virgins from the town.  Bringing in children to sacrifice at the Lich's altar.  All manner of gruesome and unsavoury assignments.  There may even be a way for the players to turn against their master, or otherwise indirectly orchestrate the Lich's demise so they are freed from bondage.

But in short, this is how a regular dungeon bash can be turned on its head.

You kill the poison turtle and it drops a magic battleaxe...

It's your favourite, fantasy MMO land.  Strolling through the near photo-realistic forest you come across a skeletal knight in full plate armour wielding a spiteful broadsword, his tattered tabard bearing the emblem of a cruel and long-dead Order.

Fortunately you are a sorcerer of terrific power, and you casually unleash All Hell's Fury with the merest twitch of an eye and turn its bones to dust.

You run over, loot the corpse and find: 16 gold pieces and an enchanted hat shaped like a chicken's head.
What should you have got?  Well the 16 gold is incongruous as I find it hard to believe that a skeletal knight requires any loose change.  The chicken-head-hat is just plain silly, not because its a chicken-head-hat, but because the skeletal knight wasn't wearing it, nor does it have any bags to keep such an item.  And again, why would the skeletal knight be carrying it?

What should have dropped is: an ancient suit of plate armour, a tattered tabard bearing the emblem of a long-dead Order and a spiteful broadsword, also likely very old.  You can see where I'm going with this.  What they have is what they drop.

One thing that really frustrates me about MMOs in there insistence of creating incongruous loot tables for virtually all of the mobs.  Its high time this was rectified.  I want to see mobs dropping what they are visibly carrying, plus a chance to drop a few other things congruous to their background, condition, blah, whatever.

It really is that simple.

What they have is what they drop.