Editorial The Intricacies of Building a Character

[VentilatorOfDoom]

Tags: Frayed Knights

<p>Jay Barnson ponders <a href="http://rampantgames.com/blog/?p=850" target="_blank">the process of building characters</a>.</p>
<blockquote>
<p>After all that fun of choosing character stats that might be sub-optimal, and making lots of decisions in a deep character creation process, there&rsquo;s no better way to make me feel ripped off as a player than to discover that my choices have been neutered by a game that doesn&rsquo;t take my decisions into consideration in the game.&nbsp; If I take a low intelligence, it should play out somehow in the game (with more limited conversation options, perhaps).</p>
<p>And if the Underwater Basket Weaving costs the same number of points as Small Arms, I should reasonably expect to be able to get roughly similar amount of value from both skill. While one could argue that throwing points away on a useless skill might be a choice that matters,&nbsp; that&rsquo;s not really what I&rsquo;m talking about. I would want to see that my Underwater Basket Weaving skill has a cool and interesting place in the story. Or I want to have the opportunities available to make it so.</p>
</blockquote>
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<p>Spotted at: <a href="http://www.rpgwatch.com/#15251">RPGWatch</a></p>

 

[Azrael the cat]

Underwater Basket Weaving

The 'Aquaman' of character builds I'm envisaging a change to FO such that every quest has an alternative solution using underwater basket weaving: either shoot the guy, fix his computer, talk him into helping, or ask if you can borrow his bathtub so you can submerge yourself long enough to make a basket that you then bop him over the head with.

 

[Davaris]

One of the guys at Obsidian (I think it was Josh Sawyer) made a comment on this issue a while back and he said some RPG developers create a rule system and then design a game to fit the rule system.

What he does is the opposite, in that he designs the game and then creates a rule system to fit it. That way the designer knows exactly what skills the player needs, to overcome all of the obstacles in the game.

 

[Raghar]

What he does is the opposite, in that he designs the game and then creates a rule system to fit it. That way the designer knows exactly what skills the player needs, to overcome all of the obstacles in the game.

That's quite bad approach, either the resulting rulesystem is an one trick pony, or it feels inconsistent similarly like a person with only half face (because they thought the person would be viewed only from one direction).

 

[Awor Szurkrarz]

One of the guys at Obsidian (I think it was Josh Sawyer) made a comment on this issue a while back and he said some RPG developers create a rule system and then design a game to fit the rule system.

What he does is the opposite, in that he designs the game and then creates a rule system to fit it. That way the designer knows exactly what skills the player needs, to overcome all of the obstacles in the game.

Good idea. Hate in games picking skills and then finding out 15-20 hours down the road that most are useless.

 

[Der_Unbekannte]

One of the guys at Obsidian (I think it was Josh Sawyer) made a comment on this issue a while back and he said some RPG developers create a rule system and then design a game to fit the rule system.

What he does is the opposite, in that he designs the game and then creates a rule system to fit it. That way the designer knows exactly what skills the player needs, to overcome all of the obstacles in the game.

In my opinion both options are valid.

If I create a ruleset and afterwards implement it into a game, than basicly I know which skills the player can have and thus build obstacles he can overcome.
The otherway round was already described.

I really don't see that much difference other than production arguments. Second one probably gets the game earlier finished but could end up with a strange ruleset since too many different situations were added into the game thus resulting in a messy ruleset.

In the other case you could spend too much time on the ruleset which would result in a better ruleset but if there are problems in the game development you are pretty much screwed if you got a rigid release schedule.

Sooo. Both things good, both things bad.