Not A Game!

General Discussions
#21

We’ve got Paranoia… we’re just too old and wise to play it. It is, as you say, an anti-game. Many years later I now realise that the rulebook for Paranoia was really just a massive joke. It wasn’t meant to be actually seriously played; it is a collection of every bad idea in games design in a very cleverly written and funny, well-thought-out rulebook.

In CoC I current play a “minder” with an eyepatch called Blott, who looks after an arrogant, carousing, self-centered, debauched and largely disinterested nob who has been largely disinherited by his aristocratic father. Great fun. Previously I played a detective called Sam Slade who resolutely refused to believe in the existence of anything remotely paranormal. Well, to begin with :smiley: We tend towards doing this sort of thing in CoC because there’s no other way to really change or differentiate a character. Without the constant dripfeed of advancement (there IS advancement, but it is excruciatingly slow and actually has a negative feedback mechanism) we instead build on our character’s personalities, goals, and motivations, rather than mindlessly whacking the button hoping for another pellet of cocaine.

Cas :slight_smile:

#22

To a certain extent is pretty impossible to compare pencil-and-paper RPGs vs. computer. Anyone that’s run a pen-and-paper game with decent players knows that your carefully planned out scenarios won’t really work anything like you expected unless you’re force feeding the story to the players. They’ll pretty much always do something too insane to consider or find some crack to sneak through or cleverly side-step, etc. etc. You have to adapt to the “collective” storyline that unfolds the best you can to have fun. Stuff like this is simply impossible to script up. Err…I’ve forgotten what point I was working toward.

#23

You were probably going to say how that games designers have co-opted the term RPG for their pale shadows of imitations of the real thing, and that the reality is that the only bit of real RPGs that is present in their computerised imitiations is the P. The R is absent, and like the OP has noticed, it’s barely a G.

Cas :slight_smile:

#24

[quote=“princec,post:17,topic:39483”]
Now I’m impressed by your story-telling skills. ;D A really interesting read which brings into words things I’ve been thinking for a while. The biggest problem I have with grinding advancement is the lack of satisfaction I get from it. I played WoW for a long time and got addicted a little, until I realized how little fun I was having. Grinding is not fun, but it sure is addictive. Until you realize how the system works, then it’s not so hard to hate grinding advancement and lose interest in it. Diablo III was a big disappointment for me, for this reason.

Specialisation Balance systems appear to me to be much more closely tied to “skill as effort” based games, as opposed to “time as effort” based games that rely on grinding advancement. Specialization balance can only grasp my attention for longer periods of time if I get a feeling of accomplishment, of increasing skill, by skillfully combining different specialized skills.

Anyways, thanks. Got me thinking.

#25

Indeed - when players have to rely on inventiveness and cunning and out-of-the-box thinking to achieve their goals, rather than just ensuring they have a bigger set of numbers than the opposition, that’s when things get more interesting. Still… it makes for a usually terrible computer game experience, because inventiveness and cunning and out-of-the-box thinking fit incredibly poorly to the remarkably limited environment that a computer game offers.

More boring Cas stuff:

In AfterEarth I’ve also been trying to reduce the players’ reliance on huge ranges of probability to justify their actions to themselves. D20 is at first glance a very elegant and simple system - you roll a D20, add some stat and have to beat a certain value (say, 5, 10, 15, whatever). Unfortunately a D20 gives us 20 possible random values. What does +1 mean in real terms? Should I take a risk knowing I’ve got a +1 chance? The human brain is totally inept at understanding probability (if it was any good we’d all be playing poker. And of course then poker wouldn’t exist because it relies on people who are better at understanding probability playing versus people who aren’t but think they are). So I’ve removed one of the sacred cows of pen & paper RPGs and chucked out all the funny dice and left it with a D6 based system, which gives us basically 6 ranges of probabilty. Seems human beings are much, much better equipped to deal with a very short range of probability. Also removed all the tons of modifiers. And all the stats are based on very low numbers ranging from about 1…10, where human beings are “3” on average. And there’s only 4 stats. But there we go, it won’t be to many peoples’ tastes.

Cas :slight_smile:

#26

I’ve often thought about attempt to making a CFRPG that I’d like to play, but sadly my potential worldwide target audience would be about 3 people.

#27

Guild Wars has a fair amount of storytelling and plot. Other than that MMO’s really lack it.
Which is probably why I cant play them too long.

Either the game has to give you motivation -> story, or what happens in the game -> other human players. Starting such a game with a group of friends helps, because then they motivate you…

But yeah I’m all for storytelling in all types of games, and most severely lack it.

#28

And sadly most attempts at storytelling target pre-teen boys. sigh.

#29

True. If only it wasn’t of the “prophecy” type. I am so tired of stories having to do with a chosen one or a prophecy, its just lazy writing to do that YET AGAIN. Its only been done hundreds of times before.

Perhaps I already complained about that before in which case I apologize for the repetition :wink:

#30

http://progressquest.com/

Cas :slight_smile:

#31

Did you follow it until the end? I actually laughed, but got bored while selling off stuff…

#32

As an aside, if I were ever to create a pencil-and-paper RPG I think I’d use a triangular distribution for success/failure stuff. Consider 2d6:

probabilities: {1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1}/36
in percentages: {2.77778, 5.55556, 8.33333, 11.1111, 13.8889, 16.6667, 13.8889, 11.1111, 8.33333, 5.55556, 2.77778}

#33

D&D rolled stats in a gaussian distribution (3d6) but rolled against them in a uniform distribution (d20). Almost there but not quite. GURPS did things right, (exponentially higher point costs for stats, 3d6 rolls against them) but loaded way too much into just four stats, and skills didn’t always cover the gap. I always thought White Wolf had a pretty darn decent stats system, even though I don’t remember much of how it worked.

Paranoia was just a super fun way of blowing off steam. My favorite scenario I cooked up was that the players were given a Portable Fusion Projection Device – basically a nuclear bazooka – that laid waste to everything within 500 meters of whatever it hit. Once powered on, it had to be fired every 1-3 hours (determined randomly) or it would overload and make big nuclear boom and wipe everyone out (and of course it couldn’t be powered off). Naturally most of the campaign was indoors. And did I mention the user interface for firing the thing was an AI that was essentially a mentally unhinged version of Clippy? “Hi!!! It looks like you’re trying to fire the RandTech Corporation Experimental Man-Portable Fusion Projection Device Mark V Beta! You have (cut to robotic IVR type voice)37 seconds(back to annoyingly chipper voice) to fire before overload! Would you like to: a) Arm the fusion core. b) Override standard firing protocols. c) …” and so on.

They always actually had more time than that, since of course RandTech never quite got their progress bar quite right (yes there were a lot of Microsoft jokes in there). But they did have to at least take it seriously, because the time they didn’t … well, the original team started with the Mark IV beta and an extra clone for each all around :wink:

#34

Aha yes I forgot about GURPS. We played a really good Culture scenario (as Special Circumstances agents. I played a female SC agent who liked shopping for shoes and bags in alien cultures) using the hi-tech GURPS ruleset. It suffered a little from the AD&D4 mechanical complexity but it was such a nicely consistent system. Getting head around probabilities again confused everyone to some extent.

I think it’s a massive shame pen & paper RPGs aren’t a bigger and more popular pasttime considering how they fill nearly every gap left miserably starved by what passes for RPGs on computers. And much more social as well.

Cas :slight_smile:

#35

The problem I’ve had with most RPG gaming sessions is that they tend to either be too much game mechanics and no story, or all story and no game. While the former at least gives the human contact lacking in computer games, the lack of any game mechanics in the latter makes it like sitting around telling interactive fanfic, which I’m not into. And I’m way too possessed of a sense of dignity to participate in LARPing.

It’s all just a delicate balance I suppose, and I’ve never found a group that could hold it for long. I look on with sheer envy at the elaborate constructions that Mike Krahulik of Penny Arcade comes up with for his D&D games. The guy inhabits a completely different world of gaming than I’ve ever experienced.

#36

You should play FF3-9!

#37

This is my new game. It is called Bashing Rocks.

You start play with a little rock. Use it to bash little rocks.

After an hour of bashing rocks, you get a bigger rock. Use it to bash bigger rocks. This is called levelling up.

You can level up to level 75, so expect plenty of fun.

While playing Bashing Rocks, you may not wear a hat. This is part of the fun. If you want to wear a hat, visit the in-game store and buy one of the approved Bashing Rocks hats. Or, sign up five of your friends for Bashing Rocks, and get awarded the free Golden Beanie.

MMORPG == notAGame

#38

Don’t jest, I’ve actually designed an Android game that’s almost exactly like that :slight_smile:

Cas :slight_smile:

#39

Solar 2 is like that too, and that’s a really fun experience!

#40

JRPGs in general are story heavy