Someone is missing. Is it you?

Played Arkham Asylum. I must say that I am impressed with how the game was designed. The mechanics and controls are functional, all the silly Batman villains and characters are taken at face value without flinching, and the overall feeling is exceptional. My personal favourite thing about Arkham Asylum is the Predator Mode.

One of the most important tools in Batman’s arsenal is fear. When confronted with a group of armed thugs, Batman takes them out one by one, eroding their confidence until the last ones panic and fail. Predator Mode, or rather Predator Places, are designed around this aspect perfectly. There are several places in the game where Batman encounters a group of armed inmates guarding something. These places are rife with hiding places, vents and high perches. The player must stay hidden and take the enemies out one by one, by either creeping behind them, taking them out from underfoot crawlspaces, hanging down from gargoyles, or by many other ways.

The Predator parts are fun, because the player truly feels like Predator: He can see the enemies through walls, he has an arsenal of gadgets and ways to take down the enemies and being invisible is easy. But that is only half of it. The other half is the atmosphere: At first the thugs saunter around casually, tossing comments to each other, listening to their boss shouting orders from loudspeakers. When the Batman makes his first takedown, the enemies get alert, aggressively trying to find him, shouting insults. As they drop one by one, the thugs’ heartrate goes up and the insults turn to nervous shouts and questions, all the while their boss breathes down on their neck from the loudspeakers. Finally, when only about two to three thugs remain, they all become terrified, shooting at shadows and nervously asking ”What are you, Batman!?”. All the while the player keeps to the shadows, scanning the environment for the next prey. Pro-awesome.

Since Batman is nigh-omnipotent, the parts were not too challenging. In fact, most of the fun came from merely observing, listening to the loudspeakers and laughing at the poor criminals, confused and frightened at the prospect of incoming doom. Difficulty is also well-implemented: Most of the difficulty in the Predator parts come from achieving physical objectives, using favourite tactics and saving the Riddler Informants for last so they can be interrogated.

Arkham City’s Predator Mode was fun enough to leave me desiring for a game where that is the main point. Stealthing around, infiltrating places and slowly taking out small groups of enemies, and most importantly of all: Causing fear. Since most enemies in video games tend to be homicidal maniacs with no sense of fear nor self-preservation, seeing well-implemented fear is always a fresh thing.

Dreamland Initiative

You may be aware that I am working as a Game Designer in Games&Tales Ltd, a cross-media company (also available on Facebook!). I’ve been working in several projects, and finally I know how much I can say about them. So, as a first post whose subject is related to my work, I’ll be writing about a roleplaying game I’ve designed to the setting that our writer and CEO have created: Dreamland Initiative.

About 1500 years into the future, Mankind has expanded into space. As time went by, humanity evolved into three distinctive major physio-sociological groups. Dreamland Initiative focuses on one of these groups; The Archaists, who voluntarily decided to stop advancing technology and genetics beyond a certain point. In the midst of an interstellar war between the human factions, a small Archaist research team makes a strange discovery: With a certain extract, a strong-willed individual can experience something called a Dream Projection: Seeing other people, beings and parts of the galaxy in their dream, and maybe even affect them. Of course, sensing a way to boost their obsolete and relatively weak army and fleet, the Archaist Military takes control of the project and starts using it to scout for resources and alien contacts in the galaxy. They create an operation called Dreamland Initiative.

In the game, players are strong-willed individuals from the Archaist colonies who have been chosen as volunteers for the Initiative. These individuals, called Agents, are packed in small science corvettes, where they are given dream therapy, taught to have lucid dreams, and given memory-boosting drugs. After the Agents are deemed ready, they are injected with a large dose of the Dream Extract and their mind is hopefully sent to somewhere where they can scout for useful resources or alien contacts. Focus on the word “hopefully”. After the session, the Agents are debriefed extensively before the next session.

So this is the premise of the game. I have GM’d about half a dozen sessions of DI now, and every one has been a blast. Since pretty much the whole game takes place in a dream, everything is possible. In the sessions, players have taken part in interstellar reality cooking shows, been the chief caretakers of a medieval castle and nobles and gladiators in ancient Rome. The juxtaposition of a haphazard military operation and a subconscious interpretation of events happening in other parts of reality is a large part of the fun, along with the rapid degeneration of coherency of the dream. Dreamland Initiative is one of those games that is extremely difficult to explain, but I’ll try.’

Each character has three attributes that define how the character solves problems. These are the base dice pools for any rolls in the game. In addition, every character has Willpower, which is a pool of tokens the player can spend to miscellaneous effects. Then, every character has at least three Identity Feature/Trauma pairs. Each Identity Feature is a single object or attribute that is integral to the character. An avid teacher might have Laser Pointer, an artist a sketchbook, or a soldier a weapon. These Identity Features appear to the character in the dream, and they are potent tools with which to safely affect the dream world. Each Identity Feature is paired with a Trauma. This is a phobia, a traumatic event or some other important negative thing in the character’s past. Spiders, spaceship crash or loneliness are examples of Traumas.

The game has a Coherency Tracker at the middle of the table, where everyone can see the coherency of the dream. At the start, the dream is very life-like and ordered. As players interact with the game world, the dream starts to become more chaotic and dream-like. Objects start to randomly appear. Doors lead to other places. Suddenly the players find themselves in a completely different place. Mechanically, every time the players attempt something non-trivial in the game world, the player who leads will roll dice. If he can use his or any assisting players’ Identity Features, he gets one more die for every feature. On a success, the player succeeds and nothing happens. On a failure, the Coherency Tracker goes down one step, and every Trauma from the used Identity Features trigger in the dream world. The thing is, the player who failed must explain how they happen. If the explanation does not make sense within the current dream context, the Coherency Tracker goes down further.

This is one of the games I’ve been designing nowadays. It is still being playtested, and the background might change drastically. But I would love to know what you think about Dreamland Initiative so far, so comments would be appreciated!

EDIT: Added a link to Games&Tales website. Check it out!

Difficulty in difficulty

Challenge is one of those nefarious things that is subjective and even then difficult to get right. I switched Dragon Age Origins to easy after I got annoyed by the combat, but the sequel I switched to Hard. I complain that Puzzle Quest II is too easy. I got tired of Super Meat Boy. Sometimes I feel that my definition of challenge is all over the place. But after a wonderful video by a wonderful person called Jim Sterling on the Escapist, I realized my stance on game difficulty.

I hate frustration from forced repetition. Hard platformers where you need to perform flawlessly for 5 minutes between saves are pure hell for me. The fun part is to figure out what you need to do and which route to take to earn all the collectibles and beat the par time, but when you need to sit down and get 10 millisecond-accurate jumps in a row my blood begins to boil. Because repetition takes time, and I do not want to waste it. So the key is how much time a challenge takes.

Conversely, I love mental challenges and strategy. Figuring out efficient patterns, finding out routes, solving (non-arbitrary) puzzles, creating combos… Those things are fun. That’s why I tend to turn up the difficulty in my D&D combats: I want the players to feel challenged, but still survive. Puzzle Quest (as I remember) was fun because the enemies were quite merciless. Every move had to be thought out and you needed to have a grand strategy. But in Puzzle Quest II the enemies deal way too little damage and do not utilize their abilities as well as they could. In Dragon Age II the fights became a drudge when I realized that I could just bang my head on the keyboard and still win everyone. That’s when I switched to Hard. The fights still took an equal amount of time, but they needed more thought.

So those are my preferences towards difficulty. Now onto the main course.

In most video games, like first person shooters, action-adventures and such, there are three difficulty levels: Easy, Normal and Hard. In most cases, Easy difficulty lowers enemies’ HP and decreases their damage. Normal has no changes to those values, and on hard enemies have more HP and deal more damage. This is not a good way to do difficulty. Increasing enemy HP just means that it takes longer to kill them, and increasing their damage means you have to perform better mechanically. Your jumps need to be accurate and your shots need to all hit the head. This does not increase the need for strategy, it just means you need to play longer. This is why I usually avoid hard difficulty: It just wastes time without actually being more challenging.

So how to make games more or less difficult? Most of the time difficulty comes from multitasking. Navigating environments, figuring out enemy attack patterns, figuring out enemy weaknesses, managing resources… If you want less challenge, take some of those features away. Add infinite ammunition. Simplify enemy AI. Add pointers to the best place from where to shoot. And conversely, add more complexity if you want challenge. Add more different types of enemies. Add weapon jamming. Make the AI more cunning. Although, this will require more time and resources from the developer.

One way games have handled things better are achievements. Not the generic, “kill 1000 enemies” grinds. But those which require you to do stuff with a handicap. Half-Life Episode II and Puzzle Quest II have prime examples. Half-Life had and achievement that required the player to place a garden gnome into a space rocket. The only garden gnome in the game is found near the start, and the only space rocket near the end. In other words, you need to carry a garden gnome with you the whole game. Through all the dark tunnels, wide open spaces and car chases. Figuring out how to do that adds to the game difficulty by adding to complexity. Puzzle Quest II has an achievement that requires the player not to use any items except when dictated by the plot. It takes out an entire mechanic and valuable resource from the player. Many bosses have actually become challenging with this handicap. Beat Hazard had one achievement that required you to be hit by 50 or so mines in one song and not to die. It required a lot of planning to pull off. This is Jim Sterling’s point. Make the core game as easy as possible, and add additional challenges for those who desire them.

The other way is far more insidious. Fantasy Wars and Elven Legacy, strategy games from eastern Europe, both have extra objectives for every mission. These objectives range from completing the mission in X turns or less, or by having the player conquer an area somewhere, or such. The kicker is that completing these objectives award the player prizes, like experience, gold or items. These rewards are usually quite substantial. This actually makes difficulty a tactical choice: I can finish this level easily, but do I want to miss out on that wicked sword and 500 gold? In my case, I always went for gold. And boy was that hard. I remember thinking at one point “Well, this mission looks simple. There’s the main city that I need to conquer. Now what about the side objectives? Conquer that far-off village? Well, I guess that I can divide my forces… Finish the entire mission in seven turns or less?! It takes me at least 5 turns to move my first unit outside the main city! Madness!” I grit my teeth and played. I failed, learned, tried again and succeeded. Getting that sweet, sweet gold medal and all the rewards made the victory ever more satisfying.

I made a mathematical formula to represent this method. Imagine that the skill the game needs is 1, and the game gives 1 reward. The rewards make it easier for player to progress; A more efficient sword requires less attacks to fall an enemy. The difference between skill and reward is 0. If you want to decrease difficulty, make the game require 0.5 skill and give 0.75 reward. That means the difference between skill and reward changes to 0.25. So the player requires less skill to play the game, and the game gives the player more resources to succeed. And if you want the game to be harder, make the game require 2 skill and give 1.5 rewards. Now the game takes more skill to complete, but also rewards the player. If your game is a level-based roleplaying game, give the player more experience. Now he gets more (non-essential) content out of the game, and feels more challenged.

At least that is what I would do, were I a game designer. Oh wait.

Picking a better pocket

So, pick-pocketing.

Only in one game have I seen pickpocketing done well: Assassin’s Creed. In the original one, I tended to often be short on insta-killing throwing knives. In those cases I started to keep an eye open for mercenaries, who wandered the streets. When I spotted one, I locked on and moved behind him. The screen focused on the mark, making the crowds and buildings a blur. Avoiding the people and slowing down when the mark looked around I inched closer. And when I was close enough, I extended my hand towards his belt. And finally, the prize was mine. Pocketing the knives, I turned around and walked away as the mercenary slowly started to pat his belt. Assassin’s Creed showed two facets that I see are important to making pickpocketing fun: Effort and rewards.

First, rewards. As I stated, trowing knives tend to run out fast in AC, and one of the easiest ways to get more is pick-pocketing. This makes it necessary to pick pockets from time to time (outside designated pick-pocketing sidequests). Many games throw in pick-pocketing as a side thought, and therefore do not give much value for the activity. In Neverwinter Nights, I remember once pick-pocketing a single Ring of Protection at the beginning of the game. That was the most valuable loot I have ever stolen. Many characters who have something tended to just have negligible amount of money, which is not a suitable reward for the effort that picking a pocket takes.

So, effort. Many Infinity Engine games (Baldur’s Gates, Neverwinter Nights…) used the classic d20 method of picking a pocket: Rolling a single skill check. I don’t remember/know how AD&D did it, but modern incarnations had the following: You roll Sleight of Hand, and succeed if your check is over 20. The target rolls Spot and if he rolls over your check, he notices the action. This is an incredibly merciless system, since you need at least 10 points in SoH to have a 50/50 chance of succeeding in taking something, and even then the target may notice. In a tabletop environment the DM  is interpreting the situation and can craft a sensible and working solution to the situation. But in a video game, the default solution is to have the target become hostile towards the thief, and that creates the problem.

Since picking a pocket requires the target not to be hostile, they are usually either allies to the player, or a neutral party. And in Baldur’s Gates, the targets with any potential loot tend to be high-level characters. And they tend to have high Spot. So if you try to pick-pocket for example a captain of the guard, he most likely notices you and attacks. If you fight back, all the NPC allies of the captain also turn hostile. Most likely you just die. And if you do manage to kill the guards, you have either now pissed of about 70% of the city you were in, or most likely killed an important, plot-related NPC. So you have now two options: Accept that due to the low morality of the heroes of the Sword Coast, they have failed in their quest, allowing the main bad guy to plunge the world into evil, or load the game. This means that usually pick-pocketing is just rolling dice and loading until you manage to get something from the target, which is a boring, time-consuming task.

So how would I implement pick-pocketing? First of all, I understand that making a sensible reaction for an NPC that notices the thievery is extremely hard, if not impossible. That’s why I would eliminate the possibility of getting noticed. I would give each NPC in the world a stat called “Suspectibility to Pickpocketing”, which is a number from 1 to 3 (or whatever range I have my skills in). If your rogue has equal or higher pickpocketing skill, he automatically succeeds in stealing something. If he does not, he does not even try (that guy looks alert. Better pass this one). Like lockpicking in Dragon Age II.

Then I would add rewards. In Dragon Age Origins, pickpocketing was a skill that was grouped with Persuasion, Lockpicking and crafting skills. As Persuasion leads to discovering more lore, getting more experience and rewards, and getting side quests, then pickpocketing would have to offer the same. In this case I would grant experience every time the player picks a pocket, increased loot and occasionally giving the player option to carry out a quest by picking a couple of pockets.

So that would be how I would manage pickpocketing in an Infinity game. But let’s widen the scope a bit. Assassin’s Creed II: Revelations had a maneuver called Counter-Stealing. It was like a counterattack, except you stole whatever your opponent was carrying. In Revelations this was a bit useless maneuver, but there is a game I would have loved to have something like this: Dragon Age II. Some of the tougher enemies in DA II quaff a healing potion when they are down in HP. I would love to have my Rogue have a skill that would stun an enemy and steal any combat items it has, like bombs or potions. This would make pickpocketing a tactical combat maneuver worthy of consideration. Disarming enemies would probably go to the same category, perhaps as an upgrade. It might sound like a game-breaker, but that’s just a matter of balancing it.

Another thing in Assassin’s Creed Revelations are the hired group of thieves. They automatically loot bodies while following you, and give you the money found. That would be quite a nifty ability: Have the rogue of your group automatically pick some pockets while you are travelling. This way you can concentrate on your quests and won’t need to press at every bloody peasant on the streets to get use out of your expensive ability.

So now you should have principles with which to make a useful, modern, streamlined  rogue in your fantasy game. You’re welcome. Next time something else.

And you probably have discovered that I changed the visual layout of this blog. If so, good for you.

 

Picking the right lock

As I started to write this post, I began with a short story about pickpocketing. I had some strong opinions about the activity, but soon I started to notice that they were not as well thought out as I remembered. Nevertheless, I finished the post and copied it here. Only then, when I started to edit the text, I realised that I had somehow shifted to writing about lockpicking. So… Lockpicking then, I guess.

But yes, to keep this post in line with the last one as dissecting the three iconic fantasy rogue skills, I’ll be concerned more about digital roleplaying games. One of the most obvious reasons for lockpicking is getting through locked doors. A skilled rogue can pick a lock silently and without a key. These two are the main selling points of lockpicking… Or at least I feel that they should be. But lately, the focus has seemed to shift. Instead of being troublesome barriers between you and progress, they are just annoying bumps that have to be clicked with a certain guy.

Unlike traps, locked doors are generally handled just fine, the issue is with larger context. A door should be an element that lets the player to express themselves. How do you get through a locked door? Smash it with force? Pick the lock? Find and persuade the keyholder to relinquish the key? Find a way around it? In other words, there should (nearly) always be another way to open a locked door in addition to lockpicking. The methods should also be more than cosmetic. Some examples to be used in a Dragon Age-type game:

Lockpicking: Rogues can pick all nonmagical locks from the start, but it takes time. When the player clicks on a door with a rogue, he or she runs over and starts working, generating a progress bar. If an enemy attacks the rogue, he has to defend himself, thus stopping the progress bar from advancing. When the bar is full, the door unlocks. Better locks and low skill makes the process longer. After unlocking, the rogue automatically goes into stealth mode and the other party halts. Behind the door is either a solitary, bored guard, conveniently facing the other way, or a small group of guards, idly killing time.

This system would enable a situation which is quite rare in games: Defending a point. When a large, difficult combat encounter happens, you can either fight it as a whole party, or send the rogue to open the next door, essentially fighting at reduced efficiency for a while. After the door is open, the party can retreat and relock the door. This situation should of course be used sparingly, and most of the time opening a door is just clicking at it with the rogue.

Another point is the enemies behind the door. If the other method of getting through a locked door is by force, then it should have consequences. Breaking a door is loud work, and whenever the fighter/barbarian/whatever breaks the door, the game spawns a combat encounter behind the door; Most likely archers behind shield-bearing fighters. This way the player can choose to not have a rogue in the party, and still be able to get to locked places.

Finally, lockpicking should be a renegade option. Say that the players need access to the Royal Dungeons of Neverport, and only the Grand Duke has the key. Grand Duke, indifferent to the plight of the players, will relinquish the key only if they take care of the marauding band of bear cubs that have been ravaging the countryside. Or, the rogue could just pick the lock. But most likely the players will take the duke’s offer, since as a side quest it will be worth money and experience, and at the very least, just plain content. This, of course, is remedied by giving the player an equal amount of experience for picking the lock as what he would have received by taking the quest. Or, by having the Duke’s guards inside the mines(?) stop the players as intruders.

What about chests or containers? Well, first of all, do not give the players experience for unlocking chests with a rogue. The players will take every point of experience they can find, and that way you are just forcing the players to have a rogue in the party. And I’m in favour of what KotoR did: Make breaking locks a possibility, but have the process destroy something inside. That way you get the most content with rogues, but will give the players without one some content. Or, have the traps explode and give an Injury to the opener.

All right, next time I’ll try to write about pickpocketing.

Trapping the spirit of traps

Traps. I like the idea behind traps: Hidden, deadly surprises for the unwary, and only detectable by a professional. But only a few times have I seen traps implemented interestingly in a game. Today I will give some definitions.

Traps should be frightening. In Dragon Age II, a typical trap is a bear trap which does neglible damage and immobilizes the character for a few moments. In combat, this is a small nuisance. Outside combat, it is a speed bump.

Dragon Age II had the perfect solution for traps, but it fumbled it. DA has an Injury system. Whenever a character falls in combat, he or she sustains an Injury, which lowers maximum HP until healed with an Injury kit. Make a trap knock a character out outright in combat, and sustain an injury outside combat. This way traps are elevated from speed bumps and nuisances to real threats, but not life-ruining ones. A party without a rogue can stumble through a trap-infested corridor, but it will possibly leave them vulnerable for the main course.

Traps should be hidden. Ironically, most of the times traps come as complete surprises for me. I’m just running around, minding my own business, clearing out a dungeon and suddenly I run into a trap (which slows me down for exactly 2 seconds). I realize ”Oh, this is a trapped zone” and switch to my rogue for until the end of the trapped area, clearing them out as I go. While I risk sounding like an over-privileged whiner, I don’t like being surprised like this.

I feel traps should be like horror movies. They start normal, with just some vague hints of something being amiss. The events build up and strange things crop up, shadows in the dark, the feeling that something is watching. And finally, the monster attacks. This is what traps should feel like by themselves. The presence of traps should be obvious, but the exact nature and location of one should be a mystery until it strikes… Or you detect it first.

Imagine a typical D&D-based computer roleplaying game. Your typical party is doing some typical Bioware side quest in a typical old ruin. Outside the ruin is a typical bunch of bandits, camping. After slaying them and collecting the typical loot, you enter the first level of the ruin. A corridor later you come across a larger chamber, with a couple of bandit corpses laying about, deliciously highlighted as containers. Suddenly the rogue states ”Everybody stop! I have a bad feeling about this room…” The party stops, and a new movement command makes the characters move a bit slower and carefully. Now every feature of the room becomes unclear. Are those floor tiles a bit darker than the rest? Is there something barely perceptible between the pillars? Are the doors safe? After sidling along the walls, the fighter detects something behind a tapestry. The rogue is taken to it, and he, after a moment’s work manages to defuse the device. ”This room’s clear, I think… Watch out for any traps on the other room, though.” The characters start moving at normal speed again, and won’t slow again in that specific ruin. In the next room, the fighter steps onto a pressure plate, and poisonous darts fill the room. Every character gets a Poisoned-condition, which can only be cured in the base camp and which lowers healing efficiency by 50% for 30 minutes. Only after the rogue has cleared out all the traps in the ruin, he says ”Okay, I’m pretty sure that’s the last of them. We’re safe.” That’s what a good trap should be like. Creating paranoia, and striking without mercy.

Traps should either be equivalent to combat, or something else entirely. This might sound odd at first, but let me illustrate with two examples: In Dragon Age II, disarming a trap (clicking on it with a rogue) nets you 100 experience. Fighting a standard fight nets you 200 experience. So clicking three times on glowy circle will net you more experience than a 5-minute tactical combat. In Knights of the Old Republic, you can take a feat that aids you in using and disarming mines, which happens about every thirty or so minutes (if memory serves), or you can take a feat that aids you in fights, which happen in about every five minutes (the easiest way to clear a minefield in Kotor is to walk over it).

These are examples of traps sharing some features (payoff in DAII, effort in KotoR) with combat and thus muddling the experience. A game that gives the same weight to both trap disarming and combat is in Puzzle Quest II, though it is probably a cheap example due to the nature of the game. Another would be Betrayal At Krondor, where traps are minor box-pushing puzzles, but they are set in the same game mode as combat. The traps in Krondor are deadly; A lightning trap can incapacitate a character instantly if you wander into it. An example of a trap that is something else entirely than combat would be a minigame for disarming one, or a quick time event, though I don’t remember any examples right now.

The point is, traps are most likely rarer than combat. Therefore, they shouldn’t take the same resources as combat. And unless you force the player to have a rogue in the party, traps shouldn’t be worth any experience, as it is the most valuable substance in roleplaying games (in those that don’t have a reachable level cap, anyway). If you do always have a rogue, then you can reward the player for finding and disarming traps, since keeping a scout is plain smart. And if you do have a same system for traps and combat and both appear equally often, then go nuts in offering people ways to make either easier.

So here are my long, winding thoughts on making better traditional traps in digital roleplaying games. Some of these points go well on the tabletop too. Next time the other useless rogue activity: Pickpocketing.

Father vs. Son

I hate the holidays.

Anyways, I finished Dragon Age II. For some reason I have been under the impression that people liked DA II less than its predecessor, Dragon Age Origins. As it had been very long since I last played Origins, the reason for this was somewhat unclear. Was Origins truly superior? It was certainly longer, that’s for sure. And I remembered vaguely that the combat was a bit more… expansive. But I remembered nothing beyond that. So I installed Origins and took another look at it, creating a mage character and playing some of the tutorial. While memories didn’t exactly come rushing back, seeing the interface, some of the events and dialogue, I started to form a more informed opinion on the differences of the two games.

First of all, the overall tone. Origins feels a lot more gritty and grimy. In the intro, darkspawn pour over helpless townsfolk, killing and maiming. The whole world is on the brink of destruction. And only the Grey Wardens, free men and women strong enough to survive the process of becoming one, can match the darkspawn onslaught.

Dragon Age II is a story, told by Varric Tethras, a beardless rogue dwarf with an automatic crossbow called Bianca. At the intro, the Hawke family is fleeing the darkspawn invasion, cutting them down by the dozens in the process and even defeating a mighty ogre. The main character himself is wielding a greatsword as big as he is.

So Dragon Age II is not exactly a gritty and serious. This shift in tone might be one of the key points that divided opinions. After touting Origins as dark fantasy, I guess fans went into the sequel with the same mindset. I’m not sure if this was a smart move, but it certainly was an interesting one.

Storywise most of Dragon Age II takes place after the events of Origins. DA II is divided into three chapters, with three years between each. Whereas Origins’ story was about defeating the darkspawn horde that was poised to send whole of Ferelden, and maybe even the world, into chaos and ruin, DA II was about Hawke fleeing to Kirkwall as a refugee and then making his place in his new home. Again, I liked the sequel better. It had a more personal feeling. While most of the time the world is not at stake, I was invested in the troubles of Hawke and his companions. Sure there are some world-shaking events happening in the game, but they (spoiler alert) are mostly just ripples of the choices Hawke makes while defending his home city from the conflict between the Templars and the Mage Circle.

The length. Oh, the length. According to Steam, I played Dragon Age Origins for 80+ hours. It was a bloody long game. And truth to be told, I remember three things about it: When you become a Grey Warden, killing the non-essential dragons and killing the final boss. Everything else is a kind of blur. All those side quests, all those characters, I have forgotten. Meanwhile, DA II took about 30 hours. There were only about 10-20 important characters in the game, including Hawke’s party. There were three main storylines in the game, all of which I remember. In short, DA II was a lot more compact and easier to process. Origins was simply too long and massive. Although, to be fair, it had a lot more on its plate. It had to describe the world and the mythos in addition to delivering its own story.

One of the things that immidiately annoyed me when I started to play Origins again was that the Warden’s dialogue was not voice acted. I have a sneaking suspicion that I might actually not replay the game for that single reason. This is a two-bladed sword: On the other hand, the lack of voice acting gives the option to add a lot more dialogue, since only half of them has to be voice acted. But having only one side talk makes the dialogue sound silly. Especially after having been used to full (and good) voice acting. (Side note: In Mass Effect, female Shephard sounded a lot better than male Shephard, while in Dragon Age II it is the complete opposite. Male Hawke does not have the typical gruff action hero voice, but a pleasant one, capable of being both soft and hard as necessary.)

Hawke in Dragon Age II has a lot less lines than Warden in Origins, but since they must be both brief and sound good when voiced, the things Hawke has to say feel a lot more interesting and memorable.

And finally, the mechanics. Dragon Age Origins is a mess. Every stat influences something, there are both combat traits and noncombat traits, and some of the things even influence dialogue choices. There are such jewels as Pickpocketing, and if I remember correctly, Trapmaking. When has Pickpocketing ever been a skill worthy of developing in a computer roleplaying game? I could elaborate on my dislike for Pickpocketing and Trapmaking, but I think I’ll save that for later. In any case, I never got a good hold on Origins’ system. And I have a sneaking suspicion that it breaks extremely easily. I have never liked video games that have the same skill points divided between dialogue and combat skills. DA II just has a simple attribute system and a manageable amount of traits per character. And there are no levels when you don’t get to choose new traits. While DA II keeps combat and everything else separated by a solid brick wall, the system is clear and intuitive, unlike Origins’.

Combat in Origins was reminiscent of roleplaying games of old. Enemies came in all shapes and sizes and there was truly a lot of variance. Nearly every combat was different. The player had to know pretty much every trick there was. This meant that the difficulty curve was generally quite horrible. Some fights were easy as pie: Just toss the fighter and few fireballs and voila. But then there was the occational well-armoured guy with a fire immunity. These fights were hair-tearingly annoying. I remember one random wolf attack, which was pretty much the most difficult fight in the game. After a while I switched to Easy, as I got tired of the god damn boring hit point chipping contests.

Dragon Age II, however, is extremely streamlined. There are minions that fall in just a couple of hits, normal guys that take a longer time to kill, but are generally suspectible to special attacks, special guys like rogues and mages that can wreak havoc unless dealt with, Lieutenants that require the whole party to defeat, and bosses who generally require both the whole party and a strategy. Because of this quite rigid definition, nearly every fight is essentially the same: Kill the minions with sweeping attacks, identify rogues and mages and kill them, tie the normal guys with the fighter in melee and finally kill the lieutenant/boss.

One thing I like in Dragon Age II is the cross-class combo system. The characters have special attacks that leave the enemies with a class-specific status for a few moments. Warriors Stagger, Rogues Disorient and Mages leave the enemies Brittle. Every class also has some attacks that deal extra damage to enemies with statuses from other classes. For example, Mighty Blow from Warrior deals four times as much damage to Brittle enemies as against normal enemies. These abilities are the highlights of fights. Getting a tough enemy Brittle so you can finish him with a single blow is fun. Identifying when to use the abilities is a key part of fighting at the harder difficulties.

In the end, I turned Dragon Age II’s difficulty up when I got bored of the repetitive combat. As enemies dealt more damage and took more punishment, the fights became a lot more interesting. While the basic flow of the combat is always the same, it feels more like a puzzle. And they are a nice break to the dialogue. While not a perfect solution, I feel that it is better than Origins’ frustrating mess.

So there. Dragon Age II is better than its predecessor in almost every way. I hope the eventual sequel will make the combat more reasonable (walking down the street at night nets you about 30 to 40 dead bandits), and keeps on streamlining.

Dual Dialogue

I began to replay Dragon Age II. I say that I really like Hawke. So many player characters, especially Bioware characters, feel bland. Even Renegade-Shephard felt like a robot. But Hawke has a distinct personality: A smartass. You can be a diplomatic and easygoing smartass, a vindicative and judgemental smartass, or my favourite, the extreme smartass. And the npc influence system is so very good.

But onto my main point. I discussed Dragon Age II with my friend and wondered about the next game in the series. It was interesting that DA II left the Hero of Ferelden behind and concentrated on a completely different person in a completely different place. I wonder if the trend continues and the next game would have another new protagonist, and the previous games’ choices affect the background. It would be extremely interesting if the games introduce a bunch of characters, who join forces in the final title where the epic showdown with… something happens.

We joked that the since all the characters would be player-created, then all dialogue would be controlled by the player. Thus, in effect, the player would have conversations with himself. In dialogue with non-party npc’s, the player can press quick time events to make comment with another character. Funny aside, that would be an interesting aspect.

Imagine a scenario where two dashing smartasses are walking into a castle, but a guard stops them at the gate, saying that the king is seeing no-one. The player can then select which smartass will answer. He selects the dandy one and chooses the vindicative choice. ”Don’t you know who I am? By gods, I should get you chained up and thrown in to the dungeons!” The guard gets bamboozled. The player then shifts perspective to the non-dandy smartass and chooses the placative choice: ”Good sir, the Archduke of Heimburg has been on the road for a week. Surely the King will not tarnish his hospitality by refusing one of the most powerful nobles of the North?” The guard agrees, alarmed, and opens the gates.

It would be very interesting to control two people at the same time. To have conversations where identifying who should say what is the key. I can almost imagine how a typical Bioware chat with a partymember would go: The other character asking questions, and the other one choosing how to tell his story. I could imagine how such a dialogue tree would be incredibly huge and complex, and voice acting the whole system would be nigh-impossible. But the dual-dialoguing would be an interesting thing for some indie developer to try out. If I didn’t hate coding so much, I would try something like that.

More Dracombat

All right, back to the dragon game thing.

One of the things that annoys me in many roleplaying games is the neutral attitude. Specifically, the attitude that the designers must assume that the main character’s personality is decided by the player. This leads the designers to make the characters as neutral as possible by default, and add personality with dialogue choices. But as voice acting is bloody expensive and irrevocable, they usually just add the good options and the evil options. The contrast between the options is usually quite staggering, and there is usually little reason to make an evil selection in one place and good in another. Therefore, the player tends to choose either good or evil from the start and then automatically choose the appropriate dialogue choices. At least if the player in question is me.

So I started to think up a new way to define dialogue options. And, for the record, character advancement.

Instead of picking from Figher/Rogue/Mage, or something similar, the player chooses his personality at the beginning of the game. I have always thought of dragons as arrogant, solitary and predatory. Since three is the magic number, I’ll have three emergent personality features: Arrogant, Cold and Manipulative, in the form of three different-coloured dragons. This will manifest in both dialogue options and combat.

Since our personality is set in stone, there is no reason to have a lot of different options. Which is bad, actually, since we want interaction. But, there is another way: Points of interest. Every time a dialogue starts, the conversation goes in the most obvious route; Biggest questions and statements and all that. But in some points, the player can direct the conversation to specific subjects. If he does not, the conversation takes default route. For example, when planning an attack on a village, the player can ask about archerers, magical defenses or why he should risk his neck. There are also points where the player can either agree or disagree with something. In every case the player character’s dialogue is based on the personality.

Then, combat. As I outlined, the combat happens in turns. On his turn, the player selects a target and an action. The targets might be flying things (griffins, other dragons), or ground-based units (footmen, knights). The actions are mostly either simple maneuvers, or different attacks. As we have three personalities, we have three preferred methods of fighting. Arrogant dragons revel in their might, enjoying the feeling of superiority that battle brings. Tough, strong, melee-based. Cold dragons keep their distance and perform hit-and-run-attacks. They have no qualms about retreating. Fast, sudden, breath-based. Manipulative dragons like to toy with their foes. They feint, throw ranks into disarray, use traps and break their opponents. Agile, reactive, use all available tools of destruction. Tools, which I will define later.

Roll for Initiative

Initiative is a funny thing. A typical initiative system in roleplaying games, where the fastest entity goes first and gets the greatest bonuses is kind of a two-bladed sword: On one hand you get to act first. But on the other, others get to see what you do and react. If that sounds strange, keep in mind that Magic has molded my way of thinking:

In Magic, the player whose turn it is always gets to cast spells first. If he or she does, then the next player in clockwise order (though not always) gets to react to it by casting an Instant on top of it. That spell resolves before the first one. Then another player can cast a spell on the stack. When every player has passed, the topmost spell on the stack resolves, and a new round of spells can be played.

In this dynamic, the first player is actually in a somewhat disadvantageous position. Let’s take a Counterspell / Jace’s Ingenuity scenario. Player A wants to play a spell on his turn. His opponent, player B, has a Counterspell, which can nullify A’s spell, and Jace’s Ingenuity, which allows B to draw cards. B does not have mana for both.

If the spell player A has is cast at sorcery speed (meaning it has to be played on his turn, when the stack is empty) the situation is quite straightforward. He either plays it and forces the opponent to use the counterspell, or waits until he can play something to bait the counterspell off B’s hand. But if the spell is an instant… If A does not cast the spell and decides to wait, the ball falls to B. B can play Ingenuity and draw cards… but then he does not have a counterspell ready to counter A’s spells. If he passes, neither player gets to play anything now, and the turn changes to B. And the tables have turned. Since I have used this system for about 10 years, I have been ingrained to think that the one who gets to react is nearly always in a better position.

A few days ago I pitched in to my friends’ roleplaying game system discussion. Based on their initial ponderings, I suggested the following:

Have every player roll Initiative, with whatever applicable bonuses for quickness or dexterity or whatever. Then, reverse the order. Every round, the first person (that is, the person who rolled lowest), describes his action. Then the next one, and so on, until everyone have described what they are going to do. Now, every action is resolved from the top (that is, the person who rolled highest, and described his action last). When every action is resolved, a new round begins.

An example. Alpha, Beta and Delta have concluded that their differences can only be solved via superior firepower. Alpha rolls 11 for initiative, Beta 6 and Delta -2. Therefore, Delta has to act first. He decides to fire a barrage of magic missiles at Beta. Beta, noticing Delta’s murderous intent, presses X to take cover behind a cardboard box. Alpha, sad that he is not considered a threat, casts Candy Armor on himself. Since everyone have chosen their actions, the events happen. In a stripey red-white flash, Alpha is covered in mint brittle. Beta dashes to cover. Delta rolls for attack, taking penalties for Beta’s cover and movement.

I feel that this system has potential for it is simple and elegant… provided that there is nothing to make it more complex. But this is never the case. Delta might not be satisfied that he must always be the first to act, and wants to change his place on the initiative track. Sometimes someone might want to use his or her hands and walk at the same time. Et cetera. A weaker designer might start to think about some action system. Perhaps if you could move some distance and use your hands for a simple task at the same time. And if you can do something super-fast, there could be a some sort of free action. And perhaps you could try to out-react someone by sacrificing a part of your turn?

This is a precarious phase in game design: Recognizing a problem and trying to fix it by adding stuff. This usually leads to feature creep and adds to the rules, which is rarely a good thing, especially if you want something simple and quick. So to this situation I say no. Every action, no matter how simple or fast, takes up your turn. Dashing somewhere, drawing a gun, aiming, shooting, striking someone, using magic, everything is exactly one turn. And regarding Initiative, you can choose to do nothing on your turn to move on top of the Initiative track. Since this action is most likely taken by people who did not roll well on Initiative, everyone can react to this… By also going on top of the initiative track. Therefore, you can only get a drop on someone by forcing them to use their action on this round.

So this is the Initiative system I suggested. Simple and fast, since processing actions is the only thing that takes time. And time will tell whether my colleagues will use it. I certainly would.