[Nephilim]

I've been thinking in the back of my mind about developing an RPG rules system for my next game. I wasn't satisfied with the game balance of "Sacraments", so I want to do a better job this time.

One option I've looked at is to use the OGL from Wizards of the Coast - basically AD&D 3.5 - but I'm not sure I want to use the same game mechanics. Another option is to roll my own from scratch, which is probably better for tailoring the system to your game world, but then you have a lot of game balancing to do.

How do you guys develop the rules system for your RPGs?
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Visit the Sacraments web site to play the game and read articles about its development.

[Nodtveidt]

I look at what has worked in the past for other games, then put all those good concepts together into one package.
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If you play a Microsoft CD backwards you can hear demonic voices. The scary part is that if you play it forwards it installs Windows. - wallace

[Nephilim]

[white_door]

I wrote a huge rant about stats, but then decided to post something more practical. You can find the rant here.

Ultimately, I believe that to game balance is mainly a case of making the game too hard, then giving the player a change to over come it through either grinding enemies or clever strategy.

Looking at pen and papers games is a great way to figure out some ideas for game mechanics, though I feel that d20 is a little too bloated for PC rpgs. All the stats and rules and skills and feats are great, but its just too much! Particularilly if you are controlling more than one character.

Looking at simpler systems can often be helpful, like table top wargames from which rpgs orginally came from. They generally have fairly simple systems because players have more characters or units to deal with. (War Machine is a great example of a tactical level game system that can be played with 3-5 models a side. Which is more on level with most PC/console rpg battles, than d20 is. It also has the coolest theme!)

MMOs may or may not be your cup of tea, regualdless there is a wealth of information on the underlying system that has been figured out for most of the major MMOs. Also on a more interesting note.. The strategy guides often provide far more interesting information cercerning how the players use the system to their advantage, and the roles of each class in the game. This basically cuts through all the fluff and shows how to design each of your characters with strategic roles in mind.

[Nephilim]

Heh. I liked your rant.

I feel the same way about using stats to differentiate the characters. I don't think I was entirely successful with that in Sacraments, unfortunately, so that's something I'd like to fix. The idea with the "point buy" system I used for advancement was that the player could advance their characters in different ways, but from a few of the comments I received, it sounds like several people, at least, developed them all the same way. Each character had different available skills and spells, but it sounds like people just developed the combat abilities, so each character was basically just a studly fighter. (I think this was largely because it was more time-consuming to cast a spell by navigating through a set of windows, than to simply attack by pressing the left arrow.)

So I think I'm going to need to make characters fundamentally different if I want to solve that. Like, have Luthien only able to cast spells, not attack.
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Visit the Sacraments web site to play the game and read articles about its development.

[tunginobi]

The rant was good. You'd be surprised how far you can get with only four stats and a number of characters.

Just about Sacraments, those magic stats always cost way too much. You could level the battle stats about three or four times, for the same cost of raising a magic skill once, plus the battle stats would help you gain more experience in the future.

Just as a thought, maybe the costs for each of the stats for each character could vary. And I don't mind having more MP than HP, but that's probably because of the fact that I play a lot of roguelikes.

[Nephilim]

[Nodtveidt]

[cowgod]

The first thing to think about when designing a rules system is what the player actually sees. If the player doesn't see some part of the rules system in action, it doesn't make much of a difference.

It's really only the part that the player sees that is important.

You can do almost whatever you want here, but you must give the player some sort of choice when he gains a level (or whatever the equivalent of gaining a level is). If the player just gains an arbitrary amount of power, gaining a level is boring.

Another important thing is that there shouldn't be any element of randomness in gaining a level. I hate having to repeatedly load my saved game in an attempt to get more hit points.

I like games where you have alot of control over how your character develops. In pen-and-paper RPGs, GURPS is a good example. You gain "character points" that you can allocate however you want among your various skills. Character creation allows you to allocate them among your statistics and special advantages/disadvantages as well.

As for video game RPGs, Fallout 1 & 2, Fallout: Tactics, and Lionheart: Legacy of the Crusader are good examples. They all use pretty much the same system, which was improved with each consecutive game. Lionheart has the best levelling up I've seen even though the game as a whole gets more boring as it progresses.

In Lionheart, you gain a "perk" every time you gain 3 levels. This perk gives you some sort of special bonus. Some of them are just things like "gain 1 Strength", while others are a little strange (for instance, one of them has you making a pact with a demonic entity that raises some of your statistics). It also has skill point gaining, but that's the same as any other system.

I think the perks that provide a unique bonus rather than a statistic increase are what make the game interesting despite its repetitive dungeons.

[white_door]

I don't know if I fully agree with you on that, cowgod. Yes, giving the player 'leveling up' choices can be a really awesome way to get the the player to invest in the characters, but I personally don't think they are as important as you make out. It just depends on your overall reward strategy.

I read something interesting on rewarding the player once. (I can't recall exactly where, sorry.) It spoke about short term, mid term and long term rewards. With the size of the reward being related inversely to its frequency.

So if the player has worked really hard and long for that level up, then just adding a few stats on automatically could be seen as an anti-climax. On the other hand, if the characters regularly gain levels, a complex leveling system with lots of choices might reduce it from being a reward to a micromangement chore.

[cowgod]

[LeoDraco]

[tunginobi]

You could get away with it if you have the levelling system settings preset and customisable. When you gain a level, the gains are based on the presets, which the player has the option to change at any time.

[RampantCoyote]

There's a very interesting PDF document available about "Design Patterns for Role-Playing Games." It emphasizes Pen-and-Paper game designs, but a lot of it can be leveraged into CRPGs.

You can download the zipped PDF here:
http://www.legendaryquest.netfirms.com/books/Patterns.zip

(And no, I haven't read the whole thing... but what I read was interesting and useful but not exactly earth-shattering).

And I agree with Cowgod. Once upon a time (a long long time ago in a galaxy far, far away), I was really thrilled with the number-crunching potential of computers to handle all this incredible math on the back end. And I designed what I imagined was a really incredible dungeon "simulation" around all these aspects.

Problem is, if the player doesn't have any feedback and visibility into what all these systems are and why they are doing what they are doing, it may as well be purely random.
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Tales of the Rampant Coyote - Old-School Game Developer talks Indie Games, RPGs, and the Games Biz

[Captain Vimes]

The only way I know of to get a good rules system for an RPG is to really actually try and PLAY THE GAME before you ever set it out to make sure that it actually Works (notice the CAP'TAL w). It's like this one game I played... I think it was called Quest 64. Fun, but what happened was that the character leveled too slowly. For about the first six hours of gameplay, you were fine. It wasn't too hard or too easy. Then someone on the dev team must have said "Let's piss off every gamer out there!" and suddenly jumped the level requirement to pass through this one area, and suddenly you COULDN'T LEVEL AT ALL because a) the monsters were too tough to beat for xp and b) when you DID beat them, you got 2 xp. I eventually got so ticked at it that I sold it, which I regret now because I want to beat it. This is a worst-case scenario, but please, if you invent a new rules system, play the game to make sure it works before making it available.
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"Sometimes it is better to light a flamethrower than to curse the darkness."
- Terry Pratchett