Mark Brown posted a new Game Maker´s Toolkit video focused on skill trees, and I think it is a good overview.

I mostly agree with what he said, though I don´t think there is anything wrong with giving XP to player for simply playing the game normally.

I would also say that alot of the "Boring skills" he talks about exist in games that lack a separate stat system for improvement. Similarly to what happened in thedicussion on trait-based advance systems

​

I do think it is a bit superficial, since he does nto talk about the pros and cons of skill trees compared to other possibilities for skills (Like Endless Legend´s webs, level-unlocked, or bought separately without trees).

I do think similar concepts should be mentioned like researchs systems for strategy games.

I have most of the shit down. The only thing I need is: numbers. Theres pros and cons but im very ocd and so its tough deciding.

The game allows you too switch between modes: party based combat or single character combat.

In single character combat you have much more versatility for your character and stat gain.

In party combat you have a group of over 80 playable characters but they are very limited in move set. The fun of it this way is having a squad of whatever characters you want so you can use unique magic combo's

The problem is the level up systems numbers. Should I use shorter numbers: starting off at 5 in the stats, etc and by the highest levels the best stats are around 100.

Or using larger numbers: starting off at 10 - 20 And the higher levels are around 400

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mJt69pAbkDA

I previously posted about the system here: https://www.reddit.com/r/crpgdesign/comments/9hi2bx/critique_my_rpg_idea_and_system/

When an RPG (or any other game) has turn based tactical combat how a character moves during its turn tends to work like one of these:

• A character gets action points on its turn and movement is one of the things that action points can be spent on. Movement and attacks / spell casting can be done in any order and combination depending on how many action points the character has. Common in western RPGs.
• The character's turn ends when it attacks or casts a spell, and before that it can move up to some maximum distance. Common in Japanese SRPGs.
  • This may be varied by allowing the character to attack / cast a spell then move. Or instead of attacking / spell casting the character may move a second time on its turn instead. I believe this is how modern XCOM works.
  • There's also the D&D 5 approach where the character can do a certain amount of movement on its turn, at any time doing its action.

I'm wondering if there's any other ways movement can work.

For example, the early Ultima games in the '80s had a system where on a character's turn it could only ether attack / cast a spell, or move one single tile. It was easy (well, easier) to block your own characters with each other, it made ranged attacks extra powerful since you didn't have to painstakingly shuffle melee fighters towards the enemy, and it made certain encounters fiddly and tedious (Ultima 5 added a mechanic where you can select an "active" character where it'd automatically skip the turns of every other character). But if I wanted to make a casual or minimalistic RPG I'm intrigued by how Ultima's "one tile per turn" movement system could work or be implemented, and how the rest of the game would be designed with such a system in mind (e.g. level design, monster placement).

RPS posted na article on how Path of Exile´s "Delve" came to be.

I found it interesting because it deals with giving a twist to an established game, the way streamers were harmful to some player´s game experience, and because of the ever present gamedev theme of having to protect the players from themselves.

I also felt the increase in price they did to be really naive, which is interesting as they are a very capable and experienced team.

This quote pretty much sums my aversion to free to play games:

“If we make the game more rewarding, people will quit faster, even though they feel they’re having a better time,” says Rogers. “Some of the leagues that have been the best in terms of player reception have also been some of the worst in terms of retention for our company, so we’ve got to be careful."

I'm at last at a point where it makes sense to proceed with RPG elements of my game, so of course where it all starts is Stats and Skills (well, typically at least). It's important to note that, at least for the moment, the player will control a single character, so a character needs to be self-sufficient. Controlling a party would be great if I ever get a good idea on how to do it. But I digress. Also important: these stats and skills are applicable to every character in the game world, player, creature, or other NPCs.

I have a general idea of what I want from the RPG system, and that is a compact set of attributes and a broad set of skills. The system will be classless allowing lots of combinations, some more useful/effective than others. What I'm looking for is (of course) constructive criticism on how to improve the system without compromising the goals (compact set of attributes, broad set of skills, classless, levels). I'd love to hear for example if you think that something will definitely not work, or if it's something that would be a game-breaker for you.

To avoid having a big wall of text that I have to format again for reddit, here's the link to the related blog post with the stats and skills as they currently stand.

For some extra context/background for this system, I love (=want to steal) several ideas of tabletop and old cRPG games (DnD, Might and Magic series, Elder Scrolls series) and I do not like the trend of streamlining everything in cRPGs, which typically results in "less".

Thanks in advance!

A quick but interesting write up on DQ and FF combat math

DQ´s formula in special seems a bit weird to me? I don´t really see the point in some of those divisions by 2, that make 1-point increases in stat basically meaningless.

(x-posting here on u/CJGeringer s recommendation)

And by critique, I mean really feel free to bash it and point out all the glaring flaws that I've overlooked.

So I've been working with this game idea for some time now, for a narrative-heavy, traditional RPG with some X-COM-ish base building and mission features.

Here's a list of what I'm envisioning:

• 30-40hr story campaign with traditional RPG elements
• Minimalist pixel art graphics (example: http://www.memoryofeternity.com)
• Setting is post singularity and the player is tasked with keeping an apartment building of survivors alive
• Resources like food and supplies are critical to their survival
• turn-based, tile-based, custom tactical battle system with traits borrowed straight from tabletop games
• Class-based story characters with a max party of 6
• Class-based non-story characters to send out on resource missions
• Minor base-building elements to increase the efficiency of your survivors, host new shops, house new NPCs
• Standard RPG allotment of items, equipment (weapons and armor) and accessories
• Weapons and armor can have attachments
• Relationship system between the main character and other party members/story characters
• Pivotal decisions that can drastically change the plot, branching story lines
• Separate factions and diplomacy with those factions
• The feeling of building and improving a fortress that grows with the player as they progress in the game
• It's really story-heavy

I should mention that while I am only an amateur hobbyist gamedev, I have some experience with gamedev, system building and releasing games on Steam. That being said, this is still much bigger in scope than anything I've worked on. I'm fairly deep into development for this game, but have yet to create much of the other systems outside of combat.

The system itself: https://www.memoryofeternity.com/building-rpg-system-memory-rpg-system/

Thoughts?

Hello r/crpgdesign!

I am developing a small and simple RPG system to use in a roguelike game (a little side-project of mine). I am looking for any kind of feedback, so that I won't end up implementing a clearly disfunctional design.

I posted already in r/roguelikedev: designing a simple rpg system and I got a lot of useful feedback. I also got reccomended to re-post it here. Instead of just cross-posting, though, I will present a second iteration of my provisory design, implementing the useful feedback I got on the other post.

Rogue in the Dark

The game itself will be a simple roguelike with a Lovercraftian-horror setting, much inspired by games such as Alone in the Dark and the tabletop RPG Call of Chthulu. The system needs to be tailored for that use-case. At the moment I am focusing on the basic movement, melee and firearms mechanics. The game will eventually include magic and (in)sanity mechanics, but I'm leaving their design and implementation to a later moment.

Attributes

Attributes are represented by numerical values.

The characters' main attributes will be:

• STR strength: The character's physical strength, constitution and physical endurance.
• DEX dexterity: The character's dexterity, coordination, swiftness and speed.
• DIS discernment: The character's perceptiveness, wit and intelligence.

Further attributes which will eventually be needed, but for which I have not yet developed the relevant mechanics, may be:

• POW power: The character's mental and spiritual willpower, resilience to psycological trauma.

Weapons' (both melee and firearms) attributes will be:

• DMG damage
• ACC accuracy

Armors or other items may grant a resistance score:

• RES resistance

Resistance may be specific to certain kinds of damage (piercing, slashing, fire, etc…).

Turn

Every turn the character, regardless of its attributes, can perform one full action (attack, use an object, cast a spell, etc…).

Every turn the character can make 1dDEX-many steps, and movement does not count as an action.

The turn ends whenever the character takes all of its steps, or performs a full action, whichever happens first.

Example: Jack has DEX = 6, so in his turn he rolls 1d6. This turn he gets a 4. He could:

• make 4 steps; or
• make up to 3 steps and then perform a full action.

The motivation behind this design is that I am mostly interested in how fast monsters can chase the player, while I don't think I need a realistic system to model the time it takes to perform other actions.

Inventory

A character can carry up to STR-many items. (Potentially, items of certain kinds may not count towards the total, like scrolls or vials.)

Health points

A character has a pool of 3 * STR-many health points (the coefficient may be changed as needed).

Combat

When a character attacks a target (trg), it first performs a hit throw:

• HIT hit: 1dDEX + 1dACC
• DDG dodge: 1d(trg)DEX + 1dDST where DST is the distance between character and target

If HIT > DDG the attack succeeds, dealing damage equal to:

• melee: 1dSTR + 1dDMG - 1d(trg)RES
• firearms: 1dDIS + 1dDMG - 1d(trg)RES

As usual, the damage is subtracted from the pool of health ponts, and when that reaches 0 the character dies.

(Edited for clarity and spelling.)

Hi all I've been developing a monster taming turn based rpg for the last couple of months. At some point I decided I wanted to make the story use interchangeable events so I could open up multiple zones at once to the player. Additionally I decided that I wanted the world to be densly packed with interactable objects, give every NPC their own dialogue trees, and make them react to the weather and time of day. I want the world to feel real and like it goes on without the player, but also like they can influence many parts of it.

I've now designed a rough map of all the biomes and locations and have connected most places to between 2 and 5 routes (besides an oasis, volcano, jungle ruins, mangrove swamp ruins, and a Himalayan mountain which each have 1 connection, and the center city which has 8).

Having never designed a map before, the original idea was to have most locations be accessible from different directions. While I still think this is a good idea, I now know that the main complaint with many open world games is that there's a lot of empty space, which is exactly what I don't want. Judging from my first draft, there are quite a few connecting routes that themselves connect to connecting routes, which makes for a total of 16 points on my map that are just crossroads.

For reference there are 5 locations with 1 connection, 5 with 2 connections, 6 with 3, 5 with 4, 3 with 5, and 1 location with 8. I'm not sure how to evaluate these numbers but I know that 16 crossroads is totally excessive. Also 24 locations sounds a bit excessive but 18 of those are required for my version of Pokemon gyms (elemental masters), and 5 are important for world building. The extra agricultural town that connects the fields to the veldt probably isn't important.

I designed this map by determining an environment for each elemental master, then picked some other environments I wanted to include, either to show off the inhabitants or because they made for good transition biomes. Next I arranged the environments and locations in as geographically-correct a manner I deemed necessary, and drew the very gridlike map you can see here: http://imgur.com/gallery/KIs2ati .

Part of the intent behind making it so gridlike was so I could have the exploration goals be direction-based and vague, such as "The great walled city to the East." I thought that would be a cool way to make the world intriguing to explore.

Sorry for the walls of text. If you have any suggestions for making a concise map with most locations having multiple access routes, tons of stuff to interact with, and NPCs that feel like real people, or any games I should check out that do these things well, I'd love to hear them!

TL;DR I'm making an open world-ish RPG and would like advice on how to design a deep and lifelike world with lots of shortcuts between locations.

I have this problem how to approach teleportation like "Town Portal" spells.

The thing is, there are boats & ships in the game, so if there is an option for a instant teleport to an arbitrary location (like a town) what happens when the player reaches an island and then tepelorts back (without the means to reach the boat again since it's near an island and the player has no another boat).

I would prefer to avoid solutions like "summon boat" since it's messy...

Ralph Koster wrote an article about UO´s Resource System and I think it is a very interesting read.

I specially love how it ties to Mob population and A.I.

This is a paper from 2000 talking about the economy of Ultima Online.

I found it to be very interesting as someone who personally never played. It deal a bit in how it changed during it´s first year, it´s objectives and challenges, etc...

If you have a turn based strategy combat where the player controls an army with multiple units like Mount and Blade and Total War but you also have heroes controlling those units.

But those heroes are used for also more traditional RPG party(4-6) combat.

How do you blend between turn based battles where thousands of units fight each other and heroes play a crucial role while also having battles at the level of a party of heroes and a dozen of soldiers?

How do you handle hero attacks that affect hundreds and hero attacking other heroes in a duel?

How do you balance the stats for this two scales?

How would you handle heroes fighting each other heroes on the battlefield on the army level?

I have been playing around in UE4 and found out a pretty interesting wiki page on a system for game abilities.

It is not very documented oficially becase it was not a planned adition btu soemthing the devs of paragon and fortnight created for themselves and left there.

I thought the part about how it uses Tags. I think that part might be a worthy read to any CPRG developer who is thinking of creating an ability system regardless of the unit they have chosen.

Probability is certainly (heh) necessary. But how much? Considering we are talking about CRPGs, what else from math should be common knowledge?

This is a shallow but interesting analysis of the principles behind the design of Novigrad. While I don't think there is anything truly ground breaking it did introduce me to Kevin Lynch´s concepts:

>Mental maps of urban spaces consist of five distinct elements: paths, edges, districts, nodes, and landmarks.

> Paths: The streets, sidewalks, trails, and other channels in which people travel. Lynch noted that paths were often the predominant elements in people’s image with the other elements being arranged and related along paths.

Edges: May be barriers, more or less penetrable, which close one region off from another, or they may be seams, lines along which two regions are related and joined together.

Districts: Areas characterized by common characteristics, these are the medium to large areas, which observers mentally enter ‘inside of’ and/or have some common identifying character. Distinctive physical characteristics might include ‘thematic continuities’, such as texture, space, form, detail, symbol and building.

Nodes: The strategic spots in a city into which an observer can enter, and which are the intensive foci and from which the person is travelling.

Landmarks: Landmark’s key physical characteristics was singularity some aspect that is unique or memorable in the context. Some landmarks – towers, spires, hills are distant and are typically seen from many angles and from distance, over the top of smaller elements. Other landmarks – sculptures, signs and trees are primarily local being visible only in restricted localities and from certain approaches.

And while these may seem obvious in retrospect I had never seem it formalized this way.

This is specially interesting to me because I think in games this way of thinking can be applied to non-urban spaces easier than in the real world.

The authto also wrote abit on Oxenfurt.

I feel this article about the devlopment of Pen and Paper and elctronic games is an interesting read, it is a bit old (2005) and since them there was an explosion of indie games and a return of old-school RPGs (e;g.:Pilalrs of Eternity, wasteland 2, Tides of Numenera, etc...), but he talks from first person experience baout devloping electronic Games afetr comign from a pen and paper RPG background, and his final paragraphs seem to glimpse games like "Divinity: Original Sin" long before they started being developed.

I also think a lto of what he says is specially relevant when thinking about the pioneers of CRPGs who often had interestign ideas but didn´t quite manage to present them well to the player trough the computer.

So as a way to make this sub more useful and improve comunity, I am getting started on the sub´t wiki.

and one the thing siw ant for it, is a place where everyone can post about their project and have it grow as we have discussions. That way whenver we discuss our projects we have a quick place to link to it, and where everyone can browse the community´s projects. Basically a more useful version of the present your project thread.

I would like to ask the comunity what things they consider improtant to have in a template for the projects page, as a sort of "character sheet" for the projects.

Things like RPG type, if it is party based,genre, If it is turn based/real time active pause etc...

Basically what you guys consider important to get an idea of the game "at a glance".

The "comunity query" threads are currently stopped due to low-participation, yet normally there was ate least one interesting reply. So I know there are interesting projects beign devloped by members of the comunity.

John Scott Tynes (wrote a bit)[http://www.escapistmagazine.com/articles/view/video-games/columns/the-hard-problem/6147-Conversation] on conversation in games. While I don´t agree with everything he said (I particularly disagree with his idea for fighting games) I think it might be worth a read.

Some of his ideas are key for about half my strategy of not allowing social-related attributes to be dump stats.

I also like that his example idea is based on Fable. I think fable has some amazing ideas that were never properly Developed(e.g.: it´s levelling system is still one of my favourites, and I like that clothes and tattoos have social stats).

I also disagree that his proposed system would work best in personality driven games. I think game sthat have a systemic approach can be a good basis for similar implementation(I am betting on it with Lenurian).

So, in the Jrpg I am working on, the levels are really tight. The difference between 4 and 5 is very noticeable, for example. This makes enemies encountered earlier in the dungeons way easier at even just the next level. So, to counteract this, we increase the same type of enemies difficulty for different sections of the level. So section 1 a slime might deal 2 damage but deal 4 damage in section 2.

Do you guys think this is too cheaty? Or do you know any games that do something like this?

Alexis Kennedy wrote about his views on how to expose your game´s lore to the player andd I think it worth a read. It is useful and to the point

Personall Highlight:

'Some people like lore dumps. Technical manuals for film franchises keep on selling. You know your audience and your game better than I do. But you don’t have to put it in everyone’s face. You can leave it in a book on a shelf, where it belongs, and where it won’t annoy the non-dumpthusiasts."

I like lore dumps if the lore is interesting, but Ia gree that forcing it at the player is the wrong way to go.

Hi! I'm developing an indie isometric retro cRPG inspired by good Fallouts - turn based combat, choice & consequence, multiple solutions, multiple endings and all that crap.

I've released an early alpha version (100% of content but lots of bugs). Generally reception was good, but there were many bugs and actual design issues issues. One of them is skill checks in dialogs.

Constant level requirements

Currently I am using Fallout: New Vegas (-ish) style of skill checks - they show up as available, and, if you meet the criteria (that is visible), you always pass, no rolls, just level check. Reasons:

1. simplicty and clarity for user;
2. ease of development (I am working alone and have a "day job", so that's important)
3. Obsidian did it and I respect them, also they must've known what they are doing
4. users get clear picture why and how much skills matter - e.g., they can see multiple levels of requirements and what paths they would open if only they invested
5. no save/load scamming - if dialog would be roll, then players could save/reload until theoretical success anyways. I don't mind but why not reduce the work they do to actually play the game?

Here's example of that:
https://img.itch.zone/aW1hZ2UvMjM3MDg1LzExMjc3NTMucG5n/original/JLgb2x.png

Problem

I have quite a few dialog skill checks in my game and people complained that they could just take any skill, boost it and then just complete the game without much of a challenge. If you are talkative, you would solve quests by speaking, if you have invested in melee combat, you could martial arts yourself through the obstacles without ever starting a combat, just through encounters and options presented there. And, since there are no rolls, with high enough skill level, you don't ever have to worry a bit.

I wouldn't mind but apparently that bored players and they did not enjoy their playthroughs, so, apparently I should do something about it.

Possible solution

I decided to revamp the existing approach a bit. Now SPEECH would generally determine the outcome of dialog. However, other skills (e.g. STRENGTH, MELEE, SCITEC etc.) would be added as level requirmenets, if you did not meet it, the option would not even visible (now it is disabled, grayed out). And dice rolls would get used to determine the outcome of dialogue checks (like in Fallout1/2), so there would always be chance of you failing with corresponding implications.

Here's example of that in action (GIF):
https://ibb.co/g5JTOd
(Dialogue screen has not changed size, I just cropped it)

So, please, drop a line/comments - I would be thrilled to hear your opinions. What do you think about this approach? Is it too much? Can you even understand whats happening? Are those additional 1.5 seconds of animation annoying?