I haven’t updated in a while, I know. I’ve been busy with work, both work-work and after-work work. I’ve taken up Game Maker pretty seriously and have almost made it through all of the tutorial game projects in The Game Maker’s Apprentice. Apart from those, I have a few prototypes in various stages of development, and as soon as I’m done with the tutorials I’ll be jumping full-time into one of the prototypes with the aim of finishing a complete game. I can’t say what it’s about yet, but hopefully soon I’ll have something to show.

In other news, the spousal entity and I will be travelling to Spain over Christmas to go visit my family. It’s been over 4 years now since I moved to the States, so it’ll be nice to go back and see everyone. While I don’t expect to get much work done game-wise, I’ll be taking the laptop with GM installed on it, so perhaps something will come out of this small vacation. If nothing else, I’m sure I’ll get some gaming and some writing done, which will be good too.

I should probably have the time and inclination to write a post over Christmas break, unless I fall comatose from eating copious amounts of my mother’s delicious food. If there’s one thing I’ve missed, it’s the huge family meals she prepares on special occasions, like, say, Christmas.

So, it’s been a while since I posted, and today I’m especially motivated to write an update, so here goes:

Firstly, I got a new job, and now I’m working as a QA Tester at Gazillion. It’s a good job, and I’m enjoying it and learning many things every day.

Also in game development news, I’ve been learning to use Game Maker 7, and I’ve started working on my first game. It’s a little on the ambitious side for a first game, but I’m working on it dilligently. I’m keeping a devlog for it here. It’s still in the early stages, and most of my time right now is spent on spriting and other art assets, but I’m working on it. I will probably create a section here on the blog about it too and post updates on progress, so stay tuned.

In other game-related news, a while back Blizzard had a contest to submit names for Uniques (particularly rare and powerful items) for the upcoming Diablo III. The 5 names that are making into the game are: The Tormenter, Telranden’s Hand, Ruinstoke, Xephirian Amulet,and  Band of Hollow Whispers… As you might have figured out by now, Ruinstoke was my submission, so woot!

Finally, the whole mess with the Healthcare reform wrangling makes me very angry. Since I rant about it constantly on Twitter, I’m not going to say anything more on the subject, until I blow a whole post dedicated to the subject.

More soon.

I’ve not posted much recently, namely because I have a new job – another QA position, but this time at a development studio – and I’ve been busy acclimating to my new situation. I’m happy with it so far, I’ve only been there for just over a week and I’ve already learned a lot of things. Having hands-on time with some professional grade tools is great, as is working in an environment full of like-minded people with great ideas and passion, and seeing the day to day of a game developer’s life, as opposed to just interacting with the product in a finished or semi-finished state.

I’m looking forward to doing more writing once I’ve settled in. I also have a few things going on on the side. So it’s busy busy busy all the way. Still, I’m not complaining. I’ve been working for this for a long time now, and I’m grateful for the payoff.

More soon.

I’ve been hearing about Trine lately on Twitter, so I figured I’d get the free demo from Steam to check it out. As I was perusing Steam’s selection of free stuff, to my great surprise I saw the demo for Starscape was on there.  I’ve mentioned before how much I enjoyed Starscape, so now that the demo is available on Steam, you have no excuse not to try it. Plus, Moonpod are pretty awesome as a whole – they also developed Mr. Robot – and they’d probably appreciate your patronage.

Of course, you could always download the demo directly from Moonpod, whether you have Steam or not, or even buy it directly from them.

There’s a lot of talk about how videogames are yet to have their Citizen Kane, and how when this game is released, we will be elevated to the same degree of cultural relevance as film and literature. But, recently, I’ve begun wondering if that’s really what videogames need.

Citizen Kane is a feat of cinematographic mastery, but there are many games out there that use visuals, game mechanics, and narrative elements successfully.

Star Trek, on the other hand, while perhaps not as technically impressive, has cultural and future relevance. Each of the serials, from the first one in the 1960’s, explores themes and situations which echoed events of our world which were relevant at the time. The money quote, from Roddenberry himself, is:

“[By creating] a new world with new rules, I could make statements about sex, religion, Vietnam, politics, and intercontinental missiles. Indeed, we did make them on Star Trek: we were sending messages and fortunately they all got by the network.“

Another good one is:

Roddenberry intended the show to have a progressive, almost radical political agenda reflective of the emerging sexualized counter-culture of the youth movement. However, his efforts were largely thwarted by the network’s concerns over marketability. Star Trek showed mankind what it might develop into, if only it would learn from the lessons of the past, most specifically by ending violence.

Much of the current discussion on videogames focuses on finding the medium’s own voice with which to tell engaging stories, tying the mechanics of the game to the themes and plot. And while I agree that this is important, I believe it is also increasingly important to move away from the teenage power fantasies of violent domination of faceless enemies, and look for new stories to tell. To continue with the TV references, AAA titles seem to have fallen into the same rut as the A-team, where the formula of the game/show follows a formulaic pattern, with only the slightest variations in settings and situations to differentiate one episode from the next. To use another Wikipedia quote:

“[...]a recognizable and steady episode structure. In describing the ratings drop that occurred during the show’s fourth season, reviewer Gold Burt points to this structure as being a leading cause for the decreased popularity “because the same basic plot had been used over and over again for the past four seasons with the same predictable outcome.“

The major reason why I believe we should aspire to the Star Trek of videogames is that with videogames we can do more than just show people what the future could be like, we can put them there, let them see the sights, interact with the people, and experience what could be. We can craft all manner of utopian and dystopian alternate realities, and craft our games around these ‘what if?’ scenarios. The Fallout series is a great example in that the setting shows us what could have happened if we hadn’t reigned in nuclear escalation, if diplomatic relations between the nuclear superpowers had broken down and spiralled into, to use another quote, all-out thermonuclear Heck.

Apart from being relevant in the subject matter and themes it covers, Star Trek, as illustrated in the two quotes above, also faced similar problems to those we now face as game developers: funding and censorship.

Censorship is perhaps the thorniest of the two. While it would be great to develop a game with poignant social commentary on all manner of relevant issues – unless we are very careful, or apply massive doses of saccharine -  to subjects like sexuality, gender violence, bigotry and other current social woes, our game will be whacked over the head with the AO rating, which tends to be the equivalent of  a death sentence in the current day and age. There are ways of circumventing the retail ostracising of such a game, but unless major download services like Steam and the like welcome such titles chances are such a game will see limited distribution, commercial failure, and set us back quite a number of years. The other issue, funding, is an equally formidable obstacle. With the global economy in it’s current, sorry state, is it possible to obtain funding for what is essentially a title aimed at a vapourous ‘mature’ audience that may or may not be offended by the content matter?

Despite these obstacles, I feel that to be socially relevant, and gain mainstream acceptance, we need to put the space marines and the big guns back in the toy box, and delve into the conflicts that we as average Janes and Joes have to face on an everyday basis. Conflict, the main engine of narrative and games, takes many forms. It is these forms as they appear to use on the streets of our cities that we must harness in order to appeal to those we share them with.

The game that allows us to overcome these two obstacles will, in my mind, as big a milestone for videogames as Citizen Kane was to movies.

So, following on my previous post on Cartography, and my comments on in-game stories, here’s another idea for a crafting profession.

The Loreweaver is a seeker of knowledge, a scholar of ancient languages and cultures, and is deeply interested in unearthing the history of the world. From a design standpoint, implementing the profession fulfills the following goals:

1. It is aimed at lore enthusiasts, those players who want to know more about the story of the world. One of the products of the profession is exactly that, in-game books dealing with history, mythology, culture and other such subjects.

2. As a crafting profession, it does not require exploring the world, killing monsters, or finding gear for progression.

3. It is a new way of delivering narrative to players.

4. It is an experiment in ‘player-created content’, after a fashion.

The main mechanic of the profession is, like other crafting skills, acquiring materials and combining them into finished product. In this case, materials are snippets of lore. These can be obtained in a variety of fashions:

Studying:  The player can use their study skill on any in-game book or text-scroll item in the game. I will refer to these as Sources. The actual process of studying a Source could involve a word- or letter-based minigame, with the player’s score dictating what is gained from the studying. Sources could be level-coded, such that some can be studied sooner, while others require a minimum skill level to study successfully. Alternately, each source could only be studied once, or once every X minutes. This would have to be designed and balanced to suit the Vision(tm) for the game.

Studying a source, apart from granting some amount of experience, would also yield a ‘note’. Notes are the essential loreweaving materials. Some sources might yield more and/or better quality notes. Notes would then be used to compile ‘Theories’. I haven’t ironed out the exact process, but in World of Warcraft, for example, the player would learn Theory recipes from the trainer, and combine specific types and amounts of notes to craft theories, gaining skill points in the process. For a different game, however, I would devise a system where a source can yield note with different ’subject’ values from various categories. A note might have the subjects ‘Humans 3′, ‘Trolls 5′, ‘History 2′, ‘Language 4′. The player would then either choose to try to combine a number of notes to accumulate a certain score in one subject to formulate a theory on that subject. However, if a different subject had a higher score, the theory would relate to that subject instead. So, 4 notes with scores where a highest Race category of Trolls and a Highest Discipline category of Language might yield a theory on Troll Language. The higher the particular scores, the more elaborate the theory.

Exploration: Certain locations throughout the world, namely those steeped in history, but any would work, would be sources of books, scrolls, tablets, paintings, and other such items that the Loreweaver could use to obtain notes. These could appear as ground spawns in said locations, a book on a shelf inside an old abandoned monastery, for example. Loreweavers could theoretically go out into the world and look for these items, but adventurers would likely find them throughout their travels,. If the designer wants to encourage loreweavers to go out and explore the world rubbings, explained below, can also be used.

Purchase: As I said, adventurers would find these items, and could theoretically sell them to vendors for a meager sum (they are essentially vendor trash to non-loreweavers), or to Loreweavers for considerably more. Alternately, some vendors could be implemented in the game that keep track of how many of these items have been sold to vendors in their city in the last 15 minutes, and update an inventory populated with random items from a list every so often. This inventory could be unique for each loreweaver (a form of vendor inventory phasing) or all loreweavers could be buying from the same limited inventory. Alternately, with vendors like those in Everquest, loreweavers could spend a lot of their time hunting through vendor inventories trying to find their much needed source of notes. Whichever system is used should be conducive to Loreweavers having a consistent, convenient source of materials, without actually having to go out and get them themselves.

Once the Loreweaver has enough notes, they combine them to create a theory. Theories are basically that, hypotheses the Loreweaver arrives at from studying source material and compiling notes. They are also where the ‘experimental player-created content’ comes in.

Theories need to be proved. As such, they require either more information, or actually going on a field trip to study the subject matter.

As such, when a theory is formulated, the Loreweaver would receive two items: One would be a commission, and the other the actual Hypothesis of the theory.

In WoW terms, the commission would take the form of a ‘This item begins a Quest’ item that can be traded. The Loreweaver can click on the commission and see what exactly needs to get done in order to complete the quest. They can then either choose to do the quest themselves, accepting the quest, or call out in city-wide chat or a trade channel that they have a commission to go do X. Alternately, they could very well take the quest, and then offer to share it with people, in order to get more than one person to accept the quest.

The quest itself would involve travelling somewhere associated with the subject matter of the theory, and either interacting with an object (getting a rubbing). The interaction with the object would complete the initial quest, and yield the rubbing as a reward. Rubbings are similar to notes, in that they are materials for Loreweaving, and little else (unless the game is also using inspirations). So, the adventurer completes the quest, gets a small experience reward, and now has an item they can sell to the Loreweaver, or turn in to them for the previously negotiated price. Delivery via in-game mail would also be possible, with the possibility of using C.O.D. to ensure payment. If the original Loreweaver no longer needs it, chances are some other Loreweaver might. If not, it can still be vendored.

The actual quest itself doesn’t need to end there, however. The original quest could very well just be the beginning of a quest chain, or it might have a chance of triggering a quest, or it might give a follow-up selected from a list of quests. Whatever is feasible and the designers feel they can get away with.

Once the Loreweaver has their rubbing, and other associated materials (all of which are listed in the handy hypothesis scroll’s tooltip), the player can either right click the Hypothesis – it would be a ‘Use: combine this item and X, Y, Z to create A’. – or throw it all together in their research satchel (one of the Loreweaving professional tools) and hit combine. The results would be either a proven hypothesis, a refuted hypothesis, or an unproven hypothesis. The unproven hypothesis would return the loreweaver to the questi-giving stage of the process, and yield experience and notes, and possibly another hypothesis/quest to give out. The refuted hypothesis would also grant experience, and more notes than the unproven hypothesis, but would not yield another hypothesis. Finally, the proven hypothesis would be the most desirable result, since the loreweaver could combine it with some writing materials and implements to create an actual in-game book. This book could then be studied for more notes. There might even be different qualities of books, with some only being a few pages long and not very in-depth, all the way to detailed accounts of events, cultures, languages, etc. There could even be terrible books that were obvious fabrications, or wildly inaccurate. Even these would have some merit, if only for entertainment value.

I’ll add more to this later, but for now, that’s what I have.  I have a couple more ideas in this same vein that I will put into writing soon(ish).

The discussions on questing and storytelling have been going on for a while, and I haven’t said much on the subject until now because personally I feel divided on the subject.

As a way of establishing a basis for my thoughts, here’s a little information about my playing habits in WoW:

I currently have the maximum number of characters allowed (50) scattered across a good dozen servers. I play mostly alliance characters, on PvE servers, but I have player all the racial and death knight newbie areas, and all races to at least level 20. On my main server, I have 10 alliance characters, 3 80’s, 4 70+, and three lowbies. I have one of each class (including death knight), at least one of each race, and all professions maxed or just about.

I interact with the world around me. I mourn the passing of NPCs. I intercept and kill predators that are trying to eat domesticated sheep and chickens. I /salute Thrall when I am in his presence, even as an Alliance character. I /knelt before Varyan Wrynn when he made his triumphant return to Stormwind. I will randomly emote my feelings to NPCs that I’m interacting with. To all intents and purposes, while I’m in the game, I’m in the game world. I don’t roleplay, but I respect those who do. I PvP in battlegrounds, and when I’m with a group of people pursuing an objective, but I don’t believe in ganking, and I don’t care to live constantly looking over my shoulder, worried that someone is going to poke a claymore through my spleen.

I read all the quest text, the first time. Since I play 10 different characters, that averages out to about 33% of the time up until level 80, 20% of the time up to level 74, and just about 10% at level 33 (my lowest level characters). That’s one thing I don’t know if Blizzard’s metrics take into account, players blitzing through content on alts. I’m not sure what the numbers are, but I’m pretty sure I’m not the only one who suffers from altitis, although I’m probably among the ‘chronically endangered’ by the disease.

Personally, I enjoy in-game lore. I care about the NPCs and their plights. I will avenge innocent NPCs that get slaughtered by evil meanies (don’t get me started on the Oracles questline in Sholazar Basin, I must have single-handedly slaughtered thousands of undead there). I don’t mind fetching some guy’s abandoned wood, thinning out pest populations, exploring ruins, retrieving artifacts, or any other menial task (I do object to some of the more mind-numbing quests). I like killing stuff. I like quests that send me to kill 100 blibbles. In fact, I prefer them to quests that send me to pick up one flower in zone A, two zones south from the starting point, hand it in to the wild fae maiden in zone b, on the diametrically opposed end of the continent from zone b, and then come back with the maiden’s words of love back where I started. If it wasn’t for my epic flying mount, I would despise that last quest, but would probably do it anyway if the shinies were shinier enough than what I was currently wearing.

All of that said, I agree with Tesh in that  most of these so-called quests are basically doing other people’s work for them. The aforementioned wood collecting is not a quest, it is menial labour. I have nothing against menial labour, if it will net me a little coin, some experience, reputation, and/or a follow-up. I do object to it being called a Quest.

Hence, my first line in the sand: Differentiate Quests, from tasks, favours, errands, requests for aid, bounty hunts, missions, random acts of kindness, and temporary emergency conscription. I will concede that tasks, etc, can be gateways to Quests, as a means of gaining reputation, proving one’s worth, and all the other rotes.

To me, it’s not just a matter of semantics. It’s a matter of scope. Personally, I would see Quests as the ‘group-required’ stuff in WoW, and tasks as the single player stuff. I would also differentiate in the scope of the rewards. Quests would award meaningful gear upgrades, large amounts of experience, reputation, etc. Tasks would award smaller amounts of experience, and either gold or reputation . In fact, I would love to see a game where I can choose to forego monetary rewards in exchange for a reputation boosts: the character performs the deed out of their sense of duty, honour, or kindness, and thus they are exalted in the eyes of those who requested their assistance. This would tie in nicely with what I said about tasks leading to Quests. If a number of Quests required a minimum reputation to acquire, and there were more minor reputations one could work on, all the better. Even more so, if a number of the tasks are repeatable, for smaller rewards than the first time they are completed. And even more so if there are a number of different repeatable quests that one can do in each town to build reputation, to mix things up a bit.

What makes a Quest different from any of the other terms I used above? Simple: If it requires I kill a single, named or ‘unique’ enemy, or several formidable ones, or obtain a single object of above-average importance, or  an assortment of materials that combine into something greater than the sum of the parts, or beseech the aid of a being of power orders of magnitude greater than my own at the time, it is a Quest. If it involves killing many lowly enemies, obtaining components for something that can be crafted routinely, or several mundane items, or deliver a message to someone only slightly more important than me at the time, it is a task.

The thing about quests, for a chronic sufferer of altitis as myself, is that they lost their sheen after a the first couple of times you do them. By the time I was doing Borean Tundra and Howling Fjord for the fourth and fifth time (I was alternating a warrior and mage), I found myself killing way more monsters than were immediately necessary to complete a quest. On my mage especially, I would be running around from place to place to complete my checklists, and I would stop every few dozen steps to AoE down a pack of monsters. Even on my warrior I was grinding mobs about as much as I was questing, simply because the quests had lost their sheen somewhat. It didn’t help that at the time I had a maxed tailor (cheap, decent quality mage gear) and blacksmith (ditto for warrior), hence completing quests was only coming ahead of grinding on the basis of repuatation rewards. Some of the quests I was still looking forward to doing, namely the ones that required more than killing monsters or collecting items, like the vehicle riding quests.

Another thing about quests, which has been mentioned elsewhere, is the segregation they cause. If I happen to be on the same quests as you, we can group, and go do the quest, then either we see if we have more quests or part ways. One thing I’ve noticed about WoW is that I haven’t formed any relationships as strong as I did playing Everquests, and even those pale when compared to the friendships I still have with people I met while interacting on the pre-release forums of Vanguard: Saga of Heroes. I do tend to solo in WoW, but I’m not sure which is the cause and which the effect.

In fact, call me weird, but I have fond memories of grouping in Everquest, just grinding mobs and talking to people between bouts of meditating. Part of me feels that the group quests in WoW only serve to emphasise the problem: if you happen to find enough people of the right classes to do the quests, great, you are treated to either a short period of excitement, or a horrible experience of waiting for people to gather, people dropping out to do other stuff, and/or wiping on what should probably not be a huge deal. If you don’t succeed at finding a group to complete the quest, you get stumped in your progression through the questlines of the zone, and either have to move on and come back later, wait for your friends to show up to help, or abandon the quest and miss out on that part of the game experience.

Which segues nicely into story.

As I said above, I like the stories developers weave into their worlds. If I see something that stands out in the game, I look around to see if I can figure out why it’s there. If there is quest to be read, I will read it, the first time. On the second and third times, if it’s still fresh in my mind, I’ll just click through it. I might read it again if I remember the quest text being interesting, funny, or otherwise memorable – an aside here to mention that I have a pretty good memory for in-game quests and such if I’m actively playing the game – but chances are, if it’s yet another fetch quest or verb number noun quest, I’ll just click through it and go on my merry way.

That said, I do like in-game lore. I especially like what WoW did with the books strewn throughout the world. And not just the important books that tell the world’s history and legends. I thought the steamy romance novels were clever and funny. I read people’s diary’s, or try to. I think story, of all scopes, does more to bring the world to life, as do little NPC interaction scripts, wolves killing squirrels, critters, and things that are there just because. When I’m doing a quest with a story behind it, I live the story, and don’t worry about the fact that thousands of others have done it already, and I don’t feel like the hero any less.

So, as it relates to quests, I like that Quests have stories, and that quests have stories. It’s all part of bringing the world together into a cohesive whole. Even if they are simple, small stories of labourers driven away and missed shipment deadlines, they are the stories of the people who we, as heroes, are there to protect. And we all have to start our Questlines somewhere.

Exploring the world is one of the things that draws me to virtual worlds, whether they be MMOs or single player games. I also really like crafting, to the extent that I usually take up all crafting professions in MMOs, even if it requires rolling up a bunch of alts. While juggling possible crafting professions that haven’t been explored or implemented in other games, I came up with the idea of a crafting profession that could appeal to explorers. Hence Cartography.

In my mind, Cartography would work similarly to how the world map works in World of Warcraft. As you explore the world, you gain cartography experience, and you uncover the world map. Once you uncover the entirety of a zone (in a zoned game) or a certain area, you would gain the ability to ‘draw’ a map of the area, using ink and papyrus. You would then be able to draw maps and sell them to others. Maps would be items that non-cartographers would click in order to add them to their own world map. Without these, either players would not have access to the map, and thus would have to rely on their own navigation skills and landmarks strewn around the world, or would have access to very rough maps that show only settlements and major roads. This way, travel between settlements (the ‘known world’) would not be hindered, but travelling off the beaten path would be potentially dangerous.

The first obvious problem I can come up with when implementing this crafting profession is scope. As soon as the cartographer has fully explored the world, they stop gaining experience from exploration, and are unable to grow further in their craft. The basically have nothing left to do but make maps and sell them.

To overcome this, I would introduce treasure maps. Treasure maps would be item drops from monsters, treasure chests, etc, and would require a certain amount of cartography skill to use – ‘decipher’. It would be not unlike the rogue’s lockpicking ability in World of Warcraft, where a player can trade the map to a cartographer in the ‘will not be traded’ slot, and the cartographer uses one of the Cartography-related skills to ‘unlock’ the map, allowing the other player to use it, placing a notation on their world map with the location of the chest. Of course, if that player doesn’t have a cartographer’s map showing that location, the notation could very well appear in the middle of the ‘here be monsters’ part of the map, so the cartographer might very well be able to make an upsale if they happen to be able to draw maps of that particular location in the world. Alternately, the player who finds the map might be able to sell the cartographer the map if they aren’t particularly interested in treasure hunting, creating a good possibility for bi-directional cash-flow or even barter. Once the location of the treasure has been pinpointed, it would either be a matter of having a spade tool that can be used at the location to unearth the treasure, or have a clickable instanced mound of earth that only the player with the notation can interact with.

Another thing that could be done to make the skill have a little more of a tail would be to have crafted maps not be automatically finished with one application of the mapmaking skill (I don’t think I have explained elsewhere that I see crafting skills as ‘classes’, in that there isn’t a single skill associated with a single profession, but rather a set of skills that would work similarly to weapon skills, ie they increase with use, with soft caps that increase each time the crafter ‘levels up’ their profession, or maybe the crafter’s level is an aggregate calculated from the average level of each of the skills that comprise the ‘class’).

So, at lower levels, the player might use their “craft X map” recipe, and get a partially finished map of X, and then further applications of the skill (and consumption of associated materials) work towards completing the unfinished product. Since each application of the skill gives varying amounts of experience depending on level of success, this can be balanced in such a way as to actually reduce how many crafted goods are flowing into the market, and creating ‘costs’ for crafters in the way of materials. Since the amount of completion per application of the skill/recipe is random, but increases with skill/level, easier recipes are easier to make at higher levels, but the difference required might be significant. In fact, it can be balanced in such a way that by the time a crafter is able to make an item with a single set of materials, the recipe is no longer the ideal way to gain experience.

Thoughts?

In the last instalment, I touched briefly on the subject of how a relationship system could affect combination attacks during combat. Relationship systems aren’t a new invention by any means, Breath of Fire had the coloured gems on the character status screen, and Star Ocean: The Second Story had a very in-depth system of inter-character friendships and love. This system was the basis for the ‘Private Action’ system of events, where you could watch short scripted sequences that took place between characters in your party when you entered a town. Some of these private actions included interactive elements, where you got to choose how you would react to the interactions between other characters. When I first saw it in action I thought it was brilliant, and still to this day think this is a great way to flesh out character’s personalities, backstory, and relationships between characters.

However, tihs series is about combat. So let’s look at combat.

As I said last time, a character relationship system goes very well with a combination attack system. Characters who are ‘friends’ are more likely to develop combat strategies that take advantage of each others’ strengths. The possibilities don’t end there, however.

I used the phrase ‘friends fighting side by side’, and I think therein lies the key: friends look out for each other, derive strength from each other, and watch each other’s backs. These are all things that can be implemented using existing mechanics.

Final Fantasy VI had another, less visible system, where if you had a character at near-death status (low HP, with a visual cue of the character kneeling instead of the usual standing idle stance) and selected the ‘Fight’ command, there was a small chance the character would execute a desperation attack. Desperation attacks, like the character-specific abilities, had unique combat animations and spell effects, and were usually pretty powerful.

In a similar vein, and using the relationship system, when a character is reduced to near death, it could be interesting to have characters with strong emotional ties to that character to intervene. A healer, for example, might cast a heal on the character to pull them out of the danger zone, while a defensive fighter might position themselves in front of that character, protecting them from the next attack.

To tie it in with the action gem system I detailed in the first ToRPGCS, perhaps the triggering of one of these actions requires and expends an active action gem. This way, we’d avoid the crazy exploitation of the system by the sly – as was common with Squall’s Renzokuken in FFVIII – and at the same time it would add another element to the strategic conservation of actions: a player might decide to leave the healer’s action gems active instead of topping up characters if they are expecting a powerful enemy attack. The player would also be more invested in keeping track and developing the relationships of their characters.

It would also be interesting for the pendulum to swing both ways: if character A is very good friends with character B, and character B is KOed in combat (HP reduced to 0), it would be interesting for character A to express their anguish or grief somehow. In a combat setting, this could be a temporary debuff that decreases their strength in combat, or perhaps the character goes berserk and attacks the enemy uncontrollably for a few rounds. After all, villains usually resort to attacking the heroes’ weaker associates and love ones as a means of demoralising them.

I haven’t been posting as often because I have started working on a game. I’m very excited, and look forward to sharing the outcome, but for now, I’d rather not say anything about it. More news as soon as there is something to report.