Building an RPG. (what makes you want to scream at the dev team?)

[RootedPhoenix]

I'm building an RPG. I'm ..still building key parts, but I thought I should ask this question now.

When playing RPGs (or any game that shares elements with RPGs) what were the kinds of things that made you want to shake the stupid out of the development team?

Maybe this is a startlingly obvious question. I don't know.

*sets up table, offers cookies, cake, milk, and sodas* <3

[EricKei]

Be careful how much you let potential players get involved/how much influence they have. People don't always want what they think they want ^_^ Listen to fans interested in your concept, but don't get mired in every little detail fans may suggest. You could end up unintentionally overpromising.

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Pen and paper? Digital for... PC's? Consoles? Tablets/mobile?

Different strokes for different folks ^_^

In order --

PnP - Likely to put up with larger, more complex rulesets, tho that means that rules lawyers will inevitably crop up.

Digital players - Generally, keep as much of the 'dice-rolling' and charting behind the scenes as possible, to keep things fluid for the players. Not all of these are true for all games on a given platform, and there is some crossover:
- PC/CRPG - Tend to be dialogue-heavy, deeper, more complex (tho not always)
- Console - Tend toward middling-level simplicity; need the ability to be able to save/quit at alost any time out of combat, to be resumed at will (assume short burst of play, 1-2 hours)
- Touchscreens - Tend to be simpler in both look and in execution; if sold in digital stores, are expected to be cheaper

[Kittish]

As EricKei noted already, your platform affects the answer quite a bit. I do a lot of pen & paper gaming, and one thing that drives me (and the other people in the gaming group) crazy is combat rules, especially if there are any firearms in the game. Though, to be fair, I'm not really sure how you can make firearm combat anything like realistic without breaking your combat system.

One of the people in our group is a min-maxer, he's really really good at finding the loopholes in a ruleset that let him build a character that's far more powerful than it should be. Having too many such loopholes can potentially break your game.

Consistency!! We've tried out a couple of systems that we (the group I game with) decided were just unplayable due to inconsistencies in how the system worked.

Also, play style. Straight up D&D style hack and slash with spells blazing is ok, but it's getting kind of boring. I've come to prefer a more story driven game, like Dresden (but the combat system in that game is... well, it's got some serious cracks running through the foundations). Story driven does make more work for the players, they have to actually think about character development and *gasp* role play.

[RootedPhoenix]

Um. I'm waffling between PC and mobile. Leaning more towards PC. I think it'll be more story-driven.

I've got charts, notes and other things for me, but I'm glad to know that I don't have to show the math...unless someone wants to see all of it.

[Seshat]

There will always be people who want to see the math. There will always be people who don't care.


Be up-front.
If your game is primarily story driven, TELL US.
If your game is basically a fighting game that has story to link it together, TELL US.

We want to know. Games that supposedly 'satisfy both audiences' actually satisfy neither.

If it's story driven, make sure your audience can bring the difficulty down to 'trivially easy' for combat sections, because you WILL have some people who are far more interested in the story than in the combat system.

If it's a fighting game, be sure your audience can dial the difficulty up to 'absolute nightmare' for the combat sections. And try to go heavy on the realism of the combat system, or at worst, the consistency. (If you have magic or space lasers, screw realism.)

If it is going to be 'some of both', make the combat system at least somewhat configurable; otherwise you're going to make both groups unhappy.




One of the 'not again' things for me: If the peasants in the village at the end of your game can easily fend off bandits that would have demolished the crack troop fighters at the start of your game, why the hell aren't those peasants doing the job of the fighters?

[wolfie]

Avoid anything that's completely illogical (at least in terms of the game system).

Case in point: I was a player (AD&D) in a party exploring ruins which (from scenery the DM set up) it was clear that nobody had visited for at least a few hundred years. In one room of the dungeon, we had to get past a couple of pyrohydras which were chained in place. Various players had a tendency to disbelieve if an obstacle looked too tough - naturally, the DM always insisted on anyone who disbelieved something pointing out WHY they thought it was an illusion.

I disbelieved this one, on the grounds that since they were chained the pyrohydras couldn't prowl elsewhere for food, there was no sign of anything that they could have eaten, and there were no piles of pyrohydra shit. If they'd been set there as guards, the lack of tending would have resulted in them dying of starvation a long time ago.

I made my roll, but those critters were a key element of the dungeon (even though, given my arguments, they shouldn't have been there). DM's solution? I saw that they were an illusionary aura around a couple of mechanical constructs.

[AccountingDrone]

For the love of god, please please please PLEASE let us skip cutscenes.

[EricKei]

... and one thing that drives me (and the other people in the gaming group) crazy is combat rules, especially if there are any firearms in the game. Though, to be fair, I'm not really sure how you can make firearm combat anything like realistic without breaking your combat system.

I can cite a good example of what NOT to do when it comes to firearms rules

Come with me, back into the days of the ancients...Specifically, the late 80's. PnP game makers Palladium (the guys who make the Rifts & Robotech RPG's) had a TMNT game in which they had absurdly detailed rules for how to resolve gun-based combat (probably based on their Recon game rules)...To the extent that they had players roll to hit for every single bullet in a burst (salvo), and roll damage for every shot that actually hit. I think they may have also had you roll scatter direction for misses with high-output/low-accuracy weps like machine guns...And speaking of which, yes, this meant that firing a long burst/sustained fire out of something like a machine gun or a full-auto-whatever could easily require several DOZEN rolls per attack sequence. This was a badly failed attempt at gaining realism at the expense of bogging down combat speed.

Fortunately, this was changed by the time any of those books got to their first "Revised Edition," for obvious reasons. Their more modern way of dealing with gun bursts is just to assume (for 3-round-ish bursts; this assumes that one trigger pull = a 3 round burst) that either all of the shots hit or all of them miss, or (for sustained fire/long bursts) that either you miss entirely, or that about 30% or so of the bullets actually hit the primary target. Both were expressed with a standard roll such as a 3d6 or what have you.

Just as a side note, tho it's only presented in one or two of their older splatbooks, they do have not-entirely-preposterous rules for aerial combat (specifically, dogfighting and aerial chases) which intentionally move toward the abstract, determining things like who has successfully tailed a target or jinked out of a pursuer's sights based on the pilot's skill and the relative airspeed of the aircrafts in question.

[El Pollo Guerrera]

Character creation... point-based buy systems always (in my experience) end up with at least one character who is super-munchkin, and players who want to build a 'real' character (as in, not a killing machine) are at a disadvantage.

Also, in a super-hero game, point-based systems end up with everyone trying to build either Batman or Wolverine. No one wants to be the Green Arrow or the Human Torch.

There has to be an element of randomness in character creation, something the players will have to 'work with' in order to play. Initial stats, random powers, something from the start... THEN maybe let players build on that foundation with points.

[Mytical]

Fetch quests. Find somebody and talk to them, then come back quests. Grinding for HOURS and losing all progress with a single death. Lack of non combat quests/things to do. Working super hard, getting some decent gear, and then seeing somebody who started yesterday with uber gear because they paid real money.

[Seshat]

ESCORT MISSIONS!

I'm currently playing a game which does escort missions properly: the person I'm escorting is willing to follow me, and doesn't run off ahead willy-nilly straight into danger.

This means that I CAN pause and wait while the Ravening Tarrasque trots across its patrol area, and cut through while it's not looking where I am.


Unfortunately, my escort buddy will sometimes run off and try to kill things way tougher than he and I put together. Please correct this misbehaviour for your game!


But at least the worst part of the Nightmare That Is Escort Missions is handled in this game.

[Geek King]

Make stuff worth using. If you have status effect or elemental damage, make them worth using. I can't count the number of games I've seen where poison or damage over time was worthless because straight damage would kill much more effectively.

Also, make sure such things scale well into the late game. Often such damage doesn't scale properly when enemies with high HP show up, and you (as a player) end up with useless equipment and spells.

Also, if you have both an armor defense and agility defense in the game, make sure the agility defense actually means something. I play a lot of thief-type characters, and it drives me crazy that often I can't dodge a massive wall-of-muscle monster any better than wily kobold or goblin.

[Kaylyn]

Someone mentioned skippable cutscenes. Great idea for those that hate them, but also make sure that an accidental tap of the keyboard or controller isn't going to skip the scene for those of us that enjoy cutscenes. Assassin's Creed III, which I'm playing right now, has a "hold O to skip cutscene" so you have to actually hold the button for a few seconds rather than be paranoid that you're going to accidentally mash a button and skip that critical story-revealing scene that you're enjoying.

[Seshat]

REPLAYABLE cutscenes! Especially story-important ones.


SUBTITLES. I'm partly deaf. If it doesn't have subtitles, I've missed it. I can't imagine how people who are more deaf than I am can manage to play some games.


ASK if the person wants subtitles BEFORE playing an intro sequence. Or default to 'with'.
I know most of the hearing world wants you to default to 'without', but if you have a non-replayable sequence without subtitles, you may as well not have run it at all as far as I'm concerned. And it pisses me off.


Oh. And if you're doing subtitles for side-chatter between NPCs, don't make me turn around to find out what's being said. Both Bioware and Bethesda do that, and it drives me CRAZY. What's the point of subtitles which aren't visible?
Just stick a character name in front of the subtitle. Or put it in a scrollable chatbox or something.

[RootedPhoenix]

Unless I am massively lucky, there's not going to be voice acting for this, so all the cutscenes will have text for anything anybody says.

And I will make sure to have the cutscenes be skippable...and then put them somewhere else to be seen again whenever someone wants to.