Mass Effect RPG: Modular Campaign Options

Looks like them Shephard fellas done got themselves in whole heap of trouble this time.

One of my priorities for this system is that it can support anything from a party of random gangbangers on Omega to an alternate-universe version of Captain Kirk and his crew. Here's some excerpts from a couple of recent discussions I've had as I worked out how I was going to achieve this. . .

[dagda] I'm thinking that there'd be a number of modular campaign aspects (optional things you can add or remove)
[dagda] Basically, take the things Commander Shepherd does, minus the parts that would also be done by a random mercenary team who just takes the cash, spends it on better gear and then finds a new job.
[kirov] Such as?
[dagda] Modular options would probably include spaceships, vehicle 'missions' and leadership.
[kirov] Ah. Like supplemental books.
[dagda] The idea's that. . .well, look at it this way.
[dagda] I decide my players are gonna have a ship, like in Serenity. So I take that 'spaceship' modular option.
[kirov] Same here. Private starcraft are sort of essential for exploring in ME.
[dagda] One of the things this means is that everyone effectively gets "ship crew" points (perhaps literally, I dunno).
[kirov] Economizing everything seems like a bad step, I believe.
[dagda] They can spend these to determine most of their capabilities when it comes to the parts of the gameplay which involve the ship.
[dagda] (The rules for said gameplay are in the same section)
[kirov] The GM would be way better off with just letting the players construct their own craft, and decide on what they can and cannot have.
[kirov] Say, you can have a compliment of Marines, but you can't have a Thanix Cannon too.
[dagda] The GM would probably say "Okay, I want this Spaceship gameplay to be a big focus of this game, so everyone gets Ship Crew points as though they were 5 levels higher than the default option"
[kirov] Keep in mind that space combat is extremely lethal in Mass Effect.
[dagda] GM says ship is class X, that determines whether it's this tiny thing that can barely fit everyone up to a capital ship.
* Kirov imagines a group of gung-ho players in a dreadnaught.
[kirov] Don't ever give the players a dreadnaught.
[dagda] Players then work together to determine the ship's quality- do they have the ship be in mint condition, or give it extra maneuverability in exchange for being an error-prone piece of junk? (We know what Han Solo would choose. . .)
[dagda] 'Ship crew' points would be spent on abilities used during ship-centric gameplay-piloting the ship, operating weapons, conducting emergency repairs and so on.
[dagda] But they'd also be spent on stuff that's between the ends of the spectrum labeled "Ship Quality" and "Crew Ability"
[kirov] For now, I'm not touching ship mechanics with a ten foot telescopic pole. I will eventually start developing it, but not before I have a working prototype of the base gameplay.
(Note: Kirov is working on his own Mass Effect RPG, his being a conversion for Dark Heresy rather than an original system. He can be reached on the suptg IRC chat.)

[dagda] The shared Ship points would be spent on the broader stuff, but player points would buy the smaller, mechanically detailed bits that fall under their area of expertise.
[dagda] Sorry, I'm getting a little too detailed- this is supposed to be an explanation of how all Modular options go.
[dagda] You have the spaceship, which the whole party takes care of together. And then everyone's also got their individual points, which they spend on a given area of expertise (think "role" or "archetype"). Anything ship-based involves soemthign for you to do, no matter the role.
[kirov] Quite, like the team works in ME2.
[dagda] Pretty much. ME2's not gonna convert perfectly to a theoretical game unless you assume the GM was having to deal with a group of like 10 people who could never be counted on to show up, but isolated elements work.
[dagda] So let's use Garrus as an example. For the ME2 campaign, his player initially tells the GM he doesn't have time but quickly changes his mind, so the GM works him in.
[dagda] Since this campaign uses the Modular Ship option, Garrus' player finds himself with a bunch of Ship Crew points to spend. So he focuses on the Gunner options.
[dagda] That means he'll get to make attack rolls each combat round, and provides the ship's weapons with various performance bonuses.
[dagda] Which are basically feats, you know? The equivalent of Quick Draw, Running Shot, etc.
[dagda] Sometimes these feats are due to the PC knowing how to use the tech, sometimes they're the tweaks and minor/specific upgrades which fall under that PC's oversight.
[kirov] Yeah, I understand. But I told you that I haven't put any actual thought into how I will handle ships dealing with others outside the narrative yet. I can't really give you any real feedback here.
[dagda] No worries- again, this is mostly me working towards a general concept for Modular options. I just keep getting drawn into the details because they're interesting to come up with.
[dagda] Anyway, getting the Thanix Cannon, that's the party levelling up and deciding to spend the new ship points on an upgrade from Weaponry III to Weaponry IV.
[dagda] The broad characteristics of the weapon- a sustained "beam" (which has some mechanical ramification) and a narrow fire arc- are also determined at that point.
[dagda] The more specific quirks? Say, extra armor penetration and it "shocks" the ship's internal systems if it scores more than a glancing hit? Those are things Garrus buys with crew points.
[dagda] If no-one in the group spends ship crew points in a given area, then the ship can still be strong in that area but not do anything fancy. Blunt power, basically.
[kirov] Seeing as the Thanix Cannon is firing a constant stream of liquid tungsten at 3.6% of light speed, I'm pretty sure it does more than "shocking" the ship.
[dagda] Shocking as in even if it's not destroyed, it effectively loses a turn.
[dagda] Or something. Sorry, I'm still getting caught up in a tangent.
[kirov] I'm still bloody adamant that a sub-dreadnaught ship getting hit by a weapon like the Thanix will be crippled at best, sheared in two at worst.
[dagda] Metagame, that means the group decided to spend a TON of ship points on the most badass, collector ship-killing weapon they could invent/find in the manual.
[kirov] It also ought to be rather outlawed, as it is a closely guarded secret by the turian military.
[kirov] The Normandy only had access to it due to Garrus and Illusive Man waiving all the laws away with a giant McGuffin.
[dagda] Actually, that aspect of things won't be a focus of the mechanics.
[dagda] More likely, the process would be: Group wants max-power-for-this-ship-class weapon -> Garrus is the weaponry guy -> players and/or GM invents "Thanix Cannon" backstory for weapon

me: Modular options are intended to be in effect for most or all of a campaign, so a gameplay element that's a part of the game for a period ranging from a session to a single adventure (or "mission") could typically be covered by Grand Challenges.
me: (Another mechanic of mine. Kinda like a skill challenge, if you replaced each skill check with a different strategy the players come up with for progressing towards an overarching goal like "take down a crime syndicate". Details at http://dagda-mor.blogspot.com/2009/04/d20-rethought-grand-challenges.html)

me: Only other modular options I can think of at the moment are "Screwing around in a kickass vehicle" and "Managing and leading a bunch of npcs that make up your ship crew/unit/gang/growing merc army" The second one's par for the course if you've got a bigger ship, unless the GM opts to just gloss it over.
me: I was going to do a separate category for Interplanetary Fighting Vehicles (Mako, Hammerhead, Gunships), but then I realized that the difference between crewing an IFV and a Frigate are on par with the differences between crewing a Cruiser and a Dreadnought; that I can just call the Modular category Vehicles, and have some of the mechanics be based on your class of ship.
me: Followers are similar. I'd say that the two ends of that spectrum would be Garrus and Aria's setups on Omega; he had a party plus a small number of secondary characters, she's getting to the point where she's the head of a government. This is not to say you work your way up that spectrum as you level up; in my mind the GM declares the class of ship/organization you're managing and it likely stays that way for the whole game.
goldenneckbeard: A small matter, but I'll mention it anyway: I personally would name the modular elements after the type of role a person in the scene-type they represent.
me: Hmm.
goldenneckbeard: EG, instead of having a "Vehicles" class or skill-group, it would be "Crew" or "Crewman."
me: And Followers would be Leadership. Though to be honest, I really want to use the word "crew", since if you allow for both the literal definition and the informal "street" one then it's really the ideal phrase to describe the concept.
me: Anyway, I'm not sure, just because Vehicles would be totally focused on having this kickass vehicle that the party conceived and spent a shared set of points on- a vehicle they work together to maintain and upgrade.
goldenneckbeard: I would go broader and work followers into the social system at large. Perhaps call the mechanical module characters use to interact with said system "Advocate" to keep it as general as possible.
me: Ah, but the question is, what social system? You can have an entire campaign of explorers who deal with ruins and small colonies, so a big set of mechanics for dealing with society would be modular.

me: Basically, I'm now thinking that everything beyond you and your personal gear, all the other resources that some mass effect PCs would have and the "random gangbangers on Omega" campaign probably wouldn't get, could be covered by this same modular system. Not every high-level character has their own spaceship, not every one leads a group/organization. . .
me: I think the reason I feel that way is that the fiction Mass Effect's drawing on all is always 'personal'. Even when the story is about a massive ship or organization, it'll still also be about a handful of people and what they can do.

So that's about where I'm at right now. I'm considering a third modular element to go with Vehicles and Leadership, probably entitled Status. This would be the benefits that come from leveraging a high-ranking position in society- military rank is one option, but the influence Liara wields on Illium is another valid example.

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Global Game Jam report, part 2

One of the pieces of scratch paper we used during discussions.

"No, we can't do it that way. If the player can get through by waiting until the guard's backs are turned, then the lesson doesn't work, it's not reliable. The idea with this approach- look, call them Tutorial Gates. You see them all the time in Valve games."

It's several hours past midnight, and I'm trying to articulate yet another game design concept which I've never consciously thought about before. I just noticed them at some point, and added them to my understanding of game design. This can make things rather difficult when I need to explain something counter-intuitive.

"They'll give you a crowbar, and then they'll immediately block your path with these flimsy wooden boards that you use the crowbar to break. You lay the game out so that the player has to learn the lesson in order to get past the barrier. It's a subtle way to teach someone how to play the game if you integrate it right, but it's also one of the most effective. So if we lay the level out like so, and the guards are always facing this way, then we can assume any player who has completed this level now knows guards can see you at any distance when you're in the light."

Patrick and I have been figuring out the early levels of the game, figuring it best to start with the levels that'll introduce each game mechanic- "Guards see you if you get too close", "guards see you at a distance if you're in the light", "crates can be pushed to create new shadows", etc. Once we've got a decent idea of how those levels will go and the order in which their elements will be presented, we can roughly gauge where other levels will appear based on which gameplay elements the player needs to understand to complete them.

Of course, as we're starting to lay these tutorial levels out there are multiple cases where I need to stop and check with Josh about precisely how some game element's going to work (or rather, see whether he can give me a reasonable guess or if we need to hold off on dealing with that gameplay element until later). For example, one part of the initial concept is to have some guards with crossbows (who will instantly shoot you if you're spotted) and some guards with swords (who move at twice your speed and try to chase you down). Obviously, this implies cases where a level can be completed in a way that involves being seen by a melee guard and then managing to escape them. But what were viable means of escape? If the guard sees me run down a dead end but I'm hidden in the shadows by the time he's looking into said dead end, is he going to move in and reveal me? In that case Josh and I wound up spending a good 10 minutes hashing out the concept for the guard's movement AI, with a final concept (a guard that shifts between four states, Patrol, Chase, Track, and Return) that was largely my proposition. This would be more impressive if we hadn't decided to cut melee guards altogether a few hours later, since they weren't worth the time it'd take to write all that relevant code.

Our plans for the game are steadily developing in response to new setbacks. The first fully developed concept we came up with for the core gameplay centered around moving crates so as to manipulate the areas of light and darkness and create a working path to the end of the level. Twelve hours later we'd completely given up on that, because we just couldn't get dynamic shadows working in flixel- meaning an object couldn't block a light source. Instead, we'd figured out a viable alternative approach using traps, which I had previously written off as a third-tier priority- if you give the player a light source they can activate and deactivate at will, and they can only see traps when the light reveals them, then you've got setup that's tricky enough to make for some interesting puzzles.

Ian continues to steadily work on his sprites, which is basically all that needs to be said about his side of things. The rest of us generally alternate between talking some issue out, hunkering down to work, and leaning back in our chairs to stretch, groan, and get lost in thought for a minute (or at least, that describes me). Ian keeps one ear on our discussions and just plugs away on whatever's needed next. We're very lucky to have him.

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Divers: Quantifying Supernatural Combat

I first came up with the concept for divers back in the fall of '09, hashed out the fictional premise a little, and then put it aside. About half of everything I've written so far has been the material I came up with during that initial brainstorm, with the other half being progress I've made on the concept (through my own work and the input of others) since I got back to work on developing & discussing it in mid-January.

Divers' hibernation ended because of a spontaneous breakthrough. Since it was getting close to midnight, I had decided to watch a couple more action amvs (the good kind that you find by using community sites rather than youtube) before going to bed. In my experience, nothing fuels inspiration better than good fan-made music videos; they combine their songs with the imagery to create potent moods, and at the same time the footage itself provides you with a concentrated stream of ideas. In this case, it was enough to get me thinking about Divers and the kind of supernatural action I was hoping to capture. I opened a new document, and started pausing the videos every time I had a new thought to record or revision to make.

This wound up lasting about five hours.

At first, I was just writing down every supernatural combat ability I thought of (or saw in the videos) that might be worth including. This was very much an intuitive selection process- it could be any form of supernatural fighting ability, so long as it still "felt" like the person themselves was fighting. To put it another way: I wanted the kind of superhuman power that lets Spider-Man lift a car, rather than the kind that lets Superman lift a cruise ship into the stratosphere. The former act of "lifting" is closely related to what we do in reality, and thus resonates with us more deeply. Meanwhile, Superman's just floating in midair with his hands raised. The only way we can see that he's having to make an effort is when he wears a strained expression and starts to sweat; there's more of a spectacle, but less actual substance to his act of "lifting". This was the criteria I was using- that the act of using the supernatural power needed to be something I could still label as "fighting".

I then started focusing more on the actual interactions of these fights- identifying individual "actions" and "reactions" (He launched a bolt of energy, she negated it with a strike of her sword), noting whether these succeeded or failed (Her counter worked, so his attack didn't), and envisioning the parallel-universe scenarios that could occur where someone had chosen a different action or seen that action have a different outcome (She might have tried to dodge the attack, the energy bolt could have been too intense for her sword strike to nullify it, and so on). In other words, I was putting together a coherent view of the underlying "mechanics" for these fights; the parts of the underlying "system" that had the most direct connections to what was going on.

If D&D was somehow being made from scratch using this approach (as opposed to the system I'll eventually have for divers), the equivalent to this point would be a designer watching ren faire swordplay enthusiasts spar. He'd be conceiving each person as having a static value representing how effective their defense was, with their enemy making attempts (which might or might not succeed) to overcome this defense with their own offensive abilities. He'd also have the idea that attacks which did succeed would inflict injuries on the target with varying degrees of severity, and that the total "severity" of your injuries would eventually be enough that you'd stop fighting and die. These would be the very first details he'd come up with for the system- there'd still be a long ways to go before he'd reach clear framework these "attack roll" and "damage" mechanics would fit into, like "rounds" and "initiative". Right now he's just identifying elements of his perspective, the same way I'm coming up with concepts like "attacks" as these oncoming entities which you must choose how to react to.

Once he's identified enough of these potential actions, he can start to look for the underlying factors that dictate their results; the innate qualities that are relevant for both sides. In his case, he'd conclude that after training and experience are taken into account, the remaining factors can be summed up by three concepts of roughly equal value- Strength, Dexterity, and Constitution. Me? I've got some concepts of my own, but they're dealing with something a little trickier.

This was the last stage I reached with that 5-hour brainstorm; coming up with a set of scores whose concepts covered this spectrum of supernatural fighting abilities I'd laid out- with each getting an even share. Looking back, it was a rather deranged thing to do; I was setting aside the elements of these action sequences that you'd find in realistic fights, and trying to puzzle out the workings of what remained. Directors and animators and choreographers the world over had dreamed up these impossible acts; now I was trying to identify a shared internal logic that all this impossibility had managed to follow, allowing human beings to find these fantasies intuitive and believable.

In the end, I also came up with three scores- the working names were Power, Energy, and Control. Today, the best names I can offer are Intensity, Energy and Skill. We'll see if that's still the case when I get around to writing out these concept's explanations.

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Global Game Jam report, part 1

*Wave*

It's the evening of January 29th at the Art Institute of Portland. After taking a little time to socialize and get to know one another, 32 people have formed 5 separate teams. Each will spend the next 46 hours trying to make good on their chosen pitch. Some of these teams have as many as 8 members. Ours is half that size; 4 guys, all around 20 years of age.

Patrick: The one whose concept we're going to try and make good on. If memory serves he'd taken classes covering a general array of game development topics like programming & modeling, and was now starting to focus on design matters.
Ian: The artist who's going to be handling the graphics.
Josh: A fairly experienced programmer; the potential catch is that none of that past experience involves working on games.
Brooks: Myself, the guy with no art or programming ability to speak of- like Josh, I was here to see whether my skillset was actually up to the task.

The criteria for our time zone's GGJs was twofold. Our games had to involve the theme of 'deception', and feature either a monk, a punk or a skunk. The premise Patrick had was simple- a 2D game where you (a monk) had to evade guards and escape a dungeon by manipulating areas of light and darkness.

As everyone else moved out of the conference room and back to the computer labs, I suggested we hold up a moment. It seemed like it'd be worth taking the time to clearly lay out the games each of us was seeing in our heads; even relatively minor differences in our creative visions for the game could cost us down the road if we didn't identify them now. A couple of us took turns sketching out 'screenshots' of the game on the whiteboard, explaining the game elements and the overall scenario as we went. My version was the most thorough, which mostly just means the others had more chances to point out how some element wouldn't be feasible or worth the time it'd take to implement. The exercise took all of 10 minutes, and let us work out alot of the basic details (top-down perspective, a mix of patrolling and idle guards, etc). More importantly, it allowed us to conclude that the best approach would be to eschew inventory-based "adventure game" puzzles as well as any kind of coherent story; instead, we'd build the game entirely around the core mechanic of sneaking past guards using the light.

We made our way back to the labs, where Patrick and I started laying out some sample levels and the puzzles they could involve. One thing we needed no discussion to reach a consensus on was that the game should have a retro presentation, with graphics reminiscent of early titles for the Super Nintendo. Josh started looking into whether Flixel would meet our needs, and Ian wasted no time getting busy on the task of drawing out sprites.

Josh pointed out that we needed a working name for the project. There was a pause as people tried to come up with something. Light and Darkness? Great Escape? Monk of Darkness? After a moment's thought, I leaned over and gave my two cents: "Shadowmonk. Just as a single word." We quickly decided to go with that one.

Things were off to an excellent start.

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Oh yeah, stroke that ego.

A fellow I met a while back recently contacted me online and requested an interview. I'm not entirely sure why, but there you are. If you're interested in more brief ruminations on game design and so on, you can check it out here.

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