[Dungeon Crashers] Early Build, Feedback Appreciated
MacLeod:
Quote from: Callan S. on June 18, 2011, 03:31:05 AM
Or more to the point, say you actually wanted to make battles and an overall campaign mutually exclusive in terms of interest, how would you design it? For myself, I'd make it that following the conventions of one has no effect on the other.
I had played around with an idea that would do the opposite - weave the overall narrative into every important decision, including combat. The campaign begins with some kind of nefarious plot, perhaps shrouded in shadow or out in the open. The GM starts out with "doom tokens" with which to generate traps, enemies, disasters, etc... He uses these to try and stop the players from interfering with the nefarious plot. Both sides have ways of increasing or decreasing the Doom. Stakes are set during scenes and the winner generates some kind of value and when that value hits a particular capacity, one side wins and the other loses.
As for specifically designing a game where campaign progression and exciting combats are mutually exclusive in the rules? I feel like traditional games already do this. And I think my game is fairly traditional but with some indie/modern influences that are suppose to make it more accessible and interesting to folks still looking for a brutal dungeon crawl/survival fantasy game. :)
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Well, how did the unimaginative GM ruin it? Was it perhaps the realisation that this unimaginativeness was going to go on...forever? Game after game after game of this same behaviour? Or if not forever, for as long as the GM deemed it should go on?
His lack of imagination only ruined it because he didn't seek to make the dungeons or the combats interesting. It was; check for traps, go down corridor, open door, monsters charge & use their basic attacks, stomp them, find treasure, repeat.
I want to break up the strange, interesting and tricky combats with fun and dangerous problems that don't involve smashing an orc or finding three gems to open a door. (not that those things aren't tried and true cliches or anything!)
Plus, I know all of the pre-4e D&D monsters forwards and back from reading monster manuals as a kid. =P
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What if the campaign was only going to run for 10 sessions, do you think you might have stuck it out instead?
Our D&D campaigns rarely lasted more than four sessions! The only time we got passed level 10 was when we started out as level 5 bad guys.
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Anyway, for what it's worth, I think I've tried to make smaller combat rules which are intensely exciting - in order to still be exciting after hundreds of sessions. But the fact is, if you do anything for long enough, you get sick of it. No one can design something so awesome it breaks that fact. So if I seem to be harping on about having an ending, fair enough, but you can see why it seems important to me (even if somehow it is not the case I take it to be).
Agreed. I have gamer's ADD really bad so I prefer easily digestible setups like Lady Blackbird and Empire of Dust... and the actual combat rules in this game I think are going to be a paragraph as most exceptions and interesting rules will come from the Abilities and Special Actions (which I think I'm going to call Delver's Actions or something).
Callan S.:
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Our D&D campaigns rarely lasted more than four sessions! The only time we got passed level 10 was when we started out as level 5 bad guys.
We actually would do that alot as a group in alot of systems (from warhammer to shadowrun and so on). It was actually D&D 3.5 where we actually went from first level all the way to level ~10. I think it was that the overall leveling structure was mechanically tied to each combat (as in what range of monsters to use and significant XP listed exactly for those monsters). Anyway, do you want to just do ~4 sessions? Or is that just how it turns out? If you could decide, what what would you want?
MacLeod:
I envision this game being used for campaigns lasting about five sessions. But that is for the dedicated few. I'm sure two or three sessions would be the norm. That is one of the reasons why I like PCs beginning with 3 Levels already.
Survivability doesn't increase at an alarming rate, even as the characters get into the higher levels. A few misplaced rolls and some weak strategic/tactical thinking and the party could very well get wiped out.
^ Thinking about that last statement... I think a "living" world would make these campaigns better. That way if your character dies in the Pits of Chaos... your next character might be the one to conquer those pits and claim his stuff. Of course, such corpses will be subject to necromancy and demonic possession.
I was also thinking about writing in a sort of variant to the way characters are built. PCs begin with no Levels and only 1 piece of equipment, as opposed to 3 and 3... however, each player gets two or three of these characters. Whomever survives the 1st dungeon becomes a "real" PC.
Callan S.:
I've considered that 'start off with multiple characters who are very vulnerable to death'. I think it has exciting potential, because instead of the personality one would like to survive, one likely end up with a persona that wouldn't have been ones first choice to play on to herodom. Thus taking a person out of their comfort zone a bit. I would actually recommend that once a players lost all but one character, the final one instantly gains full PC stats (as it'd be rather drab for that last one to die or for the GM to pussy foot around (which is simply doing the same thing as giving it full PC stats, but not explicitly so in the rules)). I think having it would really help with word of mouth, which is important for RPG game distribution (free or otherwise). Good luck with it, Matthew!
MacLeod:
I think that would be a fine idea, actually. You could even describe it in game as a moment of awakening or finally hearing the call of the hero or some such cheesiness.
I'm not about gritty fantasy so epic and heroic fantasy moments like that would feel cheesy in a good way. =P
Thanks for the well-wishing... Once I get a revision of the text done, I'll make another post here for folks' perusal.
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