Game News Colony Ship RPG Update #2: Design Goals, Mechanics

[Irenaeus III]

Great stuff, oscar.

 

[Vault Dweller]

Ah, now i understand. Would also be nice if you implemented delayed consequences as well, i loved how those made save scumming for story choices less of an option.

Well, considering that the party members will handle some "gating" for you, losing a party member means losing some content down the road.

 

[xxxCatholicKillahxxx]

I don't think it would work.

When you create your own party, you create permanent characters (i.e. you aren't planning to lose them or trade them up). They are meant to be devoted slaves, not characters blessed with free will. The purpose of the personality system is to create tensions and problems when the PC does something that rubs the party members the wrong way (i.e. when the PC makes decisions he should think about how his decisions would affect his party members). Thus, if we were to let you make your own team and assign personality points yourself, most likely you'd simply create characters who'd cause least amount of trouble.

I get your point. This is going to be a protag centric game but just for the sake of arguing I'd like to address a few things if you don't mind.

Firstly nothing prevents having a pool of created characters and how permanent they are depends mostly on the developer and after that on the player themselves.

Secondly said pool of created characters could have the same personality traits that the recruitable characters have.

Lastly I assume what you say in the last sentence takes to mean that some of these recruitable characters will have personalities which cause variable amounts of trouble. Is there anything preventing the player from cherry picking in the recruitable character system? Not arguing that there should be though.

 

[Tigranes]

The above could only work if the personalities / traits / etc were extremely generic - i.e. 'religious' v 'secular'. If Vince planned on having properly written characters that have a more-than-one-dimensional reason for wanting to burn down that orphanage it's not really going to translate well, and if the player can choose all of these traits anyway it becomes much easier to game the system and create a party that is max-munchkin'd for content and obeisance.

 

[Vault Dweller]

Precisely.

 

[Irenaeus III]

Yeah, hopefully the characters will not be banal caricatures and more like larger-than-life personalities inspired by complex Codexers who defy definition.

 

[Kem0sabe]

Yeah, hopefully the characters will not be banal caricatures and more like larger-than-life personalities inspired by complex Codexers who defy definition.

I disagree, i prefer low key personalities instead of everyone other npc you meet be someone with existential and metaphysical problems.

 

[Vault Dweller]

The above could only work if the personalities / traits / etc were extremely generic - i.e. 'religious' v 'secular'. If Vince planned on having properly written characters that have a more-than-one-dimensional reason for wanting to burn down that orphanage it's not really going to translate well, and if the player can choose all of these traits anyway it becomes much easier to game the system and create a party that is max-munchkin'd for content and obeisance.

Right now (as in subject to change without notice) we're planning to go with 10 traits (values ranging from -5 to +5) strictly for the purpose of reacting to different situations and the PC's choices.

Religion (-5 means raging atheist, +5 means true believer)
Politics (-5 filthy liberal, +5 glorious conservative)
Loyalty (-5 treacherous scum, +5 loyal to a fault)
Volatile (-5 comatose, +5 always ready to fly off the handle)
Connving (-5 honest abe, +5 Miltiades)
Opportunist (-5 a man of principles, +5 what are principles?)
Idealism (-5 cynic, +5 starry-eyed idealist)
Greed (-5 above money, +5 can quote Gordon Gekko)
Altruism (-5 selfish bastard, +5 For the Greater Good!)
Agreeable (-5 doesn't play well with others, +5 gets along with Hitler)

 

[Irenaeus III]

Woah

That looks great! Really fleshes out how complex people can be.

 

[MRY]

Some quick reactions:

(1) At least arguably (although I can see it presenting some tough Philosophical Judgments), I would try to have all 10 traits run from conventionally good (positive) to conventionally bad (negative), or vice versa. It seems weird that a positive Loyalty trait moves you in the Paladin direction -- as do positive Agreeable and Altruism traits -- but Greed, Conniving, and Opportunist run in the opposite direction. Obviously this puts you in a tough position vis-a-vis religion and politics, but I believe you could just make them run toward true believer and glorious conservative and present these as paladin-type traits.

(2) I am being triggered by the lack of parallelism in the trait names. Some are adjectives while some are nouns, and even among the nouns some are abstractions (e.g., Religion) while some are concrete individuals (e.g., Opportunist), some are value-laden (e.g., Idealism) while some are neutral (e.g., Politics). This is pretty ticky tack, but to be honest little things like that in AOD -- like the tone and polish in the stat point levels -- I think may have given it a slightly less complete feel.

(3) "Religion" as a single trait feels off to me. I haven't been following the lore closely, but it seems weird that things have already Gone to Hell and there has already been a revolution and so on, but there remains only a single religion. At basically every moment of Christianity (and Islam, and Judaism, etc., etc.) there have been off-shoots ranging from small cults to huge movements. Thousands died over the one-letter difference between "of like substance" and "of same substance" and so on. I feel like you may be limiting yourself by handling it this way.

(4) The ten-point range seems excessive to me. I guess it depends on how many characters you're having, but I feel like it might work better with just a couple dozen named traits that are assigned to each character, rather than plotting ten points on ten spectra. Like, "Greey, conniving, orthodox." "Conservative, idealistic, ascetic." Etc. I am inclined to think that even though that would lead to less detail to the character, it might actually make them seem more human than a scatterplot would.

 

[Vault Dweller]

(1, 2) It's an internal system that won't be shown to the player (not to mention work in progress, which explains the lack of a proper naming convention). Its purpose is to make scripting easier, not tell the player what kind of animal he's dealing with. So when I'm checking Greed, I know that higher value is worse, whereas it's the other way around with Loyalty. Not very universal but easy to remember, at least for me.

(3) You're right but if I go with 3 religions instead of one, it will take me another 10 years, this time working full time. For, uh, simplicity's sake we'll go with democracy, totalitarianism, religion, and anarchy, with meaningful options to push each in different directions. Split religion into three and it will become an impossible task.

(4) When it comes to writing, yes. A character would have 3-4 key traits. The numbers make the scripting easier and we can check the sum of 2-3 traits where applicable. In general though, there should be a difference between a somewhat religious character and an extremely religious one. Same goes for politics - moderate vs zealots, etc.

 

[Whisper]

The above could only work if the personalities / traits / etc were extremely generic - i.e. 'religious' v 'secular'. If Vince planned on having properly written characters that have a more-than-one-dimensional reason for wanting to burn down that orphanage it's not really going to translate well, and if the player can choose all of these traits anyway it becomes much easier to game the system and create a party that is max-munchkin'd for content and obeisance.

Right now (as in subject to change without notice) we're planning to go with 10 traits (values ranging from -5 to +5) strictly for the purpose of reacting to different situations and the PC's choices.

Religion (-5 means raging atheist, +5 means true believer)
Politics (-5 filthy liberal, +5 glorious conservative)
Loyalty (-5 treacherous scum, +5 loyal to a fault)
Volatile (-5 comatose, +5 always ready to fly off the handle)
Connving (-5 honest abe, +5 Miltiades)
Opportunist (-5 a man of principles, +5 what are principles?)
Idealism (-5 cynic, +5 starry-eyed idealist)
Greed (-5 above money, +5 can quote Gordon Gekko)
Altruism (-5 selfish bastard, +5 For the Greater Good!)
Agreeable (-5 doesn't play well with others, +5 gets along with Hitler)

Can we get more Miltiades?

Please say Yes.

Maybe in next game in AoD world you are making. He can get to prison, right?

 

[Forest Dweller]

Are you planning anything similar to an influence system like what Obsidian's done with most of their rpgs? In other words, can any of those stats for a companion change based on your actions? Or can companions be more forgiving of actions that go against their views if they like you more?

Also, will conversations "unlock" with companions based on certain factors (i.e. previous conversations, their attitude toward you, main quest progress, etc.) the way they do in most party-based rpgs?

 

[Roqua]

I still think full party creation where I decide their goals, motives, personalities, quirks, traits, etc, is a far, far superior system. But, I'll of course buy this game and hopefully not despise this system too much or as much as other non-full party creation recruitment systems.

There will be a better chance of that if one of the character's is based off of Scotchmo from WL2.

 

[Trashos]

So, in order to have a group I will need to spend points on Charisma and then I will be punished a second time by having XP distributed among the group. I don't understand why games do this all. Isn't XP distribution enough to provide a trade-off for big groups? Does the game actually need the Charisma stat?

 

[Tigranes]

Usually XP distribution isn't big enough, and having a group is always more powerful - not to mention a strong scaling often breaks the game by making solo characters hit the cap far too early.

Given the features laid out, I'd actually prefer to see XP given flat across any party size, XP earnt and spent only by the PC, and the progression of each NPC tied to ... well, that's the thing. Only way is to tie it to story progression, a bit like in PST, but that can have its own problems.

 

[you know what time it is]

for sure

 

[Russia is over. The end.]

So, in order to have a group I will need to spend points on Charisma and then I will be punished a second time by having XP distributed among the group. I don't understand why games do this all.

The NPCs are gates to content here. Having more of them isn't going to make the game easy - it'll probably be more challenging, but more rewarding. It's up to you how far you want to push it.

 

[Roqua]

So, in order to have a group I will need to spend points on Charisma and then I will be punished a second time by having XP distributed among the group. I don't understand why games do this all.

The NPCs are gates to content here. Having more of them isn't going to make the game easy - it'll probably be more challenging, but more rewarding. It's up to you how far you want to push it.

What are you basing the more rewarding statement on?

 

[Ismaul]

Charisma is the new Lore. Unlocks gated content, hence more rewarding.

 

[Shevek]

Trying to figure out why I wouldn't want to pump Charisma in this system for every player character. More npcs means access to more content. Also a larger squad would generally be better at combat even if xp is split - especially since more access to gated content generally means more xp

Would a low charisma playthrough be mechanically desirable in any circumstances?

 

[hivemind]

Usually XP distribution isn't big enough, and having a group is always more powerful

Would you rather have 3 guys with 4 def/4 atck in AoD or one guy with 8/8 ?

 

[Russia is over. The end.]

What are you basing the more rewarding statement on?

Content in itself is reward, obviously.

 

[Azael]

As much as I loved Age of Decadence, and I really did, this game sounds so much better! Might be that the setting and premise in general is much more my thing. I loved the Rama books as a kid and colony ships in general are a cool and different setting from what we usually get.

It will be interesting to see how party members with a will of their own will turn out in the game. Hopefully a bit better than in Temple of Elemental Evil.

 

[Antigoon]

Usually XP distribution isn't big enough, and having a group is always more powerful - not to mention a strong scaling often breaks the game by making solo characters hit the cap far too early.

The problem with XP distribution here is that unlike in other games you can actually lose companions on your way. Imagine you have a group of 4, sharing XP for quite a while and then you are losing 2 of them. Assuming a similar unforgiving system as in AoD wouldn't you run into serious troubles being left with 2 rather weaklings?