Game design: Player character 'personality flaws'

[Zomg]

You should also have infinite health. You could simply type /die when you decide it's appropriate.

There is a continuum.

 

[DarkSign]

Im heavily in favor of them. Of course there are balancing issues, but they can definitely be done correctly. The key is to base them on the same tangible categories that bonueses are pulled from.

eg.

Monocular Vision
Description: You only have one eye
Drawback: You have poor depth perception. All range increments are halved.

It can be done and done well. Of course you will have min-maxers, but min-maxing isnt inherently bad. Some people will put up with running slower to cause more damage or some other trade off. And who the fuck cares if they do as long as the whole system is balanced?

 

[HotSnack]

I've never been a big fan of rules for character flaws, in PnP gaming or in CPRGs.

In the case of the RoA flaws, those are character traits which really should be roleplayed, and not a score that dice are rolled against to determine if your character can do something.

It steals control away from the player if his or her PC overrides the player's decision to refuse a reward because his Greed score is 7. Or if the PC has a fear of the undead, and during every such encounter, the PC keeps running away in fright.

If you're going to use game mechanics to handle character personality aspects like these, you might as well just go the whole way and define all of character's personality traits in the game mechanics, and watch the game play itself like The Sims.

People who have posted their ideas here have made mention of moral, willpower, stress, etc as part of managing your flaws. In other words I think it's safe to say that no one here is asking for a "Uh-oh, you didn't pass the Cowardice < 4 check, you lost control of your character!" At least, not without plenty of warning before-hand.

 

[DarkSign]

I've never been a big fan of rules for character flaws, in PnP gaming or in CPRGs.

In the case of the RoA flaws, those are character traits which really should be roleplayed, and not a score that dice are rolled against to determine if your character can do something.

It steals control away from the player if his or her PC overrides the player's decision to refuse a reward because his Greed score is 7. Or if the PC has a fear of the undead, and during every such encounter, the PC keeps running away in fright.

Generally this is the whole point of an RPG being different from an action game! If we wanted to play the character and not play through the character we'd chose an FPS so we could twitch. Instead, we choose an RPG where STR isnt based on what I can really pick up in the realworld...but because the stats create a character other than ourselves.

I personally dont think that emotional motivations, if done right would take away this control. In fact, it might keep a player honest. You're right in the sense that you as the player want to experience the feeling of what the character is going through, but statistics can bring that home I feel.

 

[Section8]

Hmm, I don't really have much to add that hasn't been discussed already but I will repeat what I said in one of the previous threads. Losing control of the player character is tolerable in certain circumstances, but really isn't a good solution. A better method is to compell the player to act accordingly, by penalising them for conflicting against their character's needs and desires, and rewarding them for being attuned to them.

 

[Top Hat]

In Fahrenheit/Indigo Prophecy if your character gets too depressed he can commit suicide. I think the same thing happens in Eternal Darkness if your sanity meter runs out.

In the Call of Cthulhu p&p rpg there is a mechanic that has negatives as it increases: mythos is your knowledge of otherworldly type stuff, but as it increases your max sanity goes down.

Yes, good old Fahrenheit. I was very pleased to see that David Cage Tips Top Hat for David Cage also had the idea, and before I did. I'd been thinking about my own game for the past year, and when I discovered that quite a few of the ideas were in this I decided to play it. It was quite good, even though the graphics did not run properly on my notebook and the controls were console-awful. Although I wish he had used more than one emotion (separate anger and sadness, maybe, or sadness and paranoia). There was something a bit odd about it also, that I can't quite put my finger on at the moment.

I will have to check out Eternal Darkness and get information about Call of Chthulu.

Sorry if I made it seem like a novel idea of mine, that wasn't my intention. However, it was a novel idea to me when I made it up. Unfortunately, I tend to be in the habit of having good ideas, only to find out that someone else has already implemented the same idea without my knowledge, or I leave it and someone uses it later.

Oh, there I go rambling again. Hopefully we'll see more emotion and less "immersion".

Exit.

 

[DarkSign]

Cyberpunk 2020 had a mechanic where the more wetware you added to your body the less "human" you became...which had deleterious effects.

 

[damaged_drone]

alot of this feels biowarian to me. you pick an option at the start of the game and then it plays itself. imo a better option would be for certain game events or quest resolutions to trigger 'psychological' states ie formative experiences. a dynamic attribute system like torment but with more common 'penalties' maybe (ideally penalties would be fun such as low intelligence in arcanum)
arcanum, fallout and torment all have elements of this acually without ever really pushing through to its potential.
id be very interested to see more developed mechanisms from you guys. what would your attribute list be? how many psychological states would you implement?

 

[damaged_drone]

i also think that some of the suggestions are clearly things that should be left to the players discretion. violence or cruelty specifically come to mind. the player is roleplaying, not selecting a role to watch.
games absract things that we have no control over in real life. if im a skinny, weak guy i dont have any choice over whether or not i can bash down fucken great big doors, so games reflect that lack of choice. so implement choice accurately and i think alot of these things will pretty much sort themselves out.
cruelty-choice
pacifism-choice
piety-choice
dishonesty-choice
the gameplay mechanism for these and many others are simply the availabe means of resolution. if your character isnt crafty or charming hes probably going to be forced into conflict more readily ie hes violent. you dont need a violence stat that rolls a dice to see if he randomly kills people or you selected violent temper but havent killed anyone so we'll gimp your character as punishment.

 

[kingcomrade]

Ugh, I hate mix-maxxers. I like to keep at least some sense of self-respect when I play games. I don't take Gifted, ever, for example.

Anyone play WH40k? Ever go up against an Iron Warriors list with a demon prince, 9 obliterators, a vindicator, a basilisk, a defiler, and then only 10 actual troops in 2 squads of 5? 9 lascannons, 3 pie plates, and only like 5% of all of your points in your troop selection? That is beyond cheesy. It's especially bad, as I play Lost and the Damned which aren't good at dealing with armor...

 

[MINIGUNWIELDER]

Anyone play WH40K

I will be starting as soon as I get a chance to get to the gamestore, Is one hundred dollars enough for a good Salamanders/Grey Knights army and a small cnontingent of IG soldiers, plus paints?

 

[kingcomrade]

It's enough for a good Combat Patrol (500 point) army, maybe up to 700 or 1000 points depending on what you buy. What army do you plan on playing? I'm going to take a wild guess and say Space Marines? Anyways, I'm going to give you some advice. Any time you can substitute cheaper models (you can do this with Chaos a lot), do it. Some of the models Workshop makes are overpriced (Sentinels and Rough Riders are the two that come to my mind). I don't own any models, I long ago sold the few that I had, I play with friends and we use coins (pennies = mutants, nickels = chaos space marines, etc ). For vehicles we roughly same-sized pieces of construction paper. You obviously can't do this if you are playing in tournaments, but...

 

[MINIGUNWIELDER]

I edited my post

 

[kingcomrade]

Is one hundred dollars enough for a good Salamanders/Grey Knights army and a small cnontingent of IG soldiers, plus paints?

No. Grey Knights are very expensive models. You'd do better buying normal Space Marines and painting them as Grey Knights. For IG, Stormtroopers cost more than normal troops but you can substitute normal IG troops for stormtroopers (I don't know if they allow this in tournaments but they should, especially for an Inquisition army). Of course, the Stormtrooper models are also really cool looking.

You'll be able to afford a Combat Patrol assembly, which is about 500 points, because you don't have to have very many models for Grey Knights (they cost lots of points).

Why'd you decide to play Grey Knights? They aren't a particularly effective army.

 

[MINIGUNWIELDER]

They aren't effective?
Then why the heck did that guy suggest them?
...Salamanders are good right?

 

[Claw]

What about the possibility that having a high level in a skill or attribute has an increasing negative effect?

Really great idea. It would make character development (in the sense of stat development) much more interesting.

The previous thread was mostly about weather to take away control from the player for vices or not.

I think a better idea is a mental health/willpower bar that you can fight things for a while but if you don't recover you won't be able to take it forever. This operates like how losing all HP "takes control away from the player".

It's very simple and accessible, I like that.

In the case of the RoA flaws, those are character traits which really should be roleplayed, and not a score that dice are rolled against to determine if your character can do something.

No, they shouldn't, not in a CRPG anyway. Besides, you ever heard the expression "I couldn't help myself"? Sometimes it makes perfect sense to override player control.

It steals control away from the player if his or her PC overrides the player's decision to refuse a reward because his Greed score is 7. Or if the PC has a fear of the undead, and during every such encounter, the PC keeps running away in fright.

Maybe I should complain that my low combat skill is overriding my decision to kick ass!

 

[gluon]

the gameplay mechanism for these and many others are simply the availabe means of resolution. if your character isnt crafty or charming hes probably going to be forced into conflict more readily ie hes violent.

In other words, all characters who aren't crafty or charming must necessarily be violently natured. This is one of the problems that makes adding a psychological layer of consequences intriguing to me.

I remember reading one of this site's poster's accounts of playing Fallout with a character who had low intelligence and charisma but high endurance and strength. Despite solving conflicts the way that the character was obviously best at, the player played him as a pacifist, trying to get through as much of the game as he could without using violence. Since Fallout didn't contain a psychological consequence mechanic for characters of this depth, all the roleplaying that went on went on in the player's head--Bethesda-style.

Implementing a sytem that handled psychological consequences (both positive and negative) for the character's decisions would have enabled the game to respond more realistically to the unique character that the player was playing.

you dont need a violence stat that rolls a dice to see if he randomly kills people or you selected violent temper but havent killed anyone so we'll gimp your character as punishment.

Right. I--and most of the other folks here, I imagine--agree. If you think this is the system we've been proposing, go back and read section8's and a few other posts regarding ways to implement psychological consequences in an RPG.

 

[kingcomrade]

They aren't effective?

They aren't good to take by themselves. They are very expensive, they are close-combat troops, and they have practically no way to get to the enemy fast. If you play Grey Knights, you are going to spend the first two or three turns trudging up the board getting shot. Once you get into CC range the Knights will pwn everything in sight, of course, but they're so damn expensive (points-wise) that you can't get as many of them as you can get normal space marines (and they don't have any defensive advantages, I don't think), and you'd better have something to keep the enemy distracted while they move up the board.

Grey Knights + Stormtroopers suffers from another problem. Same problem as before, the Knights basically getting shot up as they advance, but now you have stormtroopers who are fair gunsmen, but they have practically no armor and are fairly easy to kill even by weak weapons.

The only real way to use Grey Knights that I've seen is to induct them into an Imperial Guard army. That gives IG a very great countercharge CC punch, which it normally lacks. Of course, the units are still points-heavy so you aren't going to sacrifice too much just for them.

from another forum:

Winning serious games with pure Grey Knights is a rare occurrence. It's not due to lack of skill, nor lack of experience. It's simply the downfall of the army. Even in the DH codex, it states that the Daemonhunters being played with just Grey Knights units isn't recommended as it would be a great challenge. What they meant to say was, "It's completely unbalanced and won't be competitive against all-comer type games."

You can win with Grey Knights, but it greatly depends on (1) who you're face, (2) what kind of army they're running, (3) the mission's objectives, (4) your ability to spread out points and maintain mobility in an otherwise crippled list.

So do people win? Yes. They do. However, I will guarantee you that they are winning against local opponents and that the gaming level is very uncompetitive. I say this as a great fan of Grey Knights as well. Many claim their Knights rule the house at their local shop. You will only hear this on the internet though. Go to the shops and you will not hear about some Grey Knight player who whoops everyone who challenges.

The Daemonhunters are a great army; you can win with them. But playing them in the most limited fashion possible, ie: just grey knights, is a problem that players are putting on themselves by not exploring why pure grey knights aren't taking home the trophies or even registering in competitions. Grey Knights win painting competitions. But they don't win much else. Daemonhunters on the other hand can be quite competitive and very powerful--with some Grey Knights, but not all grey knights.

Here's a good summary of Grey Knight's capabilities and units:
http://forums.tauonline.org/index.php?topic=5944.0

 

[MINIGUNWIELDER]

All right what is a good Army you would reccomend, IG or Adeptus Astartes are the only things I am interested, I will branch out to non-humies when I have the funding.

 

[kingcomrade]

Why are you only interested in the most generic and overplayed armies? Personally, my favorite is Chaos, and a subdivision of Chaos called Lost and the Damned which is kinda like Chaos Imperial Guard.

If you're set on Imperium stuff, I'd go with Space Marines over IG. IG is harder to play and requires you to buy significantly more models. There's a bunch of fun SM Chapters, but you don't have to buy anything special for most of them, you could play any set of Space Marine models as any Chapter even if they are painted as something else. The SM Codex has all the different rules for all the Chapters, I think.

 

[Atrokkus]

WEre talking about personality flaws in game design, not some WH4KKKTHX shit.. STop it! [aiiiieeee]


Bloodlines had a great start with Malkavian's insane (but very wise) ramblings. Too bad the second half of the game was too fucked up...

However, modelling nonstandard verbal behaviour is a colossal task, because there are different types of mental disorders.

There is schizophasia for instance: it's when you form grammatically-correct sentences, but at the same time, you don't make any sense. That could be modelled like "dumb" mode, and it's not particularily hard: you just have a large assortment of nonsensical sentences which are randomly injected in the dialog nodes. Definately, all the NPCs must react to you accordingly... Basically, it elminates all the possible verbal interactions -- which is quite hard to implement in a story-driven RPG, because at some point you'll have to have a meaningful dialog... but it would apply only to some very freeform RPG. Because, say, in FO the elder would never send a schizo for the water chip, unless he actually could somehow enthrall you or make it your obsession... anyways, that's kinda hard to implement.

However, Id love to see a game where if you select a certain mentality/personality flaw, you are unable to beat the game, because you just can't finish certain quests, or get them for that matter. This is a great feature.. just make sure the player still has much to do in the gameworld. The question is, will such a main quest be actually given to you, in the first place?

There is a cure for that, too, acutally. Most often than not, disorders like schizophrenia are acquired during the course of life, not on birth -- though there might be a preceding state which makes it easier for you to go nuts (like severe stress situations leading to neurotic reactions). Hence, it is absolutely appropriate to provide opportunities for the player to acquire such diseases during the gameplay. Provided that the player can select several characteristics (like prone to neurosis) at the character generation stage. Then, for instance, if the PC kills too many people for no particular reason, he might develop some kind of a syndrome.

Or if he does a quest in a maniacal manner, it might evolve into a steady behavioral pattern. How to implement an urge to kill? Similar to drug addiction in FO! Of course, it's a generalization, because it's not addiction per se, but this is a game rembmer? You can't reach realism, and you don't have to. It should work like this: you don't get an indicator of your state right when you get it.. at first, it's hidden. there should be a timer -- if you don't kill people for too long, only then you get some sort of an indicator of your maniacal state -- a realization of the urge to kill. This could be done through a one-liner "MUST KILL" or something like that, or through an interface element/indicator. If you don't follow your newly acquired instinct, penalties are in order. First, it's just stats -- health droppin, main characteristics decreasing... but if you tarry too long, your character is gettin out of your control. but ONLY after a long while, as an emergency measure.

 

[Deathy]

Because, say, in FO the elder would never send a schizo for the water chip, unless he actually could somehow enthrall you or make it your obsession...

Hmm...

I interpreted the water chip quest as an attempt to send a the player character on a wild goose chase in order to get rid of him. The Overseer thought you were a liability and the standard way of dealing with liabilities was to send them out into the wasteland to die.

I could be wrong, and it's not obvious at all, but that's how I interpreted it after many completed games.

 

[Atrokkus]

Keep in mind though that you lose the game if you don't return the waterchip in time.

I'm pretty sure the Overseer wanted you to find the damn thing and he was sure that you are loyal enough to do that. However, he had no other bonds with you, so he wouldn't really care if *you* die, he would care only if you don't deliver the chip as ordered.

 

[TheGreatGodPan]

Sorry if I made it seem like a novel idea of mine, that wasn't my intention. However, it was a novel idea to me when I made it up. Unfortunately, I tend to be in the habit of having good ideas, only to find out that someone else has already implemented the same idea without my knowledge, or I leave it and someone uses it later.

I think it's less important whether the idea has been used before you than if its been overused or seldom seen. I think more games could benefit from something like it.