Tuesday, December 24, 2013

Yakuza Ishin and packed lunches

Okay, GTA like run around with swords murdering the hell out of folk sandboxy kinda game.

But here's the thing - I hear it has this 'another life' mode.

Where you pack lunches, plant vegetables and adopt stray dogs.

And I wonder if the extremeness of the violent side has suddenly made them go 'Is this the only way we can imagine living???'. And in a bit of horror at what they've made, they make an alternate mode with a really different lifestyle?

I wonder if it'll get released in the western world?

Friday, December 13, 2013

Parpuzio's dilemma

This is a good recording. But in regard to roleplay, I like it at about 9:20
http://www.cbc.ca/ideas/episodes/2013/12/12/the-fools-dilemma/

How you don't see someone so much as angry as a configuration of muscles on their face.

It ties into the recent Parpuzio stuff and probably either baffled readings of my saying it's always happening in roleplay, or alternative 'omg, his play must be like that!'. Actually the recording goes into an idea of attributing to others before attributing to oneself, but anyways...

I think some people figure that when they say their character grabs the can of peaches (that someone else has spoken some fiction about being on a table), much like we think we see anger when we actually see a  configuration of muscles on the face, they think they actually interact with that can of peaches they are thinking about. The number of interactions, like the facial configuration, slips past us. We short cut. Just like the recording gives the example of, if in the distant past a lion jumped out at us, would we pause to consider maybe this is a false possitive and it's something else, or do we scream lion? Even as the latter is a short cut?

To get the can of peaches, it's all parpuzio.

You can dial down the amount of parpuzio.

Dial it down to zero and you have a boardgame.

I swear, 5 to 6 years ahead and you'll be onboard with this anyway. You'll use different names, say it in your own words. But you'll be on board anyway.

I'm offering a shortcut.


Saturday, December 7, 2013

Rifts RPG : High cost of armour repair isn't scary

It strikes me, also having played alot of Rifts recently, that a PC with 60 Mega Damage Capacity armour just does not get any fear from an enemy who does, say, 1D6 - even though that's 1D6x600 credits in repair cost.

But the repair costs aren't scary.

This is what struck me. Because to get money to pay for them, you are still going to have to get out there amongst enemies. You can't get scared and shy away from doing that.

So it ends up at being no big deal. So small time damage (once you have tough armour) is not made thrilling by repair costs.

I'm tossing up the idea of some kind of additional 'magic damage' dealt by supernatural creatures, in a fixed amount (something like 10 Mega Damage or 20 Mega Damage) on top of the creatures paltry 1D6 or 3D6.

This damage can't wreck your armour, but it can disable it. It dissipates at one point per hour (you can pay for a faster dissipation).

This promotes the 'Well, I think I'm going to shy away from combat now!' thing which shakes play up a bit and makes for a loss condition in combat. Ie, you got beat up so bad you want to go hide in a corner for awhile. When you have to pay for repairs though, there's really no room for that as you still need to get out and make money (to pay for repairs or make up for money lost in paying for repairs).

You have to make a place for being scared in.

Tuesday, December 3, 2013

The negative reviews that actual challenge in games earns

Ran into this twice, recently. The first is here. It's a review of the latest adventure time mechanic and it mentions that you can only get back to town after every five levels.

To make matters worse, you can only return to the surface after every five floors, so if you happen to lose all of your health before you reach the next checkpoint, tough luck--you’ll be dumped back above ground without any of the loot you’d accumulated. Worse still, there’s no way to quick-save in the middle of a floor, forcing you to continue playing until you reach the next checkpoint (or die trying).
Tre sigh!

And the next is of a review of might and magic in PC powerplay, where they say that whenever you rest, you use up supplies and can only carry six at a time. This is then described negatively as having to cut short the adventure instead of continue exploring.

It's so incredibly wearying to hear things that provide difficulty as being things which actually reduce the score a game is given. Perhaps unless they dark souls-like cram the 'this is tough!' meme down their throat, it's all exploro land to them?

Okay, caveat - Lord of the Rings, war in the north had checkpoints where if you died you'd lose your previously found gear. Which annoyed me greatly.

The thing is, it didn't announce when the next checkpoint was, unlike the adventure time game, where you can see how many levels you are away from the checkpoint.

Without stating where the checkpoint is, it's not a challenge that you're facing, I'd say. It's just struggling to 'not lose'.

Monday, December 2, 2013

The 'Creative' dungeon

I posted this here first, but it warrants repeating (and yes, once again I'm in the habit of posting elsewhere then treating my own blog as the secondary place for my material - nuts, eh?)

I used to try and make gameplay about 'creative dungeons'. It burns you out when the entirety of the fun rests on your shoulders, with the game not carrying any of the effort of being fun itself. Sure it's great to add creative things, but it's not great to add it simply because if you don't there wont be anything fun at all. When a system kinda focuses on XP, levels and gold, it's best if you have players who enjoy collecting XP, levels and gold. That way they enjoy play whether you add a creative thing or not (being creative adds to the game, rather than makes the game). It's just the advice I wish I'd run into years ago.