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Kensen
2012-09-24, 08:51 AM
Rather than designing homebrew for D&D or PF or tweaking my own version of said game, I like designing entirely new game systems. Some people may remember my creations from this homebrew forum or the structured games forum, which include Rogue: Clandestine Operations, Goblins: Tactical RPG, The Twenty-Sided World, Goblins: The Exodus, And Then There Were None, The Circle of Assassins and The Fantasy Wargame. (And many games that never really got off the ground.) Mostly they're rules-lite RPGs, tactical or strategy games, or resource management games. And they're all more or less optimized for play-by-post.

This time I want to try something different. Instead of deciding for myself what kind of game to create, I want to hear if there are people out there with amazing ideas for games to play here on the GitP boards. If feasible, it could be a collaborative effort with a few designers, artists and so on.

But first things first: What kind of game would you enjoy playing on GitP but cannot because no-one wrote that game yet? :smallcool:

Eldan
2012-09-24, 09:44 AM
Playing on GitP? The only thing I still play on here are nation games. There are many systems out there for them, almost all of them homebrewed, but there isn't one so far that I think really has everything.

Kensen
2012-09-24, 11:49 PM
Playing on GitP? The only thing I still play on here are nation games. There are many systems out there for them, almost all of them homebrewed, but there isn't one so far that I think really has everything.

Well, not exclusively on GitP, but let's say it should be optimized for play-by-post.

A nation game would be a nice challenge for a change. I do remember a nation game played on GitP, but it had little in the way of rules. It had stats for the nations, but as far as I can recall, no mechanics for interacting with the stats, which essentially meant they were just flavor. Perhaps a nation game with more robust mechanics ought to be designed.

In your opinion, what does a nation game need to have "everything"?

erikun
2012-09-25, 01:42 AM
One thing I would like to see from a PbP-focused RPG is one that uses the uniquely PbP environment. That is, a system where the GM makes one post, and the players have a day or two to react (only possibly in communication with each other) to finish the turn.

I've mentioned this idea before, but the general idea is that the GM makes decisions for the NPC team and rolls in their posts, and the players get to decide how their characters react while knowing the results of their actions. For an example, the GM might post something like this:

The gnoll pulls out its longbow, firing an arrow at the halfing (roll:d20+5) while the ogre steps forward and takes a swing at the cleric (roll:d20+11).

From there, knowing the NPCs planned actions and results of the rolls, the players get to choose how they act during the turn. The halfling might duck behind some cover to increase her defense enough to avoid the arrow, or might move completely under cover to avoid the attack entirely (and doing nothing else). The fighter of the group could rush the gnoll and attack it, or could get in the way of the ogre to prevent it from attacking the cleric (and using the fighter's defense rather than the cleric's). Similarly, the cleric may choose to move out of range of the ogre's attack, giving up actions to avoid the damage, or may choose to stay and take damage while still doing something else - perhaps heal the halfling.

Players can also work together and coordinate their actions, so that the cleric heals the halfling after the arrow hits rather than before. Or perhaps the cleric first decides to back off, then the fighter chooses to block the ogre, and so the cleric then changes his action to helping the halfling. At the end of the "PC time", the last actions decided on are what every character ends up doing.


I'm not sure if that's something you'd want to use, or even something you'd already used, but I though I'd present the idea. :smallredface: It probably wouldn't relate at all to a multiplayer nations game, though.

Kensen
2012-09-25, 02:55 AM
One thing I would like to see from a PbP-focused RPG is one that uses the uniquely PbP environment. That is, a system where the GM makes one post, and the players have a day or two to react (only possibly in communication with each other) to finish the turn.

Designing a system (whether RPG, nation game or something else) that is optimized with the unique advantages and disadvantages of the PbP environment in mind is just what I want to do. However, I think what you're suggesting could be implemented quite easily in D&D (or nearly any RPG where combatants take turns to act) by simply changing the structure of the combat round. So it's probably not necessary to build a new RPG from the ground up to enable this feature. I can see that this kind of change (if done in the right way) could streamline combat in PbP. At least it increases predictability, which in the context of PbPs is a good thing because it allows the players to act more independently. (Knowing the consequences of your actions right away removes the need for GM input at every turn.)

By the way, I'm not means dead set on designing a nation game, it's just the first idea that came up in this thread. :smallsmile: I'll still consider all ideas before deciding on what to do.

Lyndworm
2012-09-25, 03:31 AM
I have no specific input on what to build, but I may have a suggestion or two.

In PbP gaming, individual actions are drawn out compared to real-time. Often, this is seen as a disadvantage. This can be a blessing (in my opinion, at least), however, when dealing with a single player controlling multiple creatures or any time one player needs to roll obscene amounts of dice.

PbP gaming is also advantageous because it pretty much requires a die-rolling program. This takes away the visceral rush of rolling physical dice, but it allows you to roll rarer dice, like d3s and d34s, as well as impossible dice, like d13s and d69s.

I'm not sure how to incorporate these advantages, but I think that you'd need to in order to fully take advantage of PbP gaming. Good luck!

Faerieheart
2012-09-25, 12:55 PM
the main problem with play by post are non committal players. I've seen too many good games die because one player got themselves to be integral to whats going on then just vanished, or posts so rarely it takes days per post. I can think of no way to combat this dilemma and is the main reason I rarely play PBP games anymore.

Kensen
2012-09-25, 04:22 PM
I have no specific input on what to build, but I may have a suggestion or two.

In PbP gaming, individual actions are drawn out compared to real-time. Often, this is seen as a disadvantage. This can be a blessing (in my opinion, at least), however, when dealing with a single player controlling multiple creatures or any time one player needs to roll obscene amounts of dice.

PbP gaming is also advantageous because it pretty much requires a die-rolling program. This takes away the visceral rush of rolling physical dice, but it allows you to roll rarer dice, like d3s and d34s, as well as impossible dice, like d13s and d69s.

I'm not sure how to incorporate these advantages, but I think that you'd need to in order to fully take advantage of PbP gaming. Good luck!

Thanks! Good points. Some players do indeed like it that they have a plenty of time for planning. On the other hand, many players post in PbPs on breaks at work or school, or for some other reason can only invest a small amount of time per post. A good PbP should ideally accommodate both styles of play.

A good point on dice too. Particularly heavy dice pool systems that would be awkward in tabletop gaming are also possible in PbP. 26d6b12? No problem! The die roller will do it for you.

It should however be noted that while a system may be primarily designed for PbP, some players may still want to play it tabletop, and then there may be some problems if you use crazy dice pools or unusual dice.


the main problem with play by post are non committal players. I've seen too many good games die because one player got themselves to be integral to whats going on then just vanished, or posts so rarely it takes days per post. I can think of no way to combat this dilemma and is the main reason I rarely play PBP games anymore.

Yes, this is a common problem, particularly with RPGs. Apart from hand-picking players you know and trust to not drop out, there's little you can do about it. But is it possible to build a game around the assumption that at least 25% of players will drop out? I have a few solutions.

1. The starting number of players is so high that no-one will mind if a few of them vanish. The rules will have to be light enough for the initial number of players to not cause a chaos, of course. Or at least the rules should allow the players to (inter)act relatively independently. Moreover, the rules should mention what happens to the character when a player drops out so that it's actually in the rules and not the GM's problem to deal with. This works particularly well in games where characters are expected to die anyway, such as murder mysteries.

2. The game allows "drop in, drop out", i.e. recruitment is always open for new players (but there may be a maximum number of players and a queue), and any players that are inactive for 2 or 3 rounds will auto-quit, allowing new players to join. There should also be an in-game reason for characters appearing and disappearing. E.g. if it's a dwarf fortress type of PbP (hey that's an idea! :smallbiggrin:), sometimes new migrants arrive, and sometimes dwarves get melancholic and wander off, or they go berserk and the other characters have to kill them.

radmelon
2012-09-25, 10:24 PM
Well, I don't know all that much about game design, and I don't care much about how PBP friendly it is, but I've had an idea for an RPG that refuses to leave my head.

I'm going to try to pluck the nostalgia strings of some of you for a moment here, because you know what was awesome? Bionicle. One of Lego's longest running series, it (at least for the first few years[/old man rage]) had a astoundingly well thought-out and complete setting that was one of the most original I've ever seen.

For the uneducated, I can't really go into too many details about the setting at the moment (I have work to do), but 6 tribes (fire, air, earth, stone, water, ice) of biomechanical beings, all on an island populated by the same kind of biomechanical life, a culture with a maori(?) theme, and a staple of the setting is magical masks that bestow interesting powers.

I was thinking that the heroes play as Toa(hero-caste), and for a race/class combo, the players choose an element and an archtype(warrior/mage/thief/what-have-you). That's really all I have concrete right now, but it is an idea I want to explore. If not here, than maybe I'll just make a thread elsewhere on the board.

Lyndworm
2012-09-25, 10:56 PM
I would play the absolute hell out of that game. I always loved Lewa, man. I have mixed feelings about his weird terminology, but I loved his personality. He seemed like equal parts surfer-dude and wise-old-hermit.

Aren't toa not so much a caste as they are god-sent saviors, though? My memory of the original comics are a touch foggy, I suppose. It's been a while.

Kensen
2012-09-26, 02:53 AM
I recall seeing some ads long ago, but that's all I know about Bionicle, so I'm probably not the best person to design that game. But it's a worthy idea to try, and starting a new thread to find other people who want to play and/or contribute in designing a Bionicle game would probably be a good way to get started. :smallsmile:

---

Anyway, here's a summary of what has been suggested so far (including my own ideas):

A nation game with robust rules for "everything" that a nation game should have,
An RPG with a "reactive" combat round structure,
Exploring the possibilities long posting intervals and unusual dice offer,
A dwarf fortress type of game with resource gathering, crafting, building and warfare (perhaps a more advanced version of my earlier Goblins: the Exodus). Allows drop-in, drop-out. And,
A Bionicle RPG.

radmelon
2012-09-26, 09:04 AM
Aren't toa not so much a caste as they are god-sent saviors, though? My memory of the original comics are a touch foggy, I suppose. It's been a while.

Yeah, same here. While I do remember more than what I put in that rant, most of it's fairly foggy. And for the 'caste' part, I was trying to think of a way to sum it up for those who has never read the comics or anything. Man, I'm going to have to replay the Mata-Nui Online Game. Only point and click adventure I ever enjoyed (and I beat it too!).

<edit> It's also worth noting that I don't think anyone's ever tried to make a bionicle rpg before. Searching on google only ever gave me freeform roleplaying sites, and a single thread on a forum I've never heard of that died after 3 posts.

NichG
2012-09-27, 11:32 AM
I think its important to take advantage of the asynchronous nature of things. Make a game that advances whether or not people have taken actions, but such that the 'default' behavior is not harmful to a person who fails to act. Remove everything that acts as a barrier to progression of the game, while allowing for very complex things to occur within a single global 'turn' if there is enough momentum amongst the players to post that frequently.

I probably wouldn't use PbP as a model though, because PbP forces a game into a linear sequence (the sequence of posts) which makes it hard to have things resolve non-locally (which is what you want for something that is also asynchronous in time). Instead I'd say use a wiki, or use a setting where you have an entire board dedicated to the game (both of which you can do on some PbP sites).

Okay, that was pretty abstract. Here's a concrete example:

Imagine a nation game, since it was brought up earlier, but players are actually playing significant personalities within the nation. Lets say for sake that each nation has roughly four players in it, and there might be 4 or so nations total (large player bases help with players who lose interest and also make it easier for new players to join in). Characters have character sheets with mechanics, which can add bonuses/etc to things in the global turn phases but also govern their interaction with other individual characters.

Actions 'within' a nation can be cooperative or opposed, but each nation's players are responsible for mutually running those actions under the rules, with a dissatisfied player being able to call for a referee to review the interaction. So while the game as a whole is running, each nation can kind of run its own internal mini-game inside its own thread. All of these actions occur at the person-scale, which means that the only thing they mechanically affect is the individual character sheets of personae who are members of the nation. An arbitrarily large number of person-scale actions can fit into a single 'global turn', based entirely on how the players feel. Person-scale actions could lead to a character's death, their promotion (which might mean that the nation will decide to assign them more troops, but this still comes out of the total army size which is a 'global turn' thing), assignment of xp to skills, whatever. Its purely interaction-based though, which makes it somewhat zero-sum. To encourage more interaction, referees might award bonus xp to people who participate with some minimum degree of frequency.

Beyond the 'local' stage, players assign a 'global action' to their characters at any point during the week. This would be listed on a wiki page for that character. At a certain time in the week, the referees go through and copy down whatever global actions are listed, decide what happens on the global scale as a result of those actions and whatever rules determine their interaction, and post the results. This could also be done asynchronously, with each 'region' of the world being updated on a different day of the week. The global actions should all be sort of continual things, like 'lead army', 'infiltrate country', etc, so that if players don't change them its not too bad.

Furthermore, there are 'national decisions', which might be decision branches or situations that come up on a global timescale. These should be roughly organized into multiple-choice kinds of things. Players of a nation can set their vote at any point during the week, and at the update point the referees tabulate the votes and use them to decide what 'the nation as a whole' does. There might be mechanics on the local interaction scale to 'force a vote', via e.g. social combat, but it would be the players' responsibilities to track that and make sure that everyone's vote is correctly updated. Once the groups get more used to eachother, the national decisions don't need to all come from the referees - players of a nation could call for a national decision to decide e.g. to go to war versus to improve the economy or whatever.

Waargh!
2012-09-27, 07:59 PM
I would second what NichG said.

If you want a closer to RPG type of game, my suggestion is to consider characters working independently or each player controlling a group of characters. All groups or individual players will have a common goal and/or a common foe in the world thus all will contribute, just in there own pace. It will be up to the groups on how much they want to rely on each other, if they want to move together or not etc etc. GM will of course need to manage everything (or have several GMs)

Kensen
2012-09-28, 07:58 AM
I think its important to take advantage of the asynchronous nature of things. Make a game that advances whether or not people have taken actions, but such that the 'default' behavior is not harmful to a person who fails to act. Remove everything that acts as a barrier to progression of the game, while allowing for very complex things to occur within a single global 'turn' if there is enough momentum amongst the players to post that frequently.

Yes, this is good advice. In a strategy / resource management game, it's possible for a player to skip a few turns without significant problems. In an RPG it's a bit more challenging to make it work, though.


I probably wouldn't use PbP as a model though, because PbP forces a game into a linear sequence (the sequence of posts) which makes it hard to have things resolve non-locally (which is what you want for something that is also asynchronous in time). Instead I'd say use a wiki, or use a setting where you have an entire board dedicated to the game (both of which you can do on some PbP sites).

Well, it's certainly possible to use other media for the game than PbP, but I chose it because a lot of people play PbP on GitP. If I'm designing a game for people on GitP, it would be convenient to make possible to play it on GitP. I guess it shouldn't be a major problem to use several IC threads if the game has nations or teams that can act independently of each other.


Okay, that was pretty abstract. Here's a concrete example:

While what you suggested has its merits, dividing the players into groups means that an entire nation / group may vanish because one or two players disappear and as a consequence, the remaining players too lose interest. If on the other hand all the players are in the same "pool", the loss of a player or two doesn't matter much if the overall number of players is big enough.


I would second what NichG said.

If you want a closer to RPG type of game, my suggestion is to consider characters working independently or each player controlling a group of characters. All groups or individual players will have a common goal and/or a common foe in the world thus all will contribute, just in there own pace. It will be up to the groups on how much they want to rely on each other, if they want to move together or not etc etc. GM will of course need to manage everything (or have several GMs)

Yeah, that might work if the rules allow independent actions that don't usually require the GM's input. If the GM has to look after a bunch of adventures each of whom are doing different things, it'll be an awful lot of work. If, on the other hand, the rules of the game and the setting provide stuff for the PCs to do and also clear action resolution mechanics for everything, it might work.

For example, in a "City of Adventure" scenario, the PCs can spend action points to do stuff, e.g. to go practice fencing, to build a house, to buy a horse, to challenge another PC to a duel (and other actions that allow interacting with other PCs), to trade goods, and so on. And if this all is right there in the rules, the players can decide what to do, roll dice and get the rewards, no input from GM needed. Maybe only some special events need to be announced by the GM (festivals, monster attacks, captured princesses, quests, etc.) that change from week to week. In a game like this, it would be possible to have even more than 20 players. With the drop-in, drop-out feature mentioned in an earlier post, the game would never die, provided that there are enough people interested in that kind of a game.

NichG
2012-09-28, 01:18 PM
Well, it's certainly possible to use other media for the game than PbP, but I chose it because a lot of people play PbP on GitP. If I'm designing a game for people on GitP, it would be convenient to make possible to play it on GitP. I guess it shouldn't be a major problem to use several IC threads if the game has nations or teams that can act independently of each other.


That would work if the forum administrators are okay with one game occurring over 4+ threads. If nothing else you could probably get permission if you ask first. You could also associate the game with a wiki on an outside website, like wikispaces or something, and use that for summaries, recording global actions, etc. For any kind of long-running PbP game, some kind of summarization of the current state of things is pretty necessary I think.



While what you suggested has its merits, dividing the players into groups means that an entire nation / group may vanish because one or two players disappear and as a consequence, the remaining players too lose interest. If on the other hand all the players are in the same "pool", the loss of a player or two doesn't matter much if the overall number of players is big enough.

This is true I guess. My main thought would be to have two levels of organization of the game, one on the PC level and basically run by the players themselves, and another at the global level and run by the GMs. By doing clustering of players into groups, the GM doesn't have to deal with 20-30 actions and interactions, only 4 or 5, which is much more manageable.

Yakk
2012-09-28, 02:41 PM
Thoughts, inspired by DCC and Wushu...

Instead of a strictly linear progression, an RPG where there are obstacles and antagonists, and the players have to narrate and roll their way to defeating them.

Imagine there is a fight going on. There are a dozen orcs, 4 of them mounted on wolves, and a shaman possessed by a demon.

The DM narrates what the situation is, the difficulties of defeating each enemy unit, and what the enemy unit does if you fail to defeat it (or leave it alone).

The players then engage with this situation. Some actions are split over multiple posts (so you can say what you are trying to do, evaluate a die roll, then in the next post you'll know if that die roll failed or not).

Maybe some kind of rolling die-pool, where when a player fails to act they are presumed to not make any progress that round, but instead auto-aid-another. Someone else can pick up the dice they left on the table on the next round, or maybe they auto-act to interfere with the enemies actions on the next round. (ie, instead of doing a heroic action, they instead act like a mook for the round).

Attention hogging is a bit of a concern. But imagine if we ignored attention hogging for now...

Imagine a system whereby the GM can lay out a situation, then the players can engage with that situation in a narrative way and defeat it, taking multiple "turns"? The thought I'd have is that some of the actions you'd have to do might involve danger to yourself.

As an example from DCC, imagine there is a Dragon laying waste to the town. In order to engage the dragon, you have to defy danger to get through the burning buildings, with consequences if you fail. The act of defying danger carries with it its own consequences, and the DM can lay them out -- so players can defy danger, evaluate their own consequences, and then continue on for their next "turn" without waiting for the DM to evaluate their action.

Similarly, players can choose to try to defeat one of the Worg riders. By doing so, they open themselves up to danger: they roll, and on a failure of their attempt, they take consequences (which the DM describes in laying out the scene). The players know the stakes of what happens if they fail to defeat a Worg rider.

If you look at a game like Arkham Horror, each player's action also causes the bad guys to gain something. This allows the game to scale with the number of players. You could imagine a system whereby each round the actions of the bad guys scales with the number of players who acted, with the other players presumed to be "running interference" on the other monsters.

A downside to this is that sometimes it might be optimal for you to "bow out" of acting, if your actions are so poor that the bad guys would gain more through your action than not. And similarly, one person could proceed to do many turns in a row, hogging the attention of the game, and advancing the narrative without others getting a chance to participate.

Still, the idea that "the default situation is that you are locked in combat, with the following consequences" isn't that bad. Maybe characters would randomly get advantage or disadvantage for a round (which the DM could narrate), and characters in disadvantage would (if nothing else happens) end up screwed (in some predetermined way).

Allies of that character could engage in a Heroic Action to try to save them from disadvantage, or the character themselves could do the same. The consequence of a failed Heroic Action would fall on the character attempting it. If nobody rescues someone with disadvantage before the end of the turn (measured on the clock), consequences happen.

Mooks would be combatants incapable of doing Heroic Actions, and instead get randomly assigned Advantage/Disadvantage in a conflict, and have to live with the consequences. Maybe the mooks would, collectively, gain a bunch of dice to roll based on how many have advantage at the end of a round, which gives a chance to rescue allies and/or bias their situation on the next round.

...

So, some kind of cross between Arkham Horror, Dungeon Crawl Classics and Wushu? :p

NichG
2012-09-28, 05:15 PM
This sounds almost like a CCG, but imagine that each creature or obstacle has a stat line, and then the players have to decide sort of who handles what when. For instance, something like this:

Goblin Army
Offenses MELEE: 1, CAVALRY: 0, RANGE: 1, MAGIC: 0
Defenses ARMOR: 0, MOBILITY: 0, SHELTER: 0, RESIST: 0
Misc SHOCK: 2, KILL: 5, MOBILITY: 0, MARCH: 1
Special: Each round the goblin army does not take damage, it's MELEE and RANGE increase by 1 so long as it is attacking a target.

Combat occurs in four phases in order, each of which is synchronous: Magic, Range, Cavalry, Melee. Units that are taken out during a phase cannot participate in the next phase.

What these things mean:
- MELEE, RANGE, CAVALRY, MAGIC are the amount of damage this unit does in each phase of combat. When being blocked, this damage is done to all blockers. When taking unopposed offensive action, the damage is only done to the single target. MAGIC is the exception: it affects all enemies in the region in both cases.

- ARMOR, SHELTER, and RESIST subtract from melee, ranged, and magic damage. MOBILITY completely negates CAVALRY damage if it is higher than the CAVALRY unit's MOBILITY.
- SHOCK is the amount of damage this unit must take each round to prevent it from harming its intended target. If a unit has reached its STAY level in a given combat phase, it does no damage in subsequent phases.
- KILL is the amount of damage this unit must receive in a round to be taken out of play entirely.
- MARCH determines how many regions this unit may move per global turn.


So for something like that, the players could basically decide where they're going to sit at any given time and the fight can be deterministically resolved, as well as the consequences for a failure to defend or whatever. If there's a big difference between STAY and KILL for most units, it means there can be sort of a stalemate that is broken by the introduction of one or other new pieces at various points.

Ninjadeadbeard
2012-09-28, 07:39 PM
I like the Nation-game idea very much (I remember the last one fizzling before it even began), and I have at least one idea for how to use pbp to our advantage.

If every Player controls a Nation (or a state within a nation), then when the GM lays out a new "Encounter" (flood hits Nation A, NPC Nation C moves to annex a border territory of PC Nation R, elections in Nation B mean Player B has an Unhelpful Parliament/Congress, etc.) each Player makes a Major, Minor, and Quick Policy, or Action. For each Policy they make an Initiative Roll, including various modifiers and whatnot we'll hash out later.

Major Policy Actions would include Declaring War, Instituting a Draft, Making a Treaty or changing Government type, or any significant change in how the nation functions.

Minor Policy Actions include making Constitutional Amendments, ordering Diplomats, ordering Armies, major construction projects (Freeway system, transcontinental railroad, etc) or anything that does not change a nation, but modifies the current state of being.

Quick Policy Actions are things like border surveillance, raising/lowering taxes, ordering a single military unit, making a leader-to-leader phone call between nations or anything that does not change or modify a nation or state.

The Initiative Count determines what actions happen in what order. For Major and Minor Policy, ties go to who posted first. Quick Policies always occur and do not conflict. After an Initiative Order is made, the GM adjudicates what happens. Each "Turn" would be 2-3 days to allow Players to post, and if a Player misses 2 Turns they auto-drop and it is assumed there was an election or a coup, adjudicated by the GM. New Players jumping in are explained the same way. One missed Turn means a Nation simply does not act this turn.

This takes more time on the GM's part, but then again that's usually how RPGs work anyway.