Ranger Sheck's Blog

A couple months ago, I made the change from being the sole developer and writer for my game and invited some of my players to join me in creating a design team. While all the coding responsibilities still rest on my shoulders, the other designers have been contributing artwork, mission plots, non-player character design, weapon and armor design, area design, and so forth. I quickly realized that while it’s possible for people to get a sense of what a coder’s thoughts and motivations are by playing their game, there are still many aspects of a game’s design that are not so easy to interpret.

When I set up a forum for our team to collaborate in, much of the initial conversation was brainstorming about changes or additions to make to the game. I found myself defending and explaining various methods and components of the current design and what those explanations meant for future design. I realized that while I am open to other ideas, there were certain things that I wasn’t likely to budge on. The more I thought about it, the more I began to understand that I had internalized a set of principles that guide the path of development for my game.

Do I think all games should follow these design principles? Certainly not! Many parts of this list were born out of being unhappy with one particular aspect or another of a game that I otherwise enjoyed; some other parts were born out of recognizing which parts of existing games I think were done really well. But without a wide diversity of drivers and factors behind game development, where would we be?

So you may agree with these principles, and you may not. The perspective they are written from lies in the development of a role-playing game; specifically a computer role-playing game (CRPG), and more specifically than that, an online, web-based, strategy (or tactical) role-playing game. To date, combat is the largest aspect of my game, and since it is a tactical RPG in terms of a combat system, some of these principles might only make sense in that context. Others, however, are more universal.

As you read these, please take note: The words are mine, but the thoughts behind them come from an accumulation of years of experience in playing, thinking, and talking about games. I don’t claim any kind of exclusivity or originality on any of these concepts.

Game Design Principles behind Aethora (1 through 4 of 9)

1. No wrong path for character development.

This principle is at the top of the list for a reason – it’s the one that was the foundation for the character system in Aethora. This character system, while not 100% unique, is very rare in the broad range of RPGs out there, because it is classless. In a role playing game, you need roles, and in most games this role is chosen from the start as a job or a class. In some cases, it can be changed or it has branches later on in a character’s development. In Aethora’s case, the character has no class, but simply a set of skills. There are no levels, no experience, no points to spend. When you want your character to learn how to fight with a sword, you have to put a sword in their hand and get them to battle. The more you use a skill (against better and better enemies) the better you get.

The big seeds for this principle are in my frustration with pretty much any role-playing game. As much as I love to game, there are always those people out there with much more time on their hands. There is always someone to figure out which combination of race and class is the best, which branch is the best part of the skill tree to take, etc, etc. Inevitably, I’d be feeling like I made a mistake at some low level or even at the point of character creation that didn’t fully manifest itself until I got to a higher level and realized I’m just not as effective a character as I could be, but there’s no way to correct it without “re-rolling”.

In Aethora, you are not allowed to delete any characters; you can only change their name or appearance at any time. If you decide that one of the roles a PC is playing is not the ideal role for the balance of your party, you simply re-equip them and start them down the path that works for you. No regrets means no re-specing and no re-rolling.

2. Roleplaying for roleplaying’s sake, not as an excuse for convenience.

This principle is not so much a hard and fast rule, but more of a guiding ideal. I think, at the core, what this comes down to is honesty. If players are given some obviously convenient excuse for the blockage of a path or method, then they are going to lose trust in the game designer. Blatant abuse of “magic” explanation or other non-explanation of game mechanics weakens immersion, and when immersion breaks down, a player is going to start to see the “human side” of the developer. If you’ve ever played Pencil and Paper role-playing game, you may remember some moments when your Dungeon Master tried to railroad you down a path that they had meticulously laid out for you. Sometimes a player’s natural reaction to being railroaded, oddly enough, is to try to jump off the tracks. This is the kind of thing that reminds a player that they are playing a game with limitations; and that’s what I mean by “weakening immersion”.

Take the example of a 3D MMORPG. A lot of times, travel can be a real pain for players in a ginormous 3D world. To keep people from getting frustrated, developers might introduce ridable mounts that increase travel speed. This example makes perfect sense – the player doesn’t have to stretch any imagination to get on a horse and move a little faster. Now say, after a while, the developers decide that players aren’t getting to all the new fancy areas they’ve put in, so they want to make travel even more convenient; so they introduce a magical teleport system where any player can walk up to an area and be beamed over to another area fairly easily. While the new system is certainly more convenient for players, this is, in my opinion, an example of breaking the RPG setting and simply making it easier to get to the hack-n-slashing. When a player has to cross a long expanse of land to get to their destination, they develop an appreciation for the vastness of the world their character inhabits. When they bounce around via a loosely-expounded teleportation device, the world becomes a lot smaller.

3. Avoid imposing realism in favor of fun.

In some ways, this principle is the opposite of #2, but it takes a slightly different mentality. When designing an RPG system, it’s tempting to try to be as realistic as possible, whether it’s in combat, travel, basic survival, etc. One of the classic examples is the notion of hunger. In EverQuest, like many text-based MUDs before it, a player is required to carry food and drink with them at all times. In the old MUDs, you used to have to manually eat and drink food until you were satiated. In Everquest, they automated it slightly by making your character periodically eat something from their inventory. If the character had no food, they would start to get hungry (and eventually, once hungry enough, penalized in combat).

For a lot of players, this type of realism is part of the challenge of role-playing. For many others, however, it becomes just a big pain in the neck. It’s not really very mentally challenging, unless you consider trying to remember to buy food when in town a mental challenge. For me as a player, it became the most annoying when I regularly ran out of food while out adventuring and sometimes had to trek back to town just to fill up.

Whenever something like that happens, the player feels like they are doing work rather than playing. Sometimes, you have to do a little work in an RPG – that’s the nature of that style of game. As long as it’s balanced by fun, then a little work is okay – but too much work overshadows fun. That’s kind of a key point, so I’m going to restate it: If I feel like a game is making me do too much work, I’m not going to play it.

4. Heroes don’t have time for pest control jobs, I don’t care how inexperienced they are.

This principle might be specific to the setting, but honestly, I think it can be applied to most role-playing games out there. Ok, sure, the point of an RPG is that you start with small challenges and work up to larger challenges. But why, oh why, do I always have to start out killing rats? Don’t you think it would be a little more fun if we started our characters a little later in their careers? In D&D terms, I’m talking about starting at level 3 or so instead of level 1; when I first start out let me fight some orcs instead of garden snakes. I mean, come on – can you even imagine trying to stab a rat with a dagger? Wouldn’t it make more sense for that shopkeeper to just put down some rat traps or some rat poison?

So why does a typical RPG start you out on pest control duty? To be honest, I think designers like to make those first couple of levels ridiculously easy so (a) you’ll get used to playing the game and (b) you’ll get addicted fast. All of us RPG addicts are sucked in by accomplishments. We live for that “ding” sound, and once we’ve gone from level one to level two, we feel like we’ve made an investment.

The “pest control” concept goes beyond those initial stages of character development, though. For this reason, I’ve made it one of my principles. Whenever you ask a player to: clear an area of infestation/invasion/etc; bring back N number of pelts/sashes/ears; scavenger hunt for ores/oysters/Easter eggs; in any kind of typical mindless hunter/gatherer scenario, you’re basically giving the player busywork. You’re not challenging them with making appropriate decisions or problem solving – you’re acting like that doddering old substitute teacher who would come in and make the class do macaroni pictures or origami rather than attempt the lesson on fractions.

Again, why do we see this style of “quest” so often in RPGs? They make good time-sinks. Sometimes mindless play is actually pretty entertaining; heck, sometimes that’s exactly what we’re looking for in a video game. But personally, I feel like there are enough opportunities in any online RPG to go out and enjoy mindless combat. If I’m really on some kind of Quest or Mission, I want a little more of a challenge. To me, that’s what defines a Quest or Mission: it’s a challenge (and there’s a reward when it’s complete).

Continue reading principles 5 through 9 in Game Design Principles – Part 2.