Using BlogWriter for this post

As shown in the subject line, I (the Lion) am now using BlogWriter for writing to our blog, at least for this post. That way I can easily blog right from my iPod Touch.

Superiority Studios now has 4 apps on the AppStore - Tic Tac Awe, Tic Tax Awe Pro, They Say, and Superior Dice. Cool stuff is on its way, too. We have some art apps, or wallpaper apps on the way, and adventure apps still in the works.

So stay tuned!

-the Lion

Company Streaming Audio (AKA, Podcast)

Wondering where Superiority Studios is standing right now? What the Lion's next quick-app idea is? How that lazy bum Satellite Observatory can write over 10,000 lines of code, dozens of pages of design notes, and draw hundreds of graphic files and not have a single Appstore application to show for all that effort? Will he ever get off his useless butt and get a completed iPhone app out the door? (Short answer: Probably.) Find out the answers to these and other dubiously pressing questions in our first highly dysfunctional company streaming audio file (er, podcast, I guess) available at http://web.me.com/leetaur1/Thoughts/Podcast/Entries/2010/1/30_Progress_of_Mankind,_Superiority_Style.html.

Apps, Apps, Apps

One more app is in the AppStore (what we call "In Production" at my other job). The previously mentioned one is "They Say", the knowledge of the common man. It is a fun little application.

I just gave another one to Apple, that should show up within a couple of days. It is called "Superior Dice". The idea was spawned a couple of days about when I was playing a game with my daughter. All of a sudden I needed a die, and didn't have it. I looked online, and yes, there are a number of dice apps out there. But none of them worked quite the way I wanted, so I decided to make my own. I am going to end up with several apps out there that way, I think :) Determine what I want. If it is not there, make it myself. And share it, for 99 cents of course.

So, altogether, we have in the AppStore "Tic-Tac-Awe" (free version), "Tic-Tac-Awe Pro" (better version), "They Say" (the wisdom of the common man), and now, in a couple of days, "Superior Dice", in which you can roll 2, 3, 4, 6, 8, 10, 12, 20, and 100 sided dice. And you can roll up to 10 of them. Support Superiority Studios, and buy our apps!

Now, on to the next one!
- the Lion

Scifi RPG System Continued

Continuing with my discussion from last time. I promised I would talk about the issue of rules heaviness, but as I thought about this post, I decided that was actually only 1 issue I wanted to talk about. Having discussed the flavor of the implied game setting last time, this time I want to talk about the mechanics of the system, in a very high-level way, regarding fundamental decisions rather than specific details. To my thinking, there are 3 separate issues to be considered at this level, which I divide into rules cohesion, heaviness, and balance. As I talk about these things, I'm going to be referencing other systems a lot, and sometimes taking a trip down memory lane, back to the olden days of gaming. (Well, relatively speaking -- I'm not old enough to remember the really olden days of tabletop gaming.)

Warning: This post is really, really long.

I am convinced that many game designers don't even think about the issues I just named when putting their systems together. This is less true now than it used to be, as a real science (and art) of well-formed RPG rules is finally starting to take shape, but the problem is still worth looking at, particularly because there are real consequences of avoiding these high-level decisions before you start putting rules together.

Let's start with the first tabletop RPG ever made, D&D and its successor AD&D (before TSR was bought out by WotC and the system evolved into its 3rd and 4th editions). Now, I don't mean to pick on D&D here -- the late Gary Gygax and Dave Arneson, co-creators of D&D, literally invented an entire new form and media of gaming, having a vast influence on countless other game systems, movies, books, even reaching overseas and dramatically influencing fantasy anime, JRPGs, etc. An enormous pile of awesome entertainment and just about the best playground of imagination ever came into being as a direct result of Gygax and Arneson's efforts. I thank them for pioneering the modern form of gaming from the bottom of my heart. It is also worth mentioning that I remember having a lot of fun playing AD&D as a kid, which puts the system ahead of any number of others that fail on this crucial point.

That said, you would expect the first iteration of such a revolutionary experiment to be rough around the edges. And boy, was it ever. Earlier editions of D&D/AD&D had serious issues, and looking back, it almost feels like the game was fun in spite of itself, or perhaps it was fun because of its flavor (which was and is totally awesome) as opposed to its mechanical implementation (which was rife with problems). Which segues into my first real topic for this post -- that of rules cohesion.

It should be mentioned that my earliest gaming experiences were with AD&D (1st and 2nd edition), not with pre-Advanced versions of D&D. So it is to those versions of this venerable game that my comments apply.

So, rules cohension? Yeah, there isn't any. Not only that, a lot of the rules are needlessly weird and complicated. Let's take the example of THAC0 -- To Hit Armor Class 0. In order to determine if you hit something in AD&D, you subtract its AC (Armor Class) from your THAC0, and have to roll that number or higher on a D20 to hit it. So, if your THAC0 is 15 and your target's AC is 3, you need to roll (15 - 3) 12 or better to hit it. Really badass creatures have negative armor classes, and of course subtracting a negative results in adding, so, for instance, hitting a -7 AC creature with your 15 THAC0 requires a 22 or better to hit -- good luck with that.

Now, this particular rules mechanic isn't particularly hard unless you really suck at math; most people can figure out what they need to hit in like 1 second in their heads. But that's not the issue here. The issue is that this rather counterintuitive mechanic makes no sense considering how much simpler it would be to just have a modifier to your D20 roll and set the target's AC at what you need to roll to hit it (as in 3rd and 4th edition D&D). It also has the odd effect of making lower ACs better than higher ones, and lower THAC0s better than higher ones -- which would be OK, except these are not universal characteristics. In AD&D, it seems random and arbitrary when statistics get higher or lower as they improve, and the only way to figure it out is to memorize them on a case-by-case basis.

Let's take another example from pre-3rd edition forms of D&D: saving throws. 3rd and 4th edition use the sensible Fortitude, Reflex, and Will saves which cover just about every contingency and make sense, but something like that would have been way too sensible for AD&D:

- Paralyzation, Poison, or Death Magic

- Rod, Staff, or Wand

- Petrification or Polymorph

- Breath Weapon

- Spell

Okay, the first issue here is that this list uses the word "paralyzation" instead of "paralysis." As it turns out, paralyzation is in fact a real word, but never in my entire life have I EVER seen the word paralyzation outside a dictionary, except here. I think these guys just like using weird words.

Moving on to the real issue, this list looks downright nonsensical at first glance. Examine it for a minute and a sort of weird logic does start to reveal itself -- "paralyzation, poison, or death magic" seems to indicate a creature's ability to shake off effects that target its vitality, sort of a counterpart to a Fortitude save. "Rod, staff, or wand" clearly indicates resistance to magical implements, although we're already starting to show inconsistency since now we're categorizing our resistances based on arbitrary criteria. "Petrification or polymorph" implies a resistance to effects that transform you or change your composition, but this further exacerbates the inconsistent criteria problem. "Breath weapon" and "spell" are pretty self-explanatory, but now we have confusing overlap -- what if you're targeted by a spell that polymorphs you? Is that a spell or polymorph save? What about petrifying breath -- save vs. petrification or breath weapon? And there's nothing in here to cover effects that target your mentality, like charm or domination. These saving throws have problems.

Then there's the incredible number of tables in AD&D. Just about every rules mechanic in the game gets its own table swarming with numbers that need to be referenced when that mechanic comes up in play. Turning undead, hit dice vs. immunity, morale ratings, poison strength, structural saving throws, lots of random encounter tables, surprise modifiers, encounter reactions, and on and on. And there's no consistent underlying math or logic to these tables. It's unbelievably confusing.

Fast-forward some number of years to 4th edition D&D. Love or hate 4E, the game has this much going for it -- kickass rules cohesion. This isn't just a bunch of arbitrary mechanics thrown together, added to, and patched into oblivion, this is a cohesive system built to be self-integrated from the ground up. Except for damage, pretty much every roll in the universe is a d20 roll, which succeeds if it's equal to or higher than the target DC (Difficulty Class), which is just a way of saying "roll this number or higher to hit." Now that's easy to remember. Saving throws make sense, there aren't arbitrary tables for every bizarre situation you can imagine, and every set of circumstances that might come up in the rules is generally covered by a broad system that successfully covers a lot of ground with a minimum of fuss and complexity. Character classes pretty much all work the same way (unlike AD&D, where every character class is its own self-contained rules set, just about). Things make sense and they're easy to learn because they're consistent.

So, after all this it's tempting to say "cohesive rules = good, non-cohesive rules = bad." Well, mostly. Certainly you want your rules to be as easy to learn as you can make them, and they tend to work better together if there's common underlying logic behind them. That said, I don't think it's necessary or feasible to try to make your rules so elegant that you can apply one or two common mechanics to every situation in the universe. Some circumstances just kind of need to have their rules spelled out for them -- certain environmental hazards, for example, or effects of starvation on characters. And some situations do benefit from a specialized rules subset that takes into account unique factors; for instance, vehicular combat. Lastly, sometimes having random tables full of weird stuff is just fun. You shouldn't overdo it; having like 2 tables per page as in AD&D is going a little overboard. In particular, tables that need to be referenced in the middle of play are generally to be avoided (using them in character or adventure creation is far more acceptable). But your rules will have more character and personality if you allow them to take on a quirk or two instead of shaping them into a sterilized monstrosity.

Next up is rules heaviness. By this I mean whether a system is rules-heavy or rules-light; whether it contains rigorous formulas and detailed systems that direct play, or whether it provides the bare minimum you need to get up and running and pretty much lets the players take it from there.

This is not a trivial issue. In fact, it has a huge and dramatic effect on how your game feels in both look and experience. There isn't really a "right" or "wrong" answer here. Both approaches provide benefits that the other lacks. Some gamers strongly prefer one approach. Others (like myself) are flexible and can have fun in either a tightly constrained or a free-form environment. Nonetheless, a decision has to be made. These philosophies are mutually exclusive; it simply isn't possible to get all the benefits of both of them simultaneously. Before we make our choice, let's examine the benefits of both approaches.

The chief advantage of the rules-heavy approach is that a well-done rules-heavy system provides tactical depth that a more free-form system lacks. This doesn't necessarily refer to combat (although it often does), but can also refer to nonviolent challenges, facing environmental hazards, using skills effectively, and even social encounters. The key here is that "restrictions breed creativity." Concisely stated, if you have a lot of rules specifying in detail what you can do in a given situation, this inherently creates an environment of variable-benefit choices whereby critical evaluation becomes necessary to maximize the chances of success. This is the essence of all games with a strategic aspect, from purely abstract games like chess and Go to tactical RPGs like Disgaea, Yggdra Union, or Growlanser. It engages the players by rewarding them for thinking strategically. It becomes an exercise of skill. In short, between the roleplaying and gaming aspects of RPGs (which of course stands for roleplaying game), a rules-heavy approach favors the gaming side of the equation. For people who enjoy intellectual challenges, this kind of system can be immensely rewarding. On the other hand, all the emphasis on the available options, cost-benefit, risk-reward, et al, does tend to limit players' thinking and encourage them to stay within the limits of what the game allows. This in no way means that creativity, roleplaying, and storytelling are excluded from such a system, but it does decrease the emphasis on these things in certain situations.

Prime example of a rules-heavy system: GURPS, which seems to make a mission goal out of rigorously simulating reality as much as possible using paper and dice. (Whether this is a good approach to making a rules-heavy system or not isn't relevant to the current discussion.) AD&D would also be considered quite rules-heavy. D&D 4E is rather an interesting case because it is rather rules-light everywhere except in combat, where it suddenly becomes very rules-heavy. Although this theoretically sounds like an ideal approach, in my experience, the lopsidedness of the rules in favor of combat tends to cause 4E to devolve into a pure battle-tactics game with light RPG trappings sprinkled on top unless the DM is rigorous in fighting this natural shift (which, incidentally, is my chief complaint in what I feel to be an otherwise excellent system). An important lesson to take away from this is that something that looks good on paper doesn't always work out in reality, which is why testing and constant critical evaluation are really important.

Now let's take a look at the rules-light approach. A rules-light system emphasizes the group storytelling aspect of RPGs (roleplaying over gaming) by providing just enough rules to act as a fair means of evaluating the outcome of important actions, and pretty much letting group consensus, common sense, and of course roleplaying dictate the rest. In a rules-light system, the assumption is that you're playing the game first and foremost to participate in a story, and you don't want an 800-page tome of complicated rules getting in the way of telling that story. This tends to work best with rather advanced players who are comfortable acting in the context of the game environment without lots of rules holding their hand to tell them how things work out. With the right group of players, imagination and creativity can really take off in a freewheeling environment like this. And of course, this isn't to say that a rules-light system completely eschews rules (it wouldn't really be an RPG anymore if you went that far), or that a rules-light system provides no tactical depth at all. If the system is well-designed, there will still be room for interesting choices and meaningful evaluation of options in dramatic situations like combat. However, a rules-light system, by its very nature, cannot provide the level of depth that a good heavy system can. Sure, when a fight breaks out, the dice start rolling and HP start falling just like any other system, but at the end of the day, when a pivotal moment breaks out, you don't look to the dice to decide the fate of the characters -- the needs of the story trump all. This approach tends to be very appealing to highly creative or artistic types, and to lazy players who don't want to have to think about everything or learn a complex set of rules.

BESM (Big Eyes, Small Mouth) is an excellent example of a rules-light system. There are just 3 core stats for each character -- Body, Mind, and Soul -- which is substantially less than the majority of other systems out there. The core combat system is extremely simple and straightforward, emphasizing speed of play over tactical simulation. Outside of combat, the game mechanics have little to say about how to handle various situations except "roll an ability or skill check against a target number set by the GM to determine if you succeed," emphasizing that the GM should just use common sense and fairness to determine how to resolve various situations. Despite the simplicity, there is a plethora of character options to allow players to go into great detail trying to build the character they envision, further underscoring the system's implied emphasis on roleplaying. It's quite simple and elegantly assembled, promising a fun and fast-paced gaming environment, but in no way could BESM be considered to supply the tactical depth of heavier game systems.

Some people might object to my preceding analysis by saying that players can alter the system they're using as they see fit; for example, that even in a rules-heavy system, you might just ignore the rules a lot of the time when you feel like playing roles over slinging dice; or that in a lighter system, you might expand on the rules to provide more tactical options when appropriate. There is certainly some truth to this, but this objection overlooks an important reality: Even when you modify it to suit your needs, the system you use makes its influence felt throughout your entire play experience. Whether you roll up a character with a long list of specialized stats tailored to provide an interesting set of tactical strengths and weaknesses, or spend 10 minutes throwing together a "light" character whose sparse attributes are designed to aid roleplaying rather than defining him in terms of a tactical simulation, colors your thinking and your approach to the challenges of the game world. When the GM puts an adventure together, whether the rules provide a sparse means of fleshing out challenges or supply page after page of options for detailing environments, hazards, and foes, is most definitely going to impact how the GM creates that adventure, and how it's going to feel in play. You can alter the amount of influence these characteristics have on your game, but you can't escape it entirely.

As I mentioned previously, many gamers will have a strong preference for one approach or the other. In a person whose mental makeup is dominated by more logical and mathematical modes of thinking, a heavy system will have greater appeal. For the more artistic gamers out there, a lighter system will probably look more attractive. (You could almost say it's a left-brain vs. right-brain kind of issue.) In my case, neither side could really be called dominant -- I'm simultaneously strongly inclined to logic and artisticness, an unusual duality (unusual only in that neither side really dominates, since in most people one or the other is clearly stronger even if they enjoy both) that colors all my thinking and makes the decision of whether to go heavy or light for my own system less clear-cut.

Nevertheless, a little consideration makes the choice clear. Although I can enjoy both heavy and light systems, there is no getting around the fact that when I'm playing a game, I appreciate having meaningful, not necessarily obvious choices that increase or decrease my chances of success based on the strength of my situational evaluation. In short, I like strategy. The intellectual challenge of it is fun and engaging. I don't want my system to be missing this important (important to me, at least) aspect of gaming. The decision is made: The weight of my system will lean toward the heavy side.

(...The fact that among the few people I know who are willing to play RPGs with me now and then, almost all of them favor a lighter approach, could be construed as a bit of an obstacle, but that's life.)

That brings us to the last high-level issue of game design: balance. In one respect, this issue is very straightforward because (except for the fun of shattering broken systems) balance is good, lack thereof is bad, and there's not much else to discuss. Well, except there is, because systems can be unbalanced in a number of ways.

Anytime player effectiveness is starkly at odds with what you'd expect, or the effectiveness level is such (too high or too low) that the fun factor is impeded, a system can be said to be unbalanced. Let's go back to AD&D again. Even above and beyond its rules cohesion issues, where AD&D shows its weakness is in the fact that it has the balance of a one-legged chimpanzee with an inner ear infection. Low-level AD&D characters are so fragile as to be completely ridiculous. It is not only possible, but is in fact a common problem in AD&D where a 1st-level character dies anytime they take any damage from anything. Comparing the stats of a 1st-level mage with an alley cat, the alley cat has a pretty good chance of taking the 1st-level mage out. (No, I'm not exaggerating. The alley cat has a better THAC0, substantially better AC, comparable damage output, and twice as many HP as the mage. The mage's best hope is winning initiative, getting off a magic missile, and rolling lucky on the damage. Failing that, retreat is the most sensible option.) Aside from the fact that having your supposedly heroic character killed by a stray housecat really sucks, this virtually forces the DM to pull his punches like crazy in early adventures lest he get repeated TPKs and prevent the campaign from going anywhere. The most sensible solution is to houserule this nonsense and give 1st-level characters a HP boost, or just start characters off at about 4th level -- but this wildly unbalanced design is indicative of deeper problems.

3rd edition D&D addressed some of this problem. 1st-level characters start off at maximum HP, and there is a feat called Toughness which boosts your HP (by 3, if I remember right, which is actually kind of a pittance, yet can be invaluable at 1st level), and if you have any brains at all, you put a good stat in your Con score for the HP bonus to increase your survivability (assuming you don't roll your ability scores randomly). Putting all this together, even a 1st-level mage can get up to about 8 or 9 HP without too much trouble, but in order to do that, you have to burn off a valuable 1st-level feat and put a good score in your Con stat when you might well prefer to have it somewhere else. If you don't waste all these resources on boosting your HP, you're still looking at a mage with a miserable 4 HP, who still has an excellent chance of getting killed by a single blow from a pissed-off kobold grandma -- and it's not like 8 HP is awesome; you're still down from just one unlucky blow. In short, while 3E was an improvement, it still didn't go far enough in addressing D&D's "low-level characters are preposterously wimpy" problem.

4E finally got it right, where even a weakling 1st-level PC can easily expect to have around 20 HP, and thereafter HP increase at a respectable but not stupidly-fast rate. (In 4E, a 5th-level character usually has about twice as many HP as a 1st-level character, as opposed to 5x as many HP in AD&D or 3x as many in 3E. This seems reasonable.) In fact, the low- to mid-level HP values for PCs seem just about perfect in 4E, because they're enough that the PCs can take a few hits before going down, but not so much that they can take a ridiculous amount of punishment. (Which isn't to say that 4E is perfectly balanced across the board. Monster HP, in my experience, are too high and make fights drag out too long; and at higher levels, HP values are just plain too high all around.)

Another balance issue is when certain character options are undeniably better than others, without taking into account intelligent character construction. Let's look to AD&D again. At low levels, mages are unbelievably pathetic characters. They have no AC, no HP, no THAC0, and no decent weapon proficiencies. Their spells suck and they can only cast a handful of them per day, after which they become useless (and consequently, boring to play due to their inability to contribute meaningfully to the team). About all they have going for them are auto-hit spells like magic missile, but these don't begin to make up for their suckitude because their damage output sucks, and they can cast so few of them before running dry. To add insult to injury, mages require more XP to level up than most other character classes, so they are doomed to stay crappy for longer. Compared to a fighter, who can wear good armor, has much better HP, better THAC0, and good weapon proficiencies, being a 1st-level mage just plain blows.

As they start gaining levels, mages become more tolerable to play, and once they gain the ability to cast 3rd-level spells (and consequently, the vaunted fireball), they take the first steps toward becoming completely overpowered. Through the middle and then especially at high levels, mages become unstoppable killing machines who get insanely powerful spells like disintegrate, prismatic wall, meteor swarm, and a host of others. Other characters can't even begin to compete with the power and versatility of a mage who's managed to live long enough to outlive his suckitude. 3E mages have pretty much the same problems; the problem was finally addressed in 4E, where mages became on par with other classes at pretty much every tier of play (much to the dismay of magophiles everywhere, but others were relieved that balance had finally been restored to the Force).

So basically, mages are unbearably crappy at low-levels, and then insanely overpowered at higher levels. A knee-jerk reaction might be to argue that this evens out and becomes balanced after all, but that argument falls apart with even a cursory examination because, quite simply, mages aren't fun to play at low levels, and then it's not fun to play anything else at higher levels as long as a mage is in the party to one-up everybody else. The point of a well-balanced system is that every viable character option is fun to use at every level of play. Note, every viable character option. It's okay if a system that provides a lot of character options has some combinations that are crappy and others that are good, as long as there are multiple viable combinations of attributes, and not just one narrow set of options that makes a character definitively superior to all others, and thereby "breaks" the system. The system doesn't have to make all options equal, but it should support viable variety.

So, the takeaway from all this is what we started with: balance good, lack of bad. But there's more to the story, because as it turns out, just like there are multiple ways to be unbalanced, there are multiple ways to be well-balanced. For the purposes of my discussion, the two major approaches to a balanced system are to balance low, or balance high.

When balancing low, the designer basically tones everything down to make sure nothing is overpowered. If he fears an ability might break the game, he makes it less powerful, just to be safe. In essence, it's basically nerfing everything until there aren't any game-breaking options. It probably sounds like kind of a dull way of maintaining balance, and frankly, it is. It's better to try to balance things properly rather than timidly weakening things just to make sure you're not introducing any broken options.

At the opposite end of the spectrum is the balance-high model. This takes the opposite view and tries to make every option so good that everything breaks the game -- but if everything truly is that good then actually nothing breaks the game. Functionally, balancing high is no different from balancing low because either way, you make sure your options are in line with each other. However, the feel is drastically different. With low balance, it feels like everything sucks and can be frustrating trying to build a kickass character, while with high balance, practically every option seems exciting and you wish you could have everything because it all seems so cool. A well-done high-balance system makes the entire game more exciting. There's a price to pay for this benefit, though: If you mess up when balancing high, your system can end up being as broken as Amu's chastity belt. The goal with high balance is to break nothing by breaking everything, but if you screw up the "breaking everything" part, then you lose the canceling-out effect and the resulting imbalance can make the system practically unplayable. It takes a deft touch to balance high.

Clearly, I feel that balance-high is much better than balance-low, if you can pull it off. It's not quite that clear-cut, though. Depending on the nature of your system, going for a truly high balance isn't always possible. So the real rule of thumb is, balance high when you can, but don't ruin your system doing it. When balancing high in a given subset of rules doesn't make sense, don't try to force it.

...And that pretty much concludes my discussion of high-level game mechanics design considerations. For my next post, I'm going to break through the abstract and start getting into concrete details, like class-based versus points-based character creation, what set of dice to use for action resolution (the most common options are 1d20 or 3d6, but that doesn't mean other options aren't possible -- and, in fact, there may be good mathematical reasons for breaking the mold), and so on. Look forward to it! (Or not.)

- Satellite Observatory (James)