Turn-based RPG knowledge/imagination/opinions desired

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Dominic
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Re: Turn-based RPG knowledge/imagination/opinions desired

Post by Dominic »

General thoughts:
Try to get yourself a copy of the "Munchkin" handbooks. The parody elements do a good job of illustrating many of the basic principles of RPGs.


-Character classes: These are more rigid in some games than in others. Remember, classes can be subdivided by factors like species, profession, political allignment and other variables. In some cases, being a member of a certain class obligates a character to do something, even if the player has no reason to want to do the stupid thing, (such as engaging in a death duel with an ogre for the sake of honour). A healer may not be able to fight. An honourable character may not be able to allow the party to use under-handed tactics, even if those tactics would benefit the player of that character. (The advantage to using an honourable character is that they can be good for in--game negotions. And, while they are negotiating, the other play-characters can sneak off and do the sensibly dishonest thing.)

It is not unheard of for players to make their characters die (often by using a back-door deal with a game's moderator) if they are really unhappy with how things are going.


-weapons/gear: Point balance. Treat weapons as a sub-category of gear. The effect of a given items should be reflected in its in-game cost or the difficulty in getting one. In theory, an expensive enough item (call them "dungeon master's dice") can do it all.


Characters can grow out of combat based on either in-game plots or the player's whimsy.

in combat, does it generally matter *where* your characters are? Is it ever advantageous to surround an enemy, or somehow lead them onto terrain that works against them?
Location is critical. Characters have to be in proximity for close-quarters fighting, and may have to spend "moves" getting close enough to fight. (This is why markers or miniatures are so important.) In combat, the general goal is (in the words of Munchkin) "to kill the monsters and take their stuff".

A moderator (or dungeon master) can be really nasty with this. They can set up tons of weak enemies, and have the players finding useful items scattered about. These items can be everything the gaming party might need (cursed weapons, enchanted armour, healing potions, stuff to make players immune to the curses on those otherwise useful weapons mentioned above, tons of gold for buying more stuff later....). And, the the moderator can have a monster jump out that puts it all in perspective. Those weak enemies (bandits of various species, maybe even some wild fauna) were not running towards the players, they were just trying to get away from the big monster. All of those useful items, (the stuff that seemed like it was made for a dungeon raiding party), were actually things dropped by members of other parties while they frantically tried to get away (and maybe failed to get away).

Even the most Munchkinly power-gamer will get bored if the game is too easy. So, enemies and problems are essential. Try to work out ground rules for "how bad it can get" beforehand though.


-Dice tossin' Dom.....
Last edited by Dominic on Mon Jul 22, 2013 1:52 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Turn-based RPG knowledge/imagination/opinions desired

Post by Shockwave »

Gomess wrote:So with all this talk of rolls and speed and turn time, I have what might be my stupidest specific question yet: in combat, does it generally matter *where* your characters are? Is it ever advantageous to surround an enemy, or somehow lead them onto terrain that works against them?

I guess what I'm really asking is... what do you guys, as RPers, think *should* matter? I'm coming from a background of near total ignorance, and hopefully that'll let me ask some questions or make some suggestions that don't normally come up in this sort of discourse. Basically, I'm asking you all to tell me what a turn-based RPG could and should be.

No pressure.
Yes. I was playing a D&D game with my friend and had a character who could fly. I had declare as part of my turn that I wanted to grab the skeleton in front of me, fly up to the top of the room and drop it to it's death. Or smash it against the wall.

As for what a game "could be" it depends on what context. By that I think it would help to answer your question if we knew what you were planning to do. Are you going to try to run a game? Are you trying to play a game? Or, are you developing something for someone who's running or playing a game? These questions are pretty important because what a game "could be" relies so heavily on everyone playing. The Game Master can set up an interesting scenario and setting but if the players are all off on their own doing stupid shit, it won't really matter. Likewise, if you have a cohesive group of players that work well together, but have a GM that doesn't have any clue what he wants that group to do or where to go with it, that can get just as bad too. For the record, the D&D game my friend plays has been going every week for about 8-9 years now. The GM running it usually has things planned out for the players well in advance. He also makes sure not to put them in situations that their characters can't handle. It's not a fun game if you think you're GM is trying to kill you. And even less fun if he/she succeeds. Developing a character from scratch can take an entire play session depending on how detailed you get with it so to spend that time rolling a character only to have it get eaten by a dragon two minutes into the game would be a frustrating experience. On the other hand, spending that time only to wander around aimlessly doing nothing would be equally frustrating. A good GM would find ways to balance that out.
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Re: Turn-based RPG knowledge/imagination/opinions desired

Post by Gomess »

Shockwave wrote:Yes. I was playing a D&D game with my friend and had a character who could fly. I had declare as part of my turn that I wanted to grab the skeleton in front of me, fly up to the top of the room and drop it to it's death. Or smash it against the wall.
See, my question is, did that have a wildly different effect, or was it purely cosmetic? Did it 'cost' you more, and did it ensure the skeleton's destruction?
Shockwave wrote:By that I think it would help to answer your question if we knew what you were planning to do. Are you going to try to run a game? Are you trying to play a game? Or, are you developing something for someone who's running or playing a game?
Yeah, sorry I've been so cagey but it's almost like a subconscious part of my practice that I don't like to talk about hypothetical things *too* hypothetically (except in your sig I guess, dammit!). But, ok. There's a potential space for me to help work on developing characters and maybe even setting for an RPG- most likely a flash-based game- and while I have plenty of 'ideas' they're far too raw and uninformed for me to be proud of them (this is rare for me!), and since this board has the highest concentration of RPers I know, I figured you guys were my best think tank.

Would it help if I ran some of my ideas by you all and you told me how original/doable/whatever they are? I was against that idea at first because I wanted to get myself a grounding in the basics before throwing my creative poop around an admittedly small cage.
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Almighty Unicron
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Re: Turn-based RPG knowledge/imagination/opinions desired

Post by Almighty Unicron »

Are your ideas for a GAME ("crunch") or lore/story/setting ("fluff")? I've worked on both now and I can be pretty savage in that regard.
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Re: Turn-based RPG knowledge/imagination/opinions desired

Post by Gomess »

Is there an inherently greater value in either? If I'm called upon to create 'fluff', I'd like to think it's worthwhile fluff.

I'm not entirely sure I can separate the two cleanly, anyway. So far I've asked if physical positioning of characters has a tangible effect on battle, which is presumably a gameplay element? But I'm equally curious about what contexts would be more interesting than swords 'n' sorcery, which is presumably seen as fluff.

Actually, cutting through common interpretations of perceived 'objectively valuable' content in a medium which is supposed to be a relatively personal, customisable experience would be a nice bonus to this thread, too.
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Almighty Unicron
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Re: Turn-based RPG knowledge/imagination/opinions desired

Post by Almighty Unicron »

Different skillsets are involved. Some people can only do one, some can do both.
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Dominic
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Re: Turn-based RPG knowledge/imagination/opinions desired

Post by Dominic »

The context and setting determine the fluff.

Crunch is essential. Make no mistake. If you do not have the how and why of a rule nailed down, the game will come screeching to a halt the minute there is a contested action or roll. Fluff will do nothing to soften that.


The "crunch" is how the game works. This is how the numbers and stats that a character has translates in to playable actions. (If Shockwave's flier from the post above decided to punch the skeleton, how much damage would he likely do? The answer lies in his stats.)

The "fluff" is why it works in a given setting.

The range and effect of a ballistic attack is "crunch". The "fluff" is what the attack is based on. Is it a side-arm? Is it a cross-bow bolt? Is it a magic spell? Do some reading on the "Rifts" or "Cartoon Action Hour" RPGs for the fungibility of "crunch" between genres.

Or, look at 40K. Here is your homework: Look at the armies for both "Warhammer" and "Warhammer 40,000". Look at the *rules* for those armes, and figure out which are analogues for each other. (Here is a freebie: Skaven and Tyranids are very similar.) The crunch is largely the same. But, the fluff (including vocabulary for some stats) is different.


-Dictate giving Dom....
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Gomess
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Re: Turn-based RPG knowledge/imagination/opinions desired

Post by Gomess »

But you guys were meant to be doing my homework for me! Damn internet with no toilets to push heads down.

Alright, I'll bite, but I'm still interested in more of youse guys' personal opinions.

I'm thinking "fluff" might have a deeper meaning than I realise, though. Does it literally mean "whether or not the ranged weapons are bows or lasers," or is it a more specific term for pages and pages of prose in a shiny manual that just acts as a story hook?

I think it's a shame if it's the former, since in my out-of-the-culture mind, you're damn right it's important to game pacing, strategy and control whether I'm shooting a limited number of homemade sharpened sticks from a pouch on my back with some string, or shooting an invisible superheated beam of light from an unknown energy source just by pulling a trigger. There's so much diverse meat for different gameplay angles in those two examples.
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Almighty Unicron
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Re: Turn-based RPG knowledge/imagination/opinions desired

Post by Almighty Unicron »

If you can put yourself in the mind of a video game designer rather than a tabletop game designer, "Crunch" is what the game needs to run and be played and "fluff" is what makes the game compelling.

Crunch is "unit A attacks unit B with a long distance weapon that does X amount of damage with a critical attack chance of Y that can hit for 2*X damage" whereas fluff would be "the elf uses the enchanted bow of numenor to loose an arrow at the gnoll"
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Re: Turn-based RPG knowledge/imagination/opinions desired

Post by Gomess »

See, again this is where my outsiderness really comes into play. I genuinely at no point thought of those two things as separate. How can you have one without the other? Even Pong had some minute degree of storying to it. And like any work of fiction, ideas of structure and aesthetic should surely grow simultaneously, rather than one taking precedence.

So I guess my answer is... both? That's the route I'd prefer to take, at least. I dunno, you guys know the ropes, so if it seems like I'm leaning more towards one than the other from my posts, then let me know. If it really does matter.
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