Wednesday, March 5, 2014

So you want to build a character?! Better download that character generator

You may have heard this a few times when playing a new RPG that involves a lengthy character creation process.  There are a few RPGs out there that making a character more or less means you need to get some software to do it.  Sure character builders are nice and helpful, but for some games it's just absolutely a must have.  Off the top of my head rolemasters comes to mind.  Creating a character in that by hand is roughly equivalent to slicing open your right eye with a jagged piece of glass then sewing it shut with a rusty needle.  Needless to say I can think of other things I'd rather be doing with my time.

So I bring this topic up because not too long ago I brought in a small group of co-workers and decided I'd try walking them through building a character in the CORPS much like a DM would in any RPG where the players have tabletop gaming experience but have never heard of the title of the game they are playing.  Since this was done during lunch breaks at my day job I've found it actually difficult to cut it all up into hour long character building sessions.  Although an hour may sound like a long time, if you factor in people are eating their lunch, arriving 5 to 10 minutes late and then getting side tracked with talks of Star Wars and comparing the merits of D&D 3.5 vs D&D 4e time flies by with very little actually being accomplished.

In the first session I had I don't think the players did more than select their theme points.  So much time was used describing the game and overall how things worked that the players were almost at a loss to decide the route they wanted to go.  Luckily one of the players has a 'de facto' build he always used when playing a new RPG so he knew what he wanted and I was able to easily guide him into the kind of path he'd want to take to make that character happen.  But still, selecting theme points, once you're familiar with the game, is only slightly more difficult than selecting your character's class in most other RPGs.  Ironically the choices that really decide the outcome of the character are usually simple and quick, and the choices that tend to be more trivial (e.g. what talents should I get or what skills do I want to know?) take a lot more time and generally have a lot less impact in the game.

Anyway getting back to it, once the theme was out of the way and the players had a better idea of what they wanted to make I was able to layout the resources used to build the them and what kind of decisions the players had to make.  From it I ended up creating a new document called 'How to make a character in CORPS' which is our first attempt at a user friendly guide that lists all the steps for making a character.  Prior to this we'd just gone through making them from memory and previous characters we'd made since we were able to turn a concept archetype into a character on paper in 30 to 45 minutes.  Going through with people unfamiliar with the game was a totally different ball game hell maybe even a game with no ball like hockey or bobsledding.  However with it, came a new outlook on things and great suggestions to help make the process easier in the future.

At the end of a couple sessions it was clear one character was making 3 combat / 1 general fighter type. Well in actuality he was a shirtless (yes he insisted his character would be shirtless) cowboy who was a bare knuckle boxer.  This was actually a great test for the limits of our system as quite a bit of debate among developers had arose from the decision on supporting a character who willing chose to fight unarmed.  One developer had at one point insisted that wielding weapons is ALWAYS better than not and that to accurately reflect fighting throughout history it should be considered inferior to be unarmed and therefore no one would want to do it in the game.  Of course I felt the view was a little narrow. People play tabletop games for a variety of reasons.  Some people like the combats, some like the social interaction and role playing, others enjoy living a life as an extraordinary character in extraordinary places.  Min-Maxing, while something I do enjoy in RPGs, isn't a must for everyone, and certainly didn't seem to be so for the player making his bare knuckled boxer.  This actually ended up leading to a few simple design changes which let us better support unarmed combat and make it fairly viable in the game.  I don't know if I'd go so far as to say it's optimal, but it's definitely viable.  Needless to say I wouldn't want to step into a ring with that guy even if I did have a sword or an ax.

It's really hard to say how such a character will pan out down the road.  To date, all testing in the game has revolved solely around level 1 characters while the other 9 levels are all theorycraft at this point.  We have it planned out, in great detail even, but how things will actually play out remain to be seen.  So thanks to that player's choice for creating a unique character type, we got to slightly tweak the CORPS system to better handle and easily allow the creation of such a character while still allowing them to contribute as much as a more common mainstream character.

The other player who had made good progress in making his character was going the magic route with a 3m / 1 Stealth caster.  His choice in spell spheres were a bit limited since we only have a little over half the spheres finished at this point, but still there are plenty of options in my opinion.  At the end of the day the player decided upon the warlock sphere.  This sphere deals primarily with crippling enemies with magic attack spells and/or killing them over time through corrosive and demonic curses.  I really felt the spell spheres had come together thus far as they had been streamlined over a series of iterations to essentially reveal two primary builds in each spell sphere.  In the case of the warlock sphere you had the warlock who focused on debilitating attacks and the other who focused on damage over time attacks.  Granted there are a lot more options within the sphere than just choice A or choice B.  In fact there are 42 spells in each spell sphere for a 3m caster and since you start out being able to only pick 6 of them and 1 armor type spell I think there is room for plenty of variation within any given spell sphere.

Getting back to the player, and one of the things that myself as a developer had failed to notice was the horrible format that the spells were being display in.  Primarily it was that each spell that did damage used a formula for determining what those damage values were based on level.  To me this made perfect sense but to player he said the looked like quadratic equations.  Shifting gears and trying to view things as a new player I could see what he meant.  Here is an example of one of the old spells.

Lifesteal (PE)
Keyword: Shadow, Fortify
Spell Type: Physical Effect
Area of Effect: Ranged 1 in 10
Duration: Immediate
Static Modifier:  Full
Crit Die: 2d8+1
Spell Effect:
          On hit target takes Xd10+Y+ Pr bonus shadow damage and the caster gains Z temporary hit points.  
          X = 1 + 1/3 * level  
            Y = 3 + 3/5 * level
            Z = 3 + 9/10 * level

Overcast: Add d10 extra damage for 2 PP.  At level 6 add 2d10 extra damage and increase the THP gained by one for 4 PP.



I had to laugh a little because it really did look intimidating, especially with a list of 42 and a few other perks and bonuses lying about all listing formulas that needed to be 'solved' in order to write it down on your character sheet.  We had originally done this because the developers were fearful of having too many charts.  Having seen how games like rolemasters and dare I say, the infamous F.A.T.A.L. went so overboard with charts as to make even the most experienced players groan in frustration and agony.  Still after stepping back from the problem another developer decided that having lots of small charts, namely for each spell, would be vastly better than having cryptic formula laid out detailing the correct values per level.  After the edit this is what spells look like now.

Lifesteal (PE)
Keyword: Shadow, Fortify
Spell Type: Physical Effect
Area of Effect: Ranged 1 in 10
Duration: Immediate
Static Modifier:  Full
Crit Die: 2d8+1
Spell Effect:
          On hit target takes shadow damage equal to the level chart below + Pr bonus.  The caster also gains a number of temporary hit points equal the level chart below.  

Level 1-5
Shadow Damage
1d10+3
1d10+5
1d10+7
1d10+9
1d10+11
Level 1-5
Temporary HP
3
4
5
6
7
Level 6-10
Shadow Damage
2d10+11
2d10+13
2d10+15
2d12+17
2d10+20
Level 6-10
Temporary HP
8
9
10
11
12

Overcast: Add d10 extra damage for 2 PP.  At level 6 add 2d10 extra damage and increase the THP gained by one for 4 PP.


Now the spell is much easier to read for a character when trying to figure out how much damage they'll do with a spell.  Got a level 1 character who knows lifesteal?  Damage is 1d10+3 + Pr bonus and you gain 3 temporary hit points.  No figuring out or rounding down fractions.  Another little improvement we made is we reduced the overall number of dice you'd be rolling when casting spells at higher levels.  It can still be a lot with certain powerful spells, but overall we reduced the absolute maximum number of dice you'd roll for a damage value from 10 to 8.  I know that probably doesn't sound impressive but across the boards the number of dice being rolled has been reduced by about 2.  The actual number of spells that will have you rolling 8 or even 6+ dice at level 10 are fairly limited.  By increase the static + damage to dice roll we're were trying to make it so that each level saw some gain in power.  Previously you'd have spells that didn't change for 2 or 3 levels and then jumped up by a d10 or d12 nearly doubling the damage of the spell the level before.  We wanted to avoid the drastic increases and opted for slower but more steady gains in spell power as the characters increased in level.  Overall I think it's a good change because people will still be able to feel some weight to their damage rolls (any gamer of dice will tell you this is a fun feeling) while not needing to make 12 different rolls for a single attack.  (that number is assuming a worst case along with a player only having 1 of a certain die size.  And I mean com'on honestly who only has 1 of each die size at a table top RPG???  An experience DM should easily be able to lend players 2 or 3 of any kind of die if needed.  Of course this is all in theory so I'm going to stop rambling now, especially in parentheses no less...)

In any case, while it's been fun finally taking some people not familiar with the CORPS system through the process of building characters it has also been a good learning exercise for the developers.  We've had a chance to further improve our system and hopefully make it more enjoyable for players who decide to tempt fate and roll the dice in the CORPS.