No more minigames

[Hicks]

So Saturday night I'm up till 3 AM writing out what is (by now) ~20 pages of an "Avatar: The Last Aribender: The RPG." And over the course of the past 3 nights I have come to the following conclusion: Seperate minigames suck.

When does it end? Sure, everybody and their mom plays the combat minigame, but the diplomacy minigame? How about the chase, or the craft, or the chandleier swinging, or teaparty, or cake baking minigame? And if you have a score of individual minigames that players jump from one to the next to represent what you want to them to be able to do, you still have to include the "Whatever Else" minigame for the shit you forgot; else say "Thar be Dragons" on the uncharted portions of your game and have a magical teaparty of a time where nobody knows whats going on because it is up to the whims of the GAME MASTER and the tolerance of their players!

Anything that is woth doing in your game should be able to be done in combat. Period. As in the dot at the end of this sentence. A "." in case you missed it. The Diplomat, Figher, Artisan, Healer, and Freaking Cake Baker all have relevent abilities they can use in combat. Example:

• The Diplomat has effectivly Suggestion and Detect Thoughts, at will. His shtick is making enemies friends and knowing what his enemies are going to do if they fail an opposed roll.
  
  The Fighter has the power to stab you in the face and can effectivly induce Fear, at will. His shtick is making removing a single target permenatly and frightening all his enemies with his mighty warcry, if they fail an opposed roll.
  
  The Artisan has a crazy steam powered mecha that he pilots or some sort of gas powered gatling chainsaw thrower, and has Fabricate, at will. He can make cool shit that everybody wants right now.
  
  The Healer can "enhance" the combat potential of himself and his allies using totally not illegal at the time stimulants and has Heal, at will. His shtick is making others not die and making everybody better, for at least a while anyway.
  
  And the Freaking Cake Baker has the ability to BAKE A FREAKING CAKE SO DELICIOUS AND MOIST IT CANT BE A LIE! NO! NEVER! On an opposed roll, all enemies within range eat the FREAKING CAKE and are POISONED BY ITS LIES!

Oh yeah, and opposed rolls - everything involving a non willing party is based off of an opposed roll resolution system, because being the wizard who does not roll to cast charm person while the enemy fighter rolls a save and then an attack roll to see if you are killed sucks too

[Username17]

Anything that is woth doing in your game should be able to be done in combat.

What if you play a game in a genre where the players don't get into combat even once a session? What if you're in pre-revolutionary France, Shogunate Nippon, or the Wild West and "combat" is structured such that it is standardly a duel where two people face off, draw weapons, and the slower man dies?

The action movie genre is a fairly narrow one, and if you're trying to do anything else then being good at combat is talent that you would expect on maybe one party member and to have it come up about as often as being good at lock picking or being good at cooking.

If you're making Bridget Jones Diaries, or any other rendition of Pride and Prejudice (other than Pride & Prejudice & Zombies), you may honestly not know if any particular character can hold their own in a fight. And it doesn't really matter, because there aren't more than 4 fights in the entire campaign arc. It's literally less important than "speaking French" or "owning a car."

-Username17

[Hicks]

Anything worth doing is worth doing in combat, and anthing out of combat that is worth doing should be treated as if it were as improtant as life or death combat. Combat could be a Bake Sale Fundrasier for all I care, with the winner being the person at the end of the day who sold the most cookies. The same resolution should be used for face stabbing as cooking selling. At no point should you write " Baker" as the primary/secondary/ever on your character sheet and have it not matter when you are counting rounds and turn order. Nor should your abilities just not exist when different, artificially segregated portions of the game not interact, because I belive that arbitrary walls between Combat and Chase and Baking and Diplomacy and Trapfinding and Stealth should not esist and instead allow those actions associated with them to coexist at all times.

[Kobajagrande]

Minigames should cover everything that is important for the genre your system is trying to simulate. They should be there to resolve all types of conflicts people playing the game should be interested in.

For example, if you make a "Homicide: Life on the Streets RPG", and people play it, they expect to do the following:

investigate a crime scene
interview witnesses/people connected to the victim
arrest the suspect
interrogate the suspect and get a confession out of him.

When you put it down, you'll find that there are really at most two-three minigames that are essentially important for the game, and combat isn't even one of them.

Now, should the character's interrogation skills help during the arrest? Sure, you could make it so. But should they matter during the investigation part, when all they can talk with is a cold, dead body? Sure, you can probably come up with some bullshit explanation like your deadly cake comment, but come on. If you have to bullshit that much, you should know you have a problem.

[Username17]

I see where you are coming from, but you're still wrong.

Consider two types of movies, a Michael Bay Movie and a Harry Potter Movie. The first has long drawn out action scenes that are characterized by many ups and downs, actions and reactions from a half dozen participants - often per side. The second generally has a series of dialogues and events that are branched out by a set of definable decision point events that often characterize individual actions by individual people.

If you're making a Michael Bay Movie, go ahead and make everything set of climactic inputs. But if you're making a Harry Potter film, that's pointless. You'll be wanting to do something where people interject attempts to influence the story at specific junctures. And in those cases you'll be wanting a fast resolution system that allows the player character to be the star while they are bringing in their gimmick. And that gmmick could be fucking anything - from "I'm good at fighting" to "I'm good at chess."

-Username17

[Psychic Robot]

and anthing out of combat that is worth doing should be treated as if it were as improtant as life or death combat.

Forging a sword just isn't as important as killing the dragon.

Now, should the character's interrogation skills help during the arrest? Sure, you could make it so. But should they matter during the investigation part, when all they can talk with is a cold, dead body? Sure, you can probably come up with some bullshit explanation like your deadly cake comment, but come on. If you have to bullshit that much, you should know you have a problem.

Feels like skill challenges.

[Josh_Kablack]

The first has long drawn out action scenes that are characterized by many ups and downs, actions and reactions from a half dozen participants - often per side.

We call people who play in games like that D&D Players

The second generally has a series of dialogues and events that are branched out by a set of definable decision point events that often characterize individual actions by individual people.

And we call people who like to play in games like that girls.


And never the twain shall meet. ;P

[Crissa]

and anthing out of combat that is worth doing should be treated as if it were as improtant as life or death combat.

Forging a sword just isn't as important as killing the dragon.

Someone has to hold the tongs, and if you need to use the Black Anvil to do it or convince the dread witch of the swamp to part with the Sky Stone she has to make it... Why not?

-Crissa

[Username17]

We call people who play in games like that D&D Players
And we call people who like to play in games like that girls.

True. But the context was about a game for Avatar. And that is not only for girls, but specifically for tweens.

-Username17

[Hicks]

I was thinking of a setting before the whole Last Airbender storyline, where you could plausably have Earth/Air/Fire/Water benders and warriors in the same party, and where the high powered muckedy-mucks fought volcanoes. But that is neither here nor there.

More when I return home.

[Psychic Robot]

Someone has to hold the tongs, and if you need to use the Black Anvil to do it or convince the dread witch of the swamp to part with the Sky Stone she has to make it... Why not?

-Crissa

Because your life is on the line when fighting a dragon. If you're making a sword, you're in considerably less danger.

[mean_liar]

There's also the problem of making your minigames similar enough that the mechanics intuitively support each other, but different enough that they don't feel like you're doing the same thing over and over and over again, with a goblin replaced by a cipher.

[Hicks]

Nobody should ever have a Craft (Swords) ability that only allows you to make swords, that was like the second worst idea ever. Instead, there should be Artifice (+2 Swords) ability that allows the player to make anything and has a bonus to making swords, and it should be set up that the better you roll this ability the faster you create and more ridiculous it can be. Serious MacGyver shit with like only a lemon, a paperclip, and a stick to make a taser or whatever.

Hide, Shadowing, Move Silently, Slight of Hand, and Open Lock should not exist, replaced by a Stealth (+ bonus) roll. All the interaction skills (Diplomacy, Interrogation, Gather Information, Bluff, Intimidate) can be boiled down to Suggestion and Fear.

Grapple, Bullrush, and Trip are all a subset of your Melee Attack skill. Every other skill should be as versitile. Running, Jumping, Climbing? Roll that shit into an Athletics check with a bonus if you are super shibbi at the long jump or whatever. Spot and listen? With shit like that you could have an ability list 4 pages long and have like 12 be viable options that don't trick you into wasting space on your character sheet.

My point is that narrow skills like "Interrogate" where you need to have a room and a spot-light and an individual legally obligated to sit down while you grill them and "Underwater Basket Weaving" where you can craft baskets while only underwater hurts the game. If you can't use your skill most of the time (allowing very specific and corner case situations where you're boned, such as a mage in an antimagic field) It should not be written on your sheet. What I'm saying is more Warp Cult and less F.A.T.A.L.

[Psychic Robot]

Nobody should ever have a Craft (Swords) ability that only allows you to make swords, that was like the second worst idea ever. Instead, there should be Artifice (+2 Swords) ability that allows the player to make anything and has a bonus to making swords, and it should be set up that the better you roll this ability the faster you create and more ridiculous it can be.

At low levels, you can only make swords because you're low-level. Once you get to high levels, you can make magical swords. And I agree that "Craft Magical Item" should encompass all magical items.

Serious MacGyver shit with like only a lemon, a paperclip, and a stick to make a taser or whatever.

That sounds supremely cheesy and I would not personally enjoy it.

Hide, Shadowing, Move Silently, Slight of Hand, and Open Lock should not exist, replaced by a Stealth (+ bonus) roll.

That's a little condensed for my taste. I think Hide, Shadowing, and Move Silently should be Stealth, and Open Lock and Sleight of Hand should be combined into Thievery.

However, I think I might be misunderstanding what you're saying. Do you mean just to have those skills combined into Stealth, and you have an equal chance of hiding as you do opening locks? Or do you mean that there is a Stealth skill with the subsets of Hide, Shadowing, Move Silently, etc., and you can "specialize" in them?

[Username17]

Reductionist skill systems are not the only way to go.

Keeping Stealth separated into Sneaking (not being seen), Shadowing (not being noticed), and Disguise (being noticed but mistaken for someone else) is pretty reasonable. Indeed, when you combine everything sneaky into a big "Stealth" skill, it usually ends up being the uber omni skill of awesomeness that everyone maxes out. At that rate you might as well just reduce Stealth to a level check and move on.

You can see that in 1st edition Shadowrun. Pretty much everyone had 6 n Stealth. Because they were criminals. And that was the "succeed at crime" skill. I for one am totally happy to have sneaking and shadowing be different skills.

-Username17

[Hicks]

The "specialize" version. Just like you can "specialize" Trip, Bullrush, Overrrun, and Grapple while it all being part of your Melee Attack skill. Broad catagories are better. You should never write "Chess" on your character sheet, But Tactics (Chess) where you provide bonuses worth a combat action and also make you win hard against old men in the park. As long as anything you write on your sheet is worth a combat action, it is worth being on your sheet, But highly granular games Now, I'm using "combat" as a pretty loose term, I probabbly should use "conflict" instead, but whatever.

[Lago PARANOIA]

I know this is pretty much a dead horse topic, but, awhile ago someone (Frank I believe) floated the reductionist idea of a 'profession' skill base where you took an occupation or role or whatever and tried to justify the action you want to take with the profession that you wanted to do.

For example, someone with the profession of Templar could use their ranks in Templar for knowledge of religious rites, intimidating people they don't like, and riding horses. Then if they needed to, say, whip the peasants up into a mob they could go 'I use my Templar rank to convince these superstitious people that they should band together and fight the heathen bandits' and the DM assigns as bonus or penalty depending on how convincing someone's bullshit is.

This would nicely solve the problem of sailors being able to sail ships but being unable to balance on uneven, slippery surfaces. Of course obviously it would slow the game down with people trying to shoehorn in their profession to whatever situation they wanted to do. If that's too broad for you, you could have major/medium/minor professions and a strict list of minimum talents anyone could do. For example, Blacksmiths were automatically able to build wagons and forge swords. They could also take a minor profession of, say, brewer.

You could even combine this with unattached skills, so you could have a Gambler/Guard who also knew how to disarm traps.

[Koumei]

Give me a day or two. I will make a Baker class, and it will be awesome. Not that this will actually affect the discussion on hand, but whatever.

[Ice9]

I think sometimes you do want multiple minigames, because honestly, most "resolve everything with one system" systems I've seen suck. Or are ultra-light, which might not suck but still isn't the style I'm into.

When you try to shoehorn things like physical combat, negotiations, fixing a computer, and administering a city into one unified system, you end up with compromises that don't fit any of the situations very well. And quite often, the system end up feeling rather bland. I don't actually want fighting a troll to feel exactly like repairing a ship or navigating a bureaucracy.

That doesn't mean you need a different resolution system for every single skill, but for things that are going to be major aspects of the game, a specialized resolution system that works well for that aspect is better than a unified one that doesn't.

[Flumph]

the second, "specialize" version. Just like you can "specialize" Trip, Bullrush, Overrrun, and Grapple while it all being part of your Melee Attack skill. Broad catagories are better. You should never write "Chess" on your character sheet, But Tactics (Chess) where you provide bonuses worth a combat action and also make you win hard against oled men in the park.

The problem with this is that chess tactics are highly specialized and not generally applicable to melee situations. Any benefit a chess master would generally receive would probably be covered by his Int score.

As for never writing "Chess" on your character sheet I'm taking that to mean you shouldn't have to spend character resourses on it. If we're talking about D&D or games very much like it I'd have to agree with you, but not every RPG is like D&D. You may be applying a design principle for a specific kind of game too broadly.

[Judging__Eagle]

the second, "specialize" version. Just like you can "specialize" Trip, Bullrush, Overrrun, and Grapple while it all being part of your Melee Attack skill. Broad catagories are better. You should never write "Chess" on your character sheet, But Tactics (Chess) where you provide bonuses worth a combat action and also make you win hard against oled men in the park.

The problem with this is that chess tactics are highly specialized and not generally applicable to melee situations. Any benefit a chess master would generally receive would probably be covered by his Int score.

As for never writing "Chess" on your character sheet I'm taking that to mean you shouldn't have to spend character resourses on it. If we're talking about D&D or games very much like it I'd have to agree with you, but not every RPG is like D&D. You may be applying a design principle for a specific kind of game too broadly.

Well... it also depends how a person plays chess. Some people seriously play against their opponent, not what is on the board. I know that's how I've beaten some otherwise impatient, but decent, opponents. Simply taking my time, and letting them get frustrated and impatient, and not thinking about their moves. I've also beat weaker players by simply scaring them into making bad tactical moves. Against better players, I tend to just make the board a giant fucking confusing mess. Sometimes that helps, sometimes it doesn't.

[erik]

Hehehe, my favorite in chess are speed games. I will do non-optimal openings to throw off my opponent's game and cause em to lose time to confusion. Works best for 3 minute or less games. 5 minutes is long enough that most good players can still spare time to deal with head games.