What We Knew Before We Knew Anything | Designing The Game
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- čas přidán 30. 08. 2023
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The six stat choices are great, but consider: if "Endurance" becomes "Toughness", then every hero is defined by their ARMPIT
A genius.
But now... it's ARMPIE... maybe even better. LOL
It could also be RIP MAT if you wanna keep them in groups
god I love every single one of these videos. As a game design major, I can't get enough of this series
Where's your degree from, can I have one?
I really makes me consider how I could change my home games to make them more interesting while not making them infinitely more difficult or bloated.
I'm here for the same reason. The future of ttrpgs is gonna be awesome. Another renaissance of rpgs.
As a game design teacher, it really is so good.
What a useless degree to have. Just do maths
As someone who is fascinated by how different ttrpg systems go about exploring a similar genre or *feel* these video design updates are always a welcome surprise. Also it's nice thing to listen to MCDM in the background while I homebrew. It's as if Matt's voice has some unknown dweomer, digging it's way into my mind in order to help my writing.
The first three videos sent my mind racing through a wild ride of possibilities for my own game. Had to rewind a lot and watch them several times to actually get everything, but it was worth it.
I feel the same way.
This video reinforced for me why I like point-buy systems. I like the slow drip of minor improvements - often tied to small successes - that feels more lifelike and reinforces an ongoing story; rather than the more momentous and dramatic "leveling up" moments.
I'm reminded of monte cooks new game, Old Gods of Appalachia. You spend experience points to buy upgrades for your character. Once youve bought enough upgrades, you gain a rank, which unlocks new upgrades to buy. They've combined classes and levels with that kind of shop-for-new-abilities design. That said, it is principally a horror game. Very different vibe.
That's all of Monte Cooks games. Old Gods is powered by the Cypher System, same as Numenera. If you like that, they've got heaps of different genres under the same system.
That's pretty much how Earthdawn does it as well. Earthdawn is also one of the few games I've seen where classes ("disciplines") and levels ("circle") are a Watsonian part of the game. That is, it's a perfectly reasonable thing for a character to say "I am a Nethermancer of the 4th circle".
Thanks for shouting out that game, I have a friend who loves Appalachia and Call of Cthulhu, and is actively running a CoC game set in Appalachia. It was basically designed specifically for her, lol. I told her about it and linked the free starter packet, and she says it looks awesome
Warhammer. both fantasy and 40k work on the similar principles. You are buying abilities with experience, and when you accumulate enough experience, you level up
Well hey there family.
Man, this was such a great bite sized chunk of design philosophy. I tend to land more on the classless/level-less styles, but these are all fascinating ideas. There are no "right" answers, just pros and cons, preferences and play styles. I love it.
You and your collaborators are right to trust your own judgement. You can break yourself and your project worrying over every Jack and Jill's feedback.
The "getting used to your character abilities" aspect of the game was the big thing I saw in 5e when running the WotC campaigns with milestone levelling. Characters were bumping levels so quickly the players never had time to get used to running them at any particular level. I saw a little of that with 3.5e too but, for that, as it was a homebrew campaign with XP levelling, I just slowed them up to a rate under the RAW.
I've always believed in 'one adventure to get a new cool ability, at least one adventure to show off mastery of the new ability', and try to write towards that. I'm asked to do a lot of conversion work, so it's not always feasible, but seems like a good goal, even if I just put a hint in the middle of an adventure that the PCs can level up during a bit of downtime.
I started with a "spend xp on new upgrades" game and most of the games I've played are like that, and it really screwed with the way I approach characters in these sorts of games. I only noticed recently that I always see my characters as "incomplete". Like they're always only part of the character I actually want to be playing and when I get that next ability they'll finally be working properly. Except that point where they're "finished" usually never comes, because if it did, I'd have nothing left to spend xp on.
Really recently, like, a couple of weeks ago at the most, I started to slip that mindset. Playing Baldurs Gate 3 helped a ton with it, and its making my experience with these games much better. My character, even in a point buy system isn't constantly feeling like they're a beta version of who they're really supposed to be.
The problem, I suspect, is that I'm making a character with all the different abilities and combinations in mind first, and then building up to them in game. I'm thinking about how cool it'll be when I get all those things I'm planning on getting, and the character I built already has those skills in my head, the game just isn't letting them do it yet. Part of the issue is game balance too, some systems your characters are just really really incompetent and don't actually make any sense until they get a certain amount of xp under their belt, but my mindset was probably the biggest factor.
"Characters were bumping levels so quickly the players never had time to get used to running them at any particular level" is exactly why I go with milestone leveling. Stop the players from worrying about tracking XP, and pre-planning their next upgrade that they know is coming soon. Instead, they can only focus on what they currently have because they have no idea when the next level is coming.
Whoa. I really saw this video like instantly. That never happens! Uh, hi Matt and MCDM! Hope you're having a good time with developing this thing, seems really cool so far!
I think it's fair to say we're actually having fun working on this! :D
Would love to hear more about the classes and how you're doing modular choices within the classes, whether that looks like subclasses or instead picking companions/powers as customization instead.
This helped a lot with creating my imaginary game used solely for the setting of a VR Game in my story I’m writing. Really appreciate helping me understand better about designing games!
I'm in a similar place with the game system and novel I'm working on simultaneously. The insight is great!
In comparison to the corporate design of our current video game climate, which I know you have personal history with, it's really encouraging to see game design focused on fun, and with tough decisions made to further the design, not for greed. Not to mention, being able to watch the process! Thanks for taking us along with you
I thought Skyrim didn’t lock you out of any abilities, just provided prerequisites for them. Meaning given enough grind you could master all the trees
Unfortunetly that is not Skyrim, they change that part of the game for Skyrim with trees and level cap. Morrowind and Oblivion works, of you leveled skill you got a trait.
@@MrocnyZbik I did some googling, they patched the level cap out about a year after release. Meaning you can unlock all 251 skills. Of course in no way do I think this is a good system for MCDM’s TTRPG 😆
@@AphonicRoar I understand why Matt choose levels and classes, hell He explained it very well. But I am not a fan of classes and levels. More M&M, Fate, Savage Worlds, Icons, Genesys this type of games. But we will see, what we will see.
@@AphonicRoarIt becomes possible to do this in many different games. In fantasy flight's Star Wars RPG (that they lost the rights to), given enough XP you could become an unkillable demigod that can do everything and never fail. The limiting factors become table time (you only ever get between 5-15 XP per session), the story itself, and your GM's sanity.
If you want to play 200 sessions and still feel like there's story to tell and fun gameplay to be had, there's nothing stopping you from walking straight up to Palpy and punching him into next millennium. Most games aren't going to survive that level of play, though. And your poor GM will probably give up in despair long before that happens.
After 3 years of very infrequent play my players have just started to unlock another skill tree in Star Wars. But you are right, I do have a mechanic in the group that has 4 yellow dice to roll on his mechanic skill and I have a hard time throwing anything at him that is an actual challenge. In the other hand it is quite the fun when he fails a roll, because it is just so rare. 😂
"58 seconds ago" ive been blessed
Praise the Walrus!
"not every skill is equally usefull" makes me regret college wildlife rehab class. Except is was easy credits!
I am thinking a lot about how a 4 Stat system inspired by Disco Elysium (DE) could be applied to fantasy games. The mandatory nature of Constitution and dumping of Intelligence feels like there is a better way to do stats. DE has stats and skills, but shuffles the skills around some, for example to bundle perception into "Dex" or lying into "Intelligence". As required by the games design, choosing stats feels like choosing a class, as in "I want to do -Brute Force/Precise/Smart/Emotional- stuff". And not choosing a stat feels like actually losing out on something, rather than obviously dumping Int.
Gold star for the use of the word "boutique".
I read this originally as the Patreon post. Still, the video helps me take the information in. While I have affection for skill based games, hard to beat the flavor of classes. It helps the creative juices going.
This video series is EXACTLY what i wanted from this channel! I feel like what I want out of dnd videos have grown along with Matts channel. When first i watched Matt, i loved and played dnd but since have moved on to designing my own system for each campaign (with much stolen from other systems) so this is SO helpful for me and the way i think about my game design! Thank you!
The M.A.E.R.I.P. system, I feel like we are very close to having a great acronym.
primea
One idea I just thought of courtesy of The Stormlight Archive, is, leveling up as a climax. Imagine if, like Kaladin, you leveled up when all hope seems lost. I'm not sure how you could implement this (maybe have some different triggers that players can decide to have, like hitting 1/4 HP, running out of X resource, seeing a friend fall in battle, etc. And, if you are at most [value of exp] away from the next level, you can immediately level up. Note, this probably requires you to have already done all of the level up mechanics you need to do, and it might be awkward to level up during a fight, but I feel like it would totally give that shounen anime feeling of rising to the occasion at the darkest hour
Was considering how to go about that as well, since while leveling up mid-fight is a great way to portray that "unlocking newfound potential" moment, tallying EXP in the middle of combat to see if you get one kind of runs contrary to the vibe of unexpectedly getting it, unless the GM somehow keeps track of it in secret.
THANK YOU! You have perfectly articulated what I’ve been trying to explain to people for years. Different classes are meant to have different “power levels”, because what that’s really demonstrating is a difference in playstyle! Class abilities should be designed to encourage specific play styles. My favorite example of this in D&D 5e is the Rogue. Sneak Attack is great. Does it deal the most damage in the whole game? No. But it often FEELS like it does. More importantly, it incentivizes the player to do the following things:
- Attack enemies that are already fighting your allies
- Keep your distance and duck behind things
- Stick to the shadows
These are all the things a Rogue should be doing. Creating class abilities that heavily incentive doing them is FANTASTIC design.
Good video! I am a fan of the pace at which these are coming out. Keep up the great work!
These videos are so delightfully informative! I love learning about your design thought process. I've been having a ton of fun using Flee Mortals design principals in my Pathfinder 2E encounter building. Altering certain creatures to fall within the different buckets of soldier, controller, skirmisher etc and it has made encounter so much more dynamic!
I love classes, but my main gripe with 5e, is that once you select the class, you don't really make big decisions.
If you and I both build a cleric, they will play very similar.
Some classes are better than others at this (warlocks with invocations). but I still wish I had more choices and customizability along the way:
"is my cleric more healy healy, or more buff oriented"
"does my paladin smite with the power of his god? Or does his every hit rally nearby allies"
"does my druid channel the raw power of nature into powerful primordial magic, or does he control the flora and fauna to achieve his desires"
The examples I gave here are binary, and can be solved with a subclass. But, the more nuance and choices you have a long the way (ie, a little bit of column A, and a little bit of column B), let's the player really make their character their own.
Love your stuff! Keep it up and I can't wait to play.
P.s. A video abou the implementation of character creation and customization in your game would be really cool!
One thing I quite enjoy is the Career/Specialization system from FFG Star Wars. It creates a system that is largely class-based, but with more flexibility. You start as a Bounty Hunter with, say, the Gadgeteer specialization for instance, and you spend a little while grabbing talents there. But once you get enough points, you can buy another specialization in bounty hunter and get those abilities-- Or if you want to, you can also spec into, like, one of the Hired Gun or Technician specializations, or even one of the force-using ones! It costs more, but there is that freedom to experiment after you've gotten yourself settled.
These videos get me so inspired about the concept of game design! Makes me want to try my hand at making systems or tinkering with existing ones more.
This series is a masterclass of game design. Every video gets me more excited to see what the folks at MCDM are going to put in their game next!
Im extremely excited to see where this game is going. The crunchy drama fuled powerfantasy is sp very enticing. After watching so much of your Running the Game videos and DM diarys, I have fallen in love with the way you and your team run and view the TTRPG space. To see that translated into a new IP is a dream come true. Some day soon I hope to be buying up all your books! Keep up the amazing work everyone.
You're convincing me. I've only played DnD but for years I thought a "classless" system would be the holy grail, like skyrim where enough perk points can eventually buy every skill. But then I thought of an analogy similar to your class 1 & 2 example. If I was playing a game with a new player and I wanted them to have the most fun, would I recommend the barbarian or the wizard? This depends a little on the person but most often the simpler, straight forward class is easier for a new or just certain players. Your breakdown makes a lot of sense in that context.
You bring up Point-Buy systems briefly, and I ran one of those a while ago - GURPS - in my own setting, and it worked great! …because I hoarded all skill/class information and dictated which ones players got, who were then free to buy into. It only worked because I controlled how players could use their points, and my suspicion is that letting players roam free in the skills menu would be a balancing nightmare
that is how gurps is basically meant to be run; seeing how the devs talk in the forums shows that they wanted it to be very GM managed; with what rules, advantages, and skills available being up to them.
@@favretheundead It's certainly not clear that it's meant to be done that way (besides additional rulesets obviously, it's pretty clear you're the one picking and choosing that), but it does make perfect sense. iirc the rules say something to the effect of: the skill/advantage lists have contradictions and things that potentially break the game, so final say is up to the GM's discretion. But it wouldn't hurt for the rules to go even further in encouraging GMs to control them.
@@z-beeblebrox that'd be a good thing, yeah
Can't wait to play this!
BTW, I enjoy a lot of classless RPGs, but they are not monster fighting tactical games: Call of Cthulhu, Night's Black Agents, FATE of Cthulhu, Swords of the Serpentine, ...
I don't think classless games are bad, just not what you are going for.
I feel like D&D class system is really cool for a group of players in their living room. But with the internet, you hear so much about other players that it is hard for a character to feel special when it is just like 10s of thousands of others. I would have liked to see MCDM go back towards simple classes but cooler magic items to differentiate them. Matt did a video about why that was cool.
I used to love the freedom of the Champions/HERO system with its point but system for building a character and unique powers and power sets. But, I have to admit, it took a lot to make a character, and it was often a big barrier to onboarding new players.
Matt, your talk about class vs a la carte design reminds me of the LancerTTRPG. Pretty much each level gives you a *ton* of new choices, and all of them are each incredibly powerful in their own way.
It feels like when they were balancing it, they prefered to buff underwhelming abilities to match the overwhelming ones.
Great video. Looking forward to see where this game goes. Sounds well thought out
This is why my RPG uses a la carte abilities, but includes plenty of abilities that require previous ones. This lets you go down various trees, or splash into whichever ability tree you want. It winds up feeling very similar to multiclassing, but also has the benefit that a new player can pick a tree and just start going down it.
These videos are so well put together and are essentially a free supplement to any design-oriented education.
Always find it interesting to learn why it's okay to make some decisions and not question them.. Got to start from somewhere.
I find the statement at 8:55 or so, "we don't think players should be spending most of their time thinking about how they're going to improve their character" _extremely_ fascinating, but largely because I love doing that and my personal biggest complaint with DnD 5e is that there's genuinely *no point* in doing that, particularly for "martial" classes, and I hate that. I hate that there's no real reason for me to think about next level unless I'm engaging in multiclassing - nine times out of ten, the game is just going to tell me what I get. I don't get to decide what kind of person I'm going to be, I just accept whatever package of nonsense they want me to have. Sometimes that packet is cool, but most of the time, for most classes, I don't get any choices within it. It's why all my Fighters are Battle Masters or Rune Knights, they give me interesting choices.
When compared to 4th Edition, I find this to be a huge downgrade, and it's the thing I wish would change absolutely the most about 5e. There are plenty of legacy things that I find boring, but man would I love it if every character got interesting choices to make on nearly every turn and at nearly every level up.
I love this video! Halfway through I started getting flashbacks to trying to GM Exalted and Shadowrun. The knowledge you need (my group call it System Mastery) to make an enjoyable character that has stats to support your playstyle means that two of my favourite settings and systems are at the bottom of my stack of games I am willing to run.
Easily the most concise statement I've ever found on why this design is compelling and enduring. It's like in eurorack - Best to start with a semi-modular first before you go building your own rack!
Thanks for the Video, Matt. I love the content and your TTRPG wisdom
Cool insights that are very helpful as I muse on my game in my head
I'd love to hear a little more about class design philosophy. I've been playing Starfinder for a bit and class design really does feel like one of the game's biggest weaknesses: See, I think Starfinder has 3 good classes... Soldier, Operative and Mystic. it's very clear what these classes are and the fantasy they embody just by looking at them, they do essentially what they say on the tin. But then you have Mechanic, Envoy, Biohacker, Nanocyte, Solarion, Vangaurd, Precog, Witchwarper and Evolutionary, all of which really fail to express their core fantasy in an obvious way (When they don't outright lie to you about it), which makes it very difficult to pick one of these classes if you're starting from the fantasy first. It took me about four different attempts at making a Mechanic character because every time I went at it I would learn that "No, that really isn't what Mechanic is"... and I ran into this problem over and over and over again any time I wanted to make a character for Starfinder, which was super frustrating because I start with the fantasy of the character and then try to pick classes that fit it.
A masterclass in game design!
love the blue lights in the backroudnd. it is such a good choice. excellent video as always but the blue-brown contrast really works and I wanted to praise the person responsible
Dayum. That point about the point buy trees for single player games and classes with levels for the multiplayer games is such a "oh shit, why didn't I think of that" moment. I really love Shadowrun. But I didn't get to olay it much to start with. So it always seemed like the best system to me cos I was ostensibly playing it by myself when I was reading the book and imagining playing it. Getting to sit down with Shadowrun 3e as an adult with some friends, however, really broke the spell, cos not only can you just choose bad options, it's hard to determine who is doing what. Now maybe that is better for a more nebulous, modern/future cyberpunk style game, that's a different topic. But it really made me appreciate just getting to be a Rogue or a Warlock and know your friends are a Fighter, a Cleric and a Wizard. Well done, Matt. Love it.
There are ways to address some of the issues you note with skill systems. For instance, you can award skill points more infrequently, maybe once a session or bundle them into levels. But like he said, there are no right or wrong answers. There's just the game/system you think you want to play. Going with classes is as reasonable a choice as using the six D&D stats (by whatever name). It works. It's not the only thing that works and might not be the most fun for every group of players. But it works.
I love these, see you in the next one! :D
This reminds me of one of the more interesting experiences I had running a game: after running FF Star Wars for a few sessions, I stopped handing out XP altogether because nobody cared about spending it. There was still "progression," in a sense, but it was all narrative. Something similar happened when I ran a space campaign with Savage Worlds.
I've been making my own TTRPG system and its nice to see so many things u came up with is not only my conclusions.
I figured out why there are patterns in game design and its because it's really hard to think of improvements for certain things.
One major thing I did was tie ability score increases to classes and then there are general free points you get with them as well. So you always have some stats in the class you are but can place them elsewhere. I also completely got rid of empty levels because nothing feels worse than leveling up in a TTRPG and only getting 8 HP.
Love this.
A lot of great fundamental game design principles here that are somehow controversial in too many corners. Bravo!
I would note that there's nothing stopping a game from delaying the spending of XP to downtime between adventures (e.g. in a sanctuary or secured location of dune some kind or needing to take days/weeks of in-game off to spend XP) so that you maintain the customization aspect without breaking the steady-state dynamic during an adventure. At that point you still have to ask yourself if the additional fiddliness of spending XP individually around your class tree is worth the increased learning curve compared to "gain level = gain set abilities," but it's not inherently disruptive of the "everyone gets to master their current powers for the length of this arc" setup.
"Start at the very beginning. That's a very good place to start." 🙂
I also thought about 3 stats for each category, but considered them as power, skill, and capacity. I was considering spending fatigue for powers which feeds into the capacity idea. But then I may also want Physical, Mental, Social, and Spirit, and I don't want 12 stats. So now I'm working on ways to have one number for each of the 4, and have feats or other key words that allow a character to emphasize power, skill, or capacity for each of physical, mental, social, and spirit.
Can i just say how much i love this guy!
The discussion of attributes made me think of properties of other rpgs I've played. I definitely agree that I've seen some grouped like that before. I think New World of Darkness did the power/finesse/resistance trio, but did it with physical/mental/social (for a total of 9 attributes). One that I always thought was a little interesting was 7th Sea because they had 5 stats and made sure that each one had both a Combat and a Non-combat purpose. Even a bruiser couldn't use the social stat (Panache) as a dump stat, because it was used for initiative and how MUCH you got to do in combat. Because as a swashbuckling game, style was very important.
Interesting seeing a video game designer approach to this. I actually see a lot of your ideas in existing TTRPGs now. It's like I get to see your excitement about finding these mechanics n get to image how Evil Hat, Les, etc must have felt when they discovered them for theirs games. Very fun n exciting
Love the explainer, thanks for making these videos. While I do like the freeform xp allocation of Genesys, you've made a very clear reasoning for levels being specific packets to reduce player overhead after each encounter.
Looking forward to giving the system a crack. Cheers mate.
A question that comes to mind and I would be interested in knowing is how you feel about Power Creep in TTRPGs? Do you think it will be a problem for your game long term, if its a problem at all, and if so how will you plan to mitigate it? I love your Videos, can't wait to play and run this game once its done.
This is a wonderful series, thank you for this gift, truly a river to your people 😁 You mention that picking a class in your system locks out the features of a different class - does that mean that there will be no multiclassing equivalent in your system? Thanks!
Wish you would make these videos more often
One other point about the "buy abilities ad-hoc" model: A meta will quickly develop where players figure out which bundles of abilities work well together, or players will look at your menu and say "I want to be a swashbuckler so...."
Either way, you've essentially ended up with a class system, only watered down and with extra steps.
your 6 stats remind me a bit of the 'storyteller system'. there your character has 9 attributes: you have a stat for power, finesse and resilience in each of the three domains of physical, mental and social. of course the similarities end there; in storyteller the attributes go from 1 to 5 and you're building pools of d10s and each roll above 7 is a success.
Very awesome.
I love your choam shirt!
How do you overcome the problem of having optimal solutions? Often times in games, choice goes away when you realise that a certain option is always better than than every other option. Which means that you will always choose the optimal ability.
I agree wholeheartedly with the using classes choice.
We recently tried Deviant in our group - which uses more of a points system rather than classes.
One player tried to make RoboCop
One player tried to make Batman
One player tried to make Mr Fantastic
I made Kilgrave.
We got into fights and all 3 found out they had misunderstood how their powers worked together. Batman was unable to use his gadgets, RoboCop was tough but a terrible shot, Mr Fantastic was stretchy but weak and slow... and then my physically weak and mentally unimpressive character walked into the room and asked them all to knock it off. 3 of the guards turned around and gunned down the others, turned off the alarm, reported the incident over and then lead us to where we needed to go, opening locked doors for us...
It became very obvious that 3 players had taken 6 level 1 powers and one player had taken a single level 6 with broad applications.
It was a decent enough game but it was very hard to make all of the characters feel equally useful when the party is that wildly unbalanced in power - and so we didn't play it for long.
Great video as always. I've been wanting to ask if you have ever played savage worlds. I think a lot of your fun-first dm philosophy lines up with savage worlds. It's definitely different than they game you're creating now tho.
I really need to see the thoughts and testing you all did around spellcasting and using spells in failure die rolls rather than spell slots or "mana pools".
Having a supplement that packages powers together is something mutants and masterminds did I believe. But it's not mandatory. I think that's the best possible system
As long as the Chain comes back!!!
We created The Guild and I started a campaign because i missed watching yall play...i miss the Toms and Anna and Odie...
What happened with the vote of confidence?
interesting call out, when I played Skyrim for a crazy long time, I often just waited on the skill purchases, since I liked what my character was doing at the time. I ended up self-regulating into levels, as he states.
I remember back in the day when my favourite RPG changed from pure levels to continuous skill points. In fact, I was one of the players supporting the design team back then, consulting for them about combat.
Frankly, I agree with you and your team, levels are the easier way and provide a good gaming experience, for just the reasons you talked about.
However, I would never do two things with levelling up.
First:
Milestones as, for example, D&D5e offers, that is a personal one and a simple one as well. I do not believe in "everybody grows the same". So I'm a big fan of XPs and even worse I'm a fan of individual XPs. I think XPs are best awarded via a checklist:
Adventure completed +X,
Cool/Fantastic/Funny/Tragic moments +Y each,
and finally lucky/unlucky dice +Z each.
Second:
I always require some of the levelling up MUST be done between adventures even if that means a character can not level up for a longer time and then jumps up 2 or even 3 levels "at once". Also, I differentiate between things that just can level up without any "break/training" and things that must be trained and learned ...
For example
HP - the upper limit just changes "magically" even in the deepest of jungles or the abyss of a dungeon. No need for a break.
Increasing your skill in swordplay will happen during the adventure naturally.
On the other hand: Learning a new Spell requires time to study and time to practice so that will rarely if ever happen in said jungle or dungeon.
Basically, I ask myself what can be learned "on the road" and what must be learned "off the road".
This can also give meaning to such skills as teaching...
These videos are super informative, and keep my mind on track when designing my own game. Appreciated.
I actually do have the a la carte XP spend system, although it kind of fits the specific fantasy being sold in my game better. It isn't heroic fantasy or dungeon crawling. Combat, when it happens, is likely to be an inconvenience with long term consequences. The fantasy is what Ginny Di calls fantastical domescity, mixed with a bit of the thriving fantasy of Minecraft. The idea is that you live in this fantastical world, and build something within it. This means leveling up in massive chunks feels more out of place, and the ability to "break" the game is in of itself a feature of the game.
It is probably very niche, but it has been an engagine project for the past six years or so.
FFG's initial class based system kind of had this, in that career trees were a little cheaper then non-career trees, otherwise there was nothing stopping anyone taking anything. The number of characters that took collousis for the sheer wounds was nuts, so much so that I never took it even if it made sense for my tough as nails trandosian Jedi who literally can regenerate 20+ wounds on a good turn to so (because he was a Dr who could heal in the force), simply because everyone being able to take the 3 meant it made no sense for me to do so. I got the last last laugh though; in having one of the best defensive profiles in the game otherwise. Fascinating talk!
3:00 I half disagree but not in any way that affects your decision here. You can make a buy-from-a-menu system with powerful and exciting abilities, but the cost is that your abilities can't interact with or build on each other. Blades in the Dark is a great example. That's got some of the coolest abilities I've seen anywhere that let you do crazy stuff like always detect lies, call lightning, or confuse your enemies into hitting each other, but the strongest interaction between two abilities anywhere in the whole game is that you can use an on-push ability one more time if you also have a special armor ability you can use to push. As I said, I don't disagree with your decision because something designed to do tactical fantasy battles better than D&D can't be that handwavy.
As someone who plays GURPS a lot (but not exclusively) I totally agree that not every stat has to be equal. GURPS actually fully embraces that by just giving different point values to stats. Intelligence and Dexterity cover way more skills than Strength and Health(DnD:Constitution) and therefore are twice as costly to upgrade. That also applies to skills. Surgery is much harder to learn than fishing so one is costlier to upgrade than the other.
Meanwhile Charisma is not even a core stat. It's a calculated value based on many factors that apply based on the situation. Your looks, social status, way with words, your voice, your reputation etc. A king might not care how handsome or scarred your face is, as long as you know the Royal Savoir Faire and have the appropriate social status. Similarly the eloquence of your chosen words might be lost on soldiers, but a confident penetrating voice and the right attire might will make an impression.
So yeah, Stats do make a difference. Be it as little as 3 (mind body spirit) or as many as 10 (warhammer) or even more. As long as they fit the experience you want to achieve. And they dont need all to be equal!
Can't wait for the game. So excited
Skyrim does actually let you grind it out to unlock everything, but it takes a long-ass time to do it. all skill trees filled in (100 in every skill) means you've hit level 252
I'm super interested to see what kind of things earn you EXP or level progression in this game. It's always interesting to me what kind of behavior a game wants to reward with a level up, because it says a lot about the kind of stories the designers expect you to tell in the system. Always something interesting to see
Huh, I didn't really think about this perspective for a class based system.
Admittedly I like the more "narrative" style of game that has a simple rule set. Overly structured games give me choice paralysis as often I try to approach them with a character concept first & struggle to realize the idea in the system...or at least that's been my experience with D&D. Race, Class, Background, Ability scores... having to make multiple choices with long lasting effects can be debilitating for an inexperienced player, especially if they know that if they don't make the right choices they won't have fun with the game(or at least significant portions of it). Of course, that's just the nature of these tactical structured long term progression style games...there will be builds that aren't fun for a player and ones that suit a play-style that is at odds with the fiction a player wants.
I love watching these videos tho. Seeing the decision making process, reasoning, & wisdom is fascinating. I look forward to what this system will become, even if it isn't my kind of fun.
Funny you should mention 3 physical and 3 mental stats for characters because this is how it works in Modiphius’ Fallout 2d20 system (which I am currently runnimg). Characters uses the same SPECIAL attributes as the video games, but ‘creatures’ just have Body and Mind.
‘Body’ is used instead of Strength, Endurance, or Agility. ‘Mind’ is used instead of Perception, Charisma, or Intelligence. Creatures don’t get an equivalent to Luck.
It streamlines enemy design for the animalistic NPCs which is useful for GMs.
i've been trying my hand at putting together a dark-souls-inspired system (original, i know), and i planned on having that "a la carte" ability selection until i heard this argument that it can break the cohesive flow of a party's progression, now i'm probs gonna get back on that class system idea i had before
I am working on a game and did 2 blocks of 2 stats. Might not be enough, but it's testing okay and the games mechanics are heavily based on the 4 suits of a deck of card, as we use a deck of cards instead of dice. It's kinda cool.
I went with a 5 stat system for my game, basically collapsing reason and intuition into one stat in terms of your selection of 6 (with different naming because obviously we all have to have our own interpretation of how the body and mind play into things lol).
I fail to see the advantage of levels as milestones however, as even in dnd it's commonplace to hold onto levels until certain milestones are completed e.g.: no exp is handed out until the end of the adventuring arc. This would have the same effect for a stat-buy or a level-bundle system either way. Nobody said that as soon as you kill the goblin for 5 xp you get to spend in mid-combat 😂 It's always up to the GM on when they want the party to develop.
I would like to see more discussion around your choices of stats and how you hope to avoid common pitfalls.
My biggest issues with the standard D&D array are how Dexterity can so easily be used for defense and offense, meaning Dexterity focused characters can outshine others. I’m also not a fan of Charisma being useful for every social skill, meaning efficient social play is usually about putting one person in front and keeping everyone else quiet.
I’d be keen to learn if you’ve thought about these and other challenges with the standard array and if you have plans to mitigate or address them.
Yeah, I was never a fan of the 6 stat system. It created this problem where strength is purely offensive, dex is offensive and defensive, and con is purely defensive. I always felt it made more sense to combine strength and con, where the big strong guy is also tough (which is almost always the case in fantasy anyway).
The social problem is a tough issue, since the nature of classes like The bard pretty much means it's possible to have a Face type role that does the talking. And once you get a "talky guy" it's pretty easy for it to turn into that one guy doing all the talking. Though I don't really have a great fix for that other than to possibly toss out way more conditional modifiers for social situations based on who you are. So the knight character is on par with the face when talking to nobility or the barbarian is really good at dealing with savages, etc. It's kind of sad when the bard is doing all the talking to the barbarian chief instead of the PC barbarian, who they should relate to better.
Possibly getting rid of charisma as a stat and just have it be pure class/background/feat type bonuses. You'd still probably want the bard to be universally good at talking since I think some people do like to be that face character archetype, but that way you don't force every fighter to be an anti-social just because charisma doesn't help their class powers at all. You'd just have the knight be good with the upper class, the peasant hero be good talking to lower classes, and so on. That way all the characters can get a spotlight in certain circumstances.
I also am not a big fan of spellcasting stats in general. While there's value in someone being a clumsy wizard versus a weak wizard, there's not really any value in being a wizard who is bad at doing wizard stuff. If you take levels in the wizard class you should be good at spellcasting. If you want to describe a wizard that isn't good at being a wizard you make him a low level wizard.
"It's not broken, it's a feature." 💯 great quote
This is why my players spent a whole adventure at level 1. Many nights of gameplay. We've played for months now and they will hit level 3 this weekend!
As someone who totally disagrees with your stance on classes vs feats, I think that it's important that designers design the game that feels correct to them. There's nothing wrong with that, and people should respect it.
"Lots of games work like this. Not ours." A very useful sentiment.
I love the class based, skill based split example when you consider games like Exalted that revel in the unbalanced point buy.
I respect how class based games give an immediate understanding of shtick and niche protection, but I also really love the complete customization that games like Gurps offer.
Same. Which is why I see quite a few RPGs try a sort of hybrid approach by making multiclassing and mixing abilities from different classes baked into the core progression. Fabula Ultima comes to mind.
I don't have a problem with 6 stats being used for different things or having different draws for different characters and being mechanically different. I think that adds a lot of depth and replayability! What I don't like is when we get god-tier stats like Dex, Wis, and Cha in DnD. All social encounters boil down to one stat as well some magic classes. Blowing people up and talking to them is the same stat, Wis has the best skills and is another magic stat, Dex adds to your AC and has the second best sets of skills. Strength does damage for 2 classes, Con is overglorified HP, and Int is a magic stat with no other uses or synergies.
If every stat has an interesting system it works with and facilitates fun play between classes (not just in party, but something to get excited about when making a new character) without creating god-tier choices, I'm more than happy. I love the direction this game is going and love hearing your team's design process. Can't wait for next week!
class systems also allow you to later just develop optional rules for multiclassing for those players that really do just want to go nuts and break the system
'if your GM / play group is okay with it and this is just how you enjoy games, okay dokie, here's your rules for mixing and matching combinations and maximizing your character's mathematical potential. have fun'
by having structured classes you get the best of both worlds, imho - accessibility and good balance for anyone that just wants to jump in and start playing, and for anyone that wants to power game you can just give them a little optional puzzle-game for how to blend classes together. and making it clear that the multiclassing rules are optional grants crucial buy-in / permission from the GM / play group with regards to how they're going to play. kind of like turning items on or off in Smash
Given the chance, constitution would be the first I would axe. This might be different in your more combat focused game but in 5e it always felt like the odd one out.
That's more a 5e thing than a Constitution thing, I think. 4e had a different approach to the stat.
I think it makes sense to have an attribute "how durable is this character", because that's an ability that's easy to imagine. The question is about what the stat does.
Woohoo!
A lot of this video, is that the games that you play the most, subconsciously biasd towards before considering anything else.
1:24 Reminds me of the old DC Heroes RPG, which did this but with three columns: physical, mental and spiritual.
This comes at the perfect time for me. I am vocally against classes and levels because that's not the feel i want for my games, and while you chose a different path, your explanations made me look at other systems I've played and realize what they did well and I hadn't noticed, and what I should/shouldn't pinch from them. for instance, I like GURPS's traits and quirks - it makes sense that people born in some ways are better at doing some things - so I'll be adding something like that. On the other hand, the way GURPS handles skills is pretty bad, its the endless list of things anyone can do... and Call of Cthulhu does a great job at "restricting" their list by professions; you have doctors, archaeologists and what not. You can make your own profession, but they have some pre-made ones for new players and I never realized how important that is