Do RPGs Suck?

I read a post today over at Mob United about ‘why RPGs are failing’ and leveled some serious criticisms at the industry in general. Some of the ideas are most definitely founded on real events, with the OSR movement and Pathfinder both retreading old territory, and many of the indie publishers doing things related to one of the above or some other system.

But I don’t think this is necessarily a bad thing. All things are built on history, and looking at the evolution of dungeon crawlers to produce a new dungeon crawler isn’t a bad thing. Examining social engines to design a better social engine helps in the long term.

In the end, Malcolm levels the criticism that rules systems aren’t going to do anything, that you have to offer something unique that another person couldn’t give. It seems he believes that the fiction, the stories are what players can’t do for themselves.

The problem is that’s false. As human beings, we gravitate to stories, and we create them out of our own lives. No memory is a perfect recollection of events, but those events and people are categorized to make recalls more simple. Malcolm even goes so far as to say why is dungeon crawling any different from the Hero’s Journey. In reality, what is remembered by the players, and is best applied in a game system, are the archetypes that make up things like the monomyth.

My honest conclusion is this:

This decade has seen the release of some very excellent RPGs, things I wish I had the time to play. Those games have been challenging the limits of RPG design space, story space, and even challenging what we call an RPG.

RPGs aren’t necessarily failing, though they are struggling. We, as designers, need to offer unique experiences without the effort demanded of older systems. The stories people want can come from many mediums, and they will choose the easiest or best value. Video games, movies, and books all demand less effort, and less time, than RPGs, and these things tell stories that are just as good as RPGs. We can take advantage of RPGs putting the player as the protagonist in ways none of these other mediums can, and that’s the place we can ply our strength.

What about you, readers, what are the unique strengths of RPGs?

Video Inspirations

So, getting back into the swing of things at school, it’s affecting my schedule a bit. Of course, to top that off, Champions Online went Free-To-Play recently, and sucked me back in. The truth is, while a lot of the Champions formula is straight out of the standard MMO formula, it did some things I’d not seen before that I really enjoyed, and keeps me wanting to play the game.

One of the major things they did that I loved is the break down of enemies into Henchmen, Villains, Master Villains, Super Villains, and Legendary Villains. This breakdown lets players know about how many they can take on their own. For example, a group of 5 on level henchmen is a pretty fair fight in Champions. A Villain and a Henchman or two is also a fair fight. Once you get up into the super villain levels you want groups of people for a fair fight.

That is, of course, the theory and the math breaks down occasionally. The idea, though, is spectacular and was one of the changes made to 4th Edition D&D I absolutely loved with the addition of the Minion, Elite, and Solo entries in the Monster Manual. This makes it very easy to throw together mixed groups of various power levels against a group of heroes without guessing if you’re going to just obliterate them or have the group steamrolled.

The other thing I liked about Champions is the way energy works. Your energy has a point of equilibrium where you recharge to almost the moment you leave combat. You also have a base power that is your energy builder; attacking with it builds up your energy bar, which drains when you use your more powerful (and interesting) powers.

I like this system, and have seen various systems in games do something similar. Building up a resource to turn it into ‘cool shit’ is a pretty well tread territory for a reason, my only complaint about it in Champions is that the power builders are really boring. Some people have leveled the same exact complaint at At-Wills in 4th Edition, and not unfairly.

The last part of the Champions formula that I love is that (for Gold members) you can modify the color and point of origin for a number of powers which allows a creative player to make dozens of archetypes using only their basic chains of powers. My example is Necromancer, my first Champions character.

Necromancer uses the Telepathic power set, which is a series of powers using telepathy for various effects, shielding, stuns, basic crowd control effects. By modifying the colors and origins, telepathy looks a lot like dark sorcery. Basically, it openly encourages reskinning which is at the heart of great role playing in most systems.

What about you guys, what video games inspire your mechanical design?

In Which I Talk About Games I Play

I talk about games quite a bit but I realized that I don’t talk about the games I like much. So this is going to be my day to ramble on about the games I’ve played lately and in the past that have had an effect on how I think about game design.

Board Games
I love board games, and love trying new ones. I grew up playing Risk and Monopoly like everyone else I know. I loved Risk as a kid, it was long, and our house rules made it longer. Obviously, eventually I experienced other board games

My latest board game fixation is Small World. I got to try it for the first time a few weeks ago and love it. Most of the tactics are pure skill and decision-making, the race and power combinations are fun and provide a cool depth to the game. Even the reinforcement die is a neat piece that allows some luck to exist in the game for those willing to gamble a bit.

I tried Sid Meier’s Civilization last weekend, and have to say, for a Fantasy Flight Games work, I was highly impressed. Still way more tokens than I normally like, but very nice quality, and an interesting set of mechanics. Definitely one I suggest trying out.

My favorite board game, though, is Go. I love strategy games, and Go is pretty much exactly the perfect game to scratch that itch. I don’t even have much more to say about it except for those who haven’t played, you need to at least try it out.

Card Games
In the card game department I have mixed feelings. I’m not really into collectible games anymore, their unknown potential costs really get to me. I do like a few boxed card games, and I still have one CCG I love.

The latest boxed card game I’ve picked up is Rowboat. It’s a Spades variant that is actually quite fun to play. There isn’t much more to say about it except the art is pretty good and if you like traditional card games you’ll find this one quite easy to pick up.

My CCG of choice is The Spoils put out by Arcane Tinmen. I could go on for hours about this one, but to make it brief: this game is everything I love in CCGs. Very tight mechanics, a beautifully concise rulebook, plenty of player interaction, and better in draft and sealed than constructed.

Miniatures Games
I like miniature war games, and typically buy on quality of models, but my choice for play is definitely Monsterpocalypse. Great flavor, great game play, and an excellent community.

Other than that, I own some Warhammer 40,000, some Warmachine, and I am currently looking into Infinity.

Role Playing Games
Considering this is a role  playing blog, this is definitely the key category of today’s post, since my views on RPGs definitely matter in the long run for the blog itself.

D&D is of course the hot button in the market right now, and my particular flavor is 4th edition. Unlike some developers, I absolutely believe in game balance and niche protection, and while 4th isn’t perfect in those senses, it’s far ahead of OGL games. I’m also big on suggesting the Dungeon Master’s Guide 2 since it has some excellent lessons on running games, some of which have been around a long while and I include similar suggestions in my Monday posts.

I’m a fan of World of Darkness on some levels. I love the flavor, and big fan of the baseline mechanics even if they need plenty of work. I don’t agree with the way most groups play the game, so I don’t get in many groups locally. If I’m going to be an asshole GM, this is the game I’d do it in, being a stickler for the personal horror elements of the game.

One of my loose and fast rules I really like is Dread. Those who haven’t gotten a copy should absolutely consider it if you can find it. When it comes to top down mechanics, Dread does it absolutely right. Using the tower produces a wonderful ramp into that titular emotion. The questionnaire character sheet makes it much easier to get into a character and generally I wish I would have thought of it.

This post is running long, so I’m going to end with those and touch on other influences to my games later. Well, readers, any games of any type I absolutely should try, let me know in the comments below!

Rambling, RPG Prices, and Tag Team Powers

Friday means Free-For-All, which basically means I could talk about anything. Today, it’s going to be me rambling about various topics.

First of all, my process. When I write my Free-For-All post, I rarely go in with a plan. I surf my Twitter feed, check Facebook, and Feedly, my RSS reader, looking for something to write about. Sometimes I see a great blog post and I use that, other times, I’m forced to come up with something, like my designer’s notes for FRE.


The first thing I found this week is an email from Steve Wieck of DriveThruRPG. He talks a little about Price Anchoring and a few of the downfalls of extremely low prices on DriveThruRPG. The price he calls out specifically is $1, I assume in reference to Adamant’s somewhat regular sale. The quick version is that at $1, it costs DriveThruRPG one cent after only paying for Paypal and the Publisher of the work. Not including other costs they incur transmitting the work to the purchaser, or even having the website up. Obviously, this would not be sustainable over a long period.


The problem is, if people all wait around for things like Adamant’s sale, the ‘value’ of RPGs would eventually drop, leaving us with almost nothing in way of potential dollars. As a developer, and eventual self publisher of RPGs, this is a problem, and something I wrestle with internally an awful lot. I know pricing is going to affect sales. I also know that lower price sells more. But how low? Obviously, one dollar is too low if I plan on using DriveThruRPG exclusively (I haven’t decided on my distribution model yet.), as I don’t want my distribution channel to fail. I also feel that fifteen dollars for an e-book is way too much.


One of the other things I study as a hobby is fiction writing, and recently, publishing as a whole. One guy I’ve found who likes sharing his views and experience is J.A. Konrath. His experience on the Kindle has led him to believe that the ‘sweet spot’ for ebooks is $2.99. I’ve discussed the idea with a few people, and I’d venture to say it’s likely between that price and $3.99. That’s fiction, though, something we buy in physical form between $6 and $13 in softcover, and upwards of $25 in hard cover.


So what’s the sweet spot for RPGs? I honestly don’t know. I can make an educated guess. We know that the price anchor for RPGs is between $15 and $30 for physical product. If I keep the assumption that ebooks are not as ‘valuable’ as hard copies, what would I aim for? I think somewhere between $5 and $15 is going to end up being ‘the right price’ for electronic products. You can bet I’ll be trying different price models with my games, so hopefully sometime in the future I’ll be able to tell you exactly what price is ‘right’ for RPG products.


The next thing I want to talk about is a post over on Nevermeet Press by shinobicow about ‘tag team powers’ in 4th Edition D&D. His idea was feat bought powers that required the teammates to act on the same initiative count. I like the core idea, but hate the concept of forcing players to delay to do something awesome. 4th Edition is definitely the ‘be awesome, all the time’ edition, and delaying is decidedly not awesome.


So, how do I counter his design? Simple: Look at Arena Fighting. Arena Fighting feats offer you a bonus to specific powers for a feat. Why not make tag teams like this? The first idea was one of the iconic attacks from the X-Men: The Fastball Special. Thinking about it, I realized we already had a power that represents the throw, and the attack could be just about anything, really.


The Warlord’s Knight’s Move lets an ally Move their speed. Perhaps, the feat changes Knight’s Move to a shift with a bonus equal to the Warlord’s Strength, and a fellow party member with Fastball Special gets to make an attack with a specific Exploit before they move before the end of the next turn. That would of course need an additional benefit, perhaps treat the attack as if they had charged, or lay in some extra damage for the Special.


Obviously, a very rough idea, and I plan on writing up a few of these and trying them in a one shot game to see how they fair. After I’ve got some balance, I’ll see what I can do to make them available to you guys!


So, RPG pricing, what do you guys think?


How about team up attacks in any RPG?


Update 2011-01-09: Chuck Wendig, freelance penmonkey, covered the topic of e-book pricing on his blog on Friday. Some interesting insights and Gareth from Adamant made a comment as well.

FRE: Primer Release and Design Notes

Welcome to Free-For-All Friday! Today I’ve got something special for everyone, in the form of my first game release. Last week I mentioned I was taking KORPG’s 1 Page RPG Throwdown and writing up the ‘intro’ to Freeform Roleplaying Engine, AKA FRE. I wrote it, tested it against one of the most brutal optimizers I know, I’ve edited it. It’s as done as a one page document can be, so I’m giving it to you guys for free. In a big twist, you’ll be able to find it here on Googledocs instead of having to deal with one of the terrible upload sites. So, how about you go get that so I can get into my designers notes and you have an idea of what I’m talking about!

FRE: Intent
When I began designing FRE, I was looking for a system that’s easy to play and easy to run with as little need for outside determinants as possible. The reason I wanted such a quick system is because the intent was to design a system for forum based freeform roleplay. Dirty secret: freeform is how I got into the hobby!

I knew I didn’t want dice because dice are clunky and impractical to the flow of a freeform game, and while some systems have limited dice spectacularly, it was still too much dependence for my goal. I also knew that some systems being used by freeformers were overly complex, requiring many hours of complex calculations to produce a ‘balance’ that really wasn’t necessary for freeform games.

So my goal became obvious: a system in which any character was balanced with another regardless of breadth or depth of ability, and which was quick and easy to use.

FRE: Resource Management
I chose research management as it was the easiest way to determine outcomes without relying on flimsy statistics that could only handle a narrow band of power well. With resource management a god and a vagabond are equally ‘plot important’ even if the god attacks with world shaking power and the vagabond just creeps people out.

Resource management also lets the players have a ‘give’. By encouraging stake setting the system encourages players to go only so far as they are willing, so character death or removal is a choice of the players, not the system choosing to arbitrarily destroy them.

FRE: Plot
I want to bring up Plot specifically due to its major revision between versions. The original version of plot read as follows:

A User spends Plot to change the story in any way, including adding new NPCs, surviving death, rewriting history, or making an Offense or Defense when they are out of those two attributes. Plot that is spent is lost.

The power I originally gave plot made it the de facto ‘best’ stat in Primer, even if it didn’t recover like Offense and Defense. Combined with encouragement to give out much more Plot in the draft, this made the game more about convincing the Moderator to hand out as much Plot as possible to take advantage of the system.

While this is not the final form Plot will take in the full version of FRE, it’s what works for Primer, which had to be approached as a stand alone game.

FRE: Moderators
Because I couldn’t do it in Primer itself, I will offer my advice to Moderators here. Don’t hand out more plot than you can handle. The more you give, the more the players will write into the game (This is good.), but if you can’t keep up with all the plot threads, start pushing them to their conclusion in an effort to simplify your task.

NPCs should max out at about 4 of either stat, and only because that’s where players will be. While players can advance their characters with plot, it isn’t intended, and if they do it too much their ability to cause lasting changes diminishes, so even a combat monster should wreck the game too much.

FRE: Stakes
While stakes are only mentioned briefly in the Primer, they are at the core of FRE, and writing out the Primer has brought it to the forefront of my mind when I begin designing the Basic set stakes will play an even bigger role in the mechanics of the system. Part of that is to better model fiction, which is what most freeformers are trying to emulate from the start.

Stakes make it obvious what it means to win or lose in any specific scenario. This way ‘losing’ doesn’t have to be death, but can be more interesting to the overall plot in general.

FRE: Player VS Player
One thing that I’m sure some of you have noticed is that the system works just fine as a PVP system. This is intentional, and is going to stay in the system. Much of the drama of forum freeform games comes from player interactions and not Moderator plot. Even so, the system will be able to produce team based games just as easily, and I intend to make that obvious for the full product.

So there you have it, FRE, from the designer’s mouth. Any other questions, I’d be glad to answer in the comments!

Free-For-All Friday: Player Motivations

So, I was good, I wrote my post for today back on Wednesday. Felt it was current enough to be interesting, and was a good topic to muse about. Then, while reading my RSS this morning, I stumble upon an article by The Chatty DM.

He’s covering the idea of player motivations, which is quite different from character motivations that I covered in Hook, Line, and Sinker. I’m going to leave most of his article over there for you to read, but to summarize for this discussion:

The 4th Edition Dungeons and Dragons Dungeon Master’s Guide lists a number of core player motivations:

• Acting
• Exploring
• Instigating
• Power Gaming
• Slaying
• Storytelling
• Thinking
• Watching

He goes on to make the claim that, regardless of what’s written on the tin, that 4th Edition caters to Power Gaming, Slaying, and Thinking to the expense of the rest.

Now, while I agree that it does cater to these three things in a number of ways (See the character optimization boards scrambling for even +1 damage in the system.), most of these motivations are in fact covered by the design and/or marketing of the product.

Acting: If any of the motivations aren’t given a solid set of rewards or encouragement in the system itself, it’s acting. There is no mechanical reward for it, and very little in the way of support for players who want this sort of thing in the way of advice.

Exploring: Exploring is given a mechanical kick in the rear through action points. The concept of ‘one more encounter, and you’ll earn an action point’ can be enough to keep some groups going. The fact that once it’s earned, you’ll lose it if you sleep makes the odd number encounters something worth running through.

Instigating: This one there isn’t a real mechanical reward, except as it relates to Power Gaming. Instigating players are as likely to cause trouble as they are to advance the in game narrative, and to them, that shaking up of the status quo IS the reward. In other words, this one doesn’t NEED a mechanical award.

Power Gaming: Optimization is rewarded.

Slaying: Like most versions of Dungeons and Dragons, most of the rules are how to kill things better and what happens when you kill those things.

Storytelling: This one is one of the better supported motivations below the key three Chatty DM called attention to. Via Skill Challenges, which admittedly needed work to become as good as they could be, and Quest rewards, the system actively encourages advancing the narrative in ways other versions of Dungeons and Dragons didn’t. It even produced support, not in mechanical aspects, but help for GMs in the Dungeon Master’s Guide 2.

Thinking: I actually feel this one could have been done better out of the box (Back in 2008), but think they’ve made some definite improvements with the new monster design and more cohesive classes that work even better as a team.

Watching: This is another one I think Wizards of the Coast did a wonderful job with. Watchers often just want to spend time with friends, and possibly make new ones, and between the character builder, Encounters, and an active push to make Dungeons and Dragons ‘mainstream’ to some degree has definitely made this a good time for casual players to get into the game.

To summarize, I think most player motivations that can be planned for were planned for well. Some in the core rules themselves, and some via the marketing efforts of the company. Does this mean some of them couldn’t be improved? Absolutely not, and I wish the Chatty DM the best of luck in his efforts. I’ve literally just discovered him, but even cursory examination of his blog is interesting, and if you like my thoughts on design, his aren’t far off. Definitely check it out.

FRE is going to be getting a one page Primer written soon to take advantage of KORPG’s One Page RPG challenge. And while the Primer is only going to be a page, expect a bit meatier version coming eventually after I’ve worked out how ‘fiddly’ I’d like it.

ExoSquad is on a back burner right now, the holidays sucking up most of my time.

Velocity is of course still awaiting its edit.


Last thing: Obviously, I've picked a new theme, what does everyone think? Better than white on black? Should I dig around for another good template? Or can anyone suggest a good (Cheap.) designer?