How do you make a CRPG that rewards roleplayers?

How do you make a roleplaying system that appeals to and rewards roleplayers more than it suits the munchkin and powergamer types?

My idea is that you need to impose limits on the game itself that prevent or outright deny obsessive levelling. Fallout did it with a time limit, the DnD systems try to do it with expotential increases on the experience required to level, Vampire: The Masquerade does it by awarding points based on roleplaying outcomes rather than killing things.
Personally, I favor the imposition of a time-limit; lifespan or quest-duration. What do you think?

Mulciber said:

How do you make a roleplaying system that appeals to and rewards roleplayers more than it suits the munchkin and powergamer types?

My idea is that you need to impose limits on the game itself that prevent or outright deny obsessive levelling. Fallout did it with a time limit, the DnD systems try to do it with expotential increases on the experience required to level, Vampire: The Masquerade does it by awarding points based on roleplaying outcomes rather than killing things.
Personally, I favor the imposition of a time-limit; lifespan or quest-duration. What do you think?

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Daggerfall did all of those things quite well too. I never had two characters even remotely alike at the end of DF. Morrowind started the downward spiral towards Munchkin Land with it's 5x multipliers, trainers and stuff.

You really had to work your ass off in DF just to stay alive, especially if you were a thief. Diseases were a deadly serious matter. Quests were expected to be completed within a certain amount of time. DF was a pretty damned good RPG as CRPG's go, Morrowind can't touch it.

Mulciber said:

How do you make a roleplaying system that appeals to and rewards roleplayers more than it suits the munchkin and powergamer types?

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Simple. You remove powergaming elements (i.e. your character can't become god-like, your skills are more important than your loot, etc) and you focus on role-playing elements (multiple solutions based on skills, distinctive builds - not different varieties of front line fighters, but different character types - DF's thief with Climbing, Sneaking, Backstab, Streetwise is a good example)

Edit: A good CRPG aint a puzzle or some lost knowledge. The concept is simple, that's why we've had so many great RPGs with superior mechanics in the past. Unfortunately, the appeal is limited, development is complex, and revenues are less than those from shooters and strategy games. That's why Fable is being praised for making RPGs more accessible for casual players, and ToEE was cursed for being so "rocket scientists only" complicated. That doesn't imply that ToEE was a great RPG - it was a great dungeon crawler though, but the rules and combat mechanics definitely didn't require a PhD.

One of the nice things about Fallout was no matter how combat oriented your character was, one critical hit could kill him or her. Combat remained challenging in that way, providing a pretty big incentive to avoid it. Plus, paths like speech and bartering could prove very useful.

But in many ways, roleplaying is its own reward. That is, if by roleplaying you mean creating a character with motivations and a personality not handed down from the developer. Then its just a matter of giving lots of options for the player to refine how his character would act.

Mulciber said:

... prevent or outright deny obsessive levelling.

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Why not just prevent levelling altogether? Because of D&D?

As long as there is a save function which can be accessed at will, every PC is an immortal demigod with limited precognition. But by increasing the severity of the challenges, you create an incentive not to roleplay, but to ruleplay. Roleplaying becomes rewarding when it yields a response from the gameworld, so what you have to do is to roll up your sleeves and create a very responsive world. Choices and consequences, and cool stuff that happens when the PC does something.

I don't even see why such a game couldn't be accessible to the mainstream. Just toss out most of the numbers, let the player choose a few important traits and then let the character develop according to choices made during the game. In such a game it becomes important that all the traits are treated equally, so that no traits end up with little or no response from the gameworld. Because otherwise there is no roleplaying-reason for choosing such a trait, and a powergamer would find out which traits gets the 'best' responses and choose those. So I guess balance is also an important part. So far I haven't seen a good CRPG that has managed to balance its complicated rules system with its myriad of options, so in my eyes it's a smart thing to dumb things down to a level where the designer can create enough content for each character trait.

hmm...maybe if you are a person like me you'll like rpgs,racing,action,adventure,rpgs,mmorpgs...argghh...
well..you get the point!

I'd say the concept of a true RPing game is alien to the majority of gamers. I'd played a lot of RPGs before I grasped the idea of asking myself "What would my character do?" Prior to that it was all about ruleplaying/rollplaying and general munchkinism.

Rewarding RPing is a difficult propostion. Without an awareness and willingness to role-play, then RP decisions become little more than a means to an end. A munchkin is going to work out which decision best serves his character statistically without regard to continuity of a role.

The idea I like the most, is the concept that the whole quest is about an amnesiac discovering who they are. The conclusion is not "y4y j00 beat t3h enmy" but a nice lengthy profile of your character, and who they are according to what they've chosen to do throughout the game. Of course, it would have to be something beyond a good rogue-like postmortem screen, and it couldn't hurt to have a recap of subplots like Fallout, where you have a greatly varied ending for each major location.

So basically, rewarding RP choices needs to be done down the track. Not necessarily as the end game, but things like rescuing the BOS guy from the Hub. If nothing else, such things ween players onto a more hardk0r diet of RPing.

I'm probably somewhere in between. I pick a particular type of character I want in a game like Fallout and go for being the best damned whatever the hell that character is. For example, if I'm going to be a gambling pistoleer, I focus on that. I improve those as much as possible. I stop periodically to gamble and try to get insanely rich because I've dumped half my points in Gambling. If anyone has a problem with that, I whip out my pistol and shoot them in the eyes from across the town map thanks to carefully picking the One Hander trait and dumping lots of points in Small Arms.

Hooray for happy mediums!

I think VD has pretty much nailed it. Only other comment I'd make is once you have a design that emphasises roleplaying and keeps a lid on the powergaming elements - let 'em go for it otherwise...if the player wants to powergame, that's their business.

Any system that rewards a play style over other will simply be abused.

The moment the player realizes the dialogue tree offers greater rewards that combat he is going to invest in the dialogue tree.

That does not make him a roleplayer.

Dialogue alone also is not a indicator of roleplaying, go read Conan to see he really does not have much to say.

Athame said:

DF was a pretty damned good RPG as CRPG's go, Morrowind can't touch it.

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Yeah, Daggerfall was one hell of a game, and it was what really got me hooked on epic games, but I honestly don't know if it qualifies as being any better than Morrowind. As far as the mechanics of the system went, Daggerfall seems to be much more prone to abuse. Not surprising- It was a simplified system, and some of the options hadn't been subjected to scrutiny yet. Take the old customized god-character twink for example. A high-elf custom with complete magic immunity and complete disease suceptibility was ridiculously overpowered. There was a lot less of that in Morrowind. Where Morrowind seemed to fail was in the scaling of the modifiers in the system (your *5 stat upgrades), not in the fundamentals of the skill system.

I think that "characterizing/ behaviorizing" skills could help roleplaying as well. Sure everyone wants access to every skill, but if you give players skill choices that characterize certain behaviors this would aid roleplaying.

What do I mean?
Say you get your pistol up to 35% then you get to choose between feats: a) improved tactical grip (increased accuracy) or b) akimbo pistol skill (reduction in dual weild penalty).

What you've just done is allow players to roleplay the tactical military type or the wild cowboy with pistols blazin type. So not just what the skill is (shooting a pistol) but how you do it (anal retentive or wild).

Dhruin said:

I think VD has pretty much nailed it. Only other comment I'd make is once you have a design that emphasises roleplaying and keeps a lid on the powergaming elements - let 'em go for it otherwise...if the player wants to powergame, that's their business.

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Well, my idea is not to punish powergamers. As you say, a decision to powergame is left to the player. I meant to focus more on the idea that the game elements that powergamers focus on- stats, skills, Ãœberloot and the maximization of the same, while unavoidable in a computer game (how else can you keep track of a character?) also detract from treating the game as a role-playing experience.

Visbhume said:

One way to reward roleplayers is to put a secret easter egg in the game so that everytime they create a bard or any other wimpy dramafag character there would be a certain small probability of winning a date in real life with a chainmail-bikini-wearing supermodel. Or maybe a chainmail-bikini-wearing RealDoll.

It would be awesome if all the hours I spent alone talking in thees and thous in front of the computer were vindicated somehow.

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Two words: Faerie Ninja. Wizardry always rewarded completely wacko character designs with the ph4ttest of l3wt.

Here's an option I thought I'd raise. It works on the principle that bad people who do bad things are dismissed but when a good person does a bad thing, the penalties are much harsher. Lost of trust etc.. in someone they thought was good.

The concept is you track a persons actions throughout the game. Every good action they do adds to their "they're a good guy" score. Every bad action they do adds to their "bad guy" score. Then, when someone breaks their character mould, you punish them.

For example, say you're a good guy so you:

• Rescue Timmy from the Well. ++
• Find the lost Dog. ++
• Help out about the Farm. ++
• Save the Princess. ++
• ... but then you break mould by killing the entire royal family afterwards and declaring yourself King. --

You then get a massive NEGATIVE kharma hit which dumps you right back down to the "vilified" level amongst all the towns. Rather than taking a small hit and being well liked, you're treated like scum.

Alternatively,you play the bad guy so you:

• Throw Timmy down the Well. --
• Kill the lost Dog. --
• Burn down the Farm. --
• Kill the Princess. --
• Then you break mould by saving the entire royal family and swearing allegiance to the King. ++

You then get a massive POSITIIVE kharma hit which brings you right up to the "saviour" level amongst all the towns. Rather than taking a small boost and still being vilified, you're treated like royalty.

The idea is that the positive or negative boost from when they break the mould is based on what they've done. Someone who's always done good should be severely punished when they do bad and someone who's always done bad should be handsomely rewarded when they do good, because they've obviously seen the light and saved the kingdom.

There are massive problems with this though, as being a bad guy and then becoming a good guy is a bit warped to say the least. Ideally, only someone who has 'done good' all throughout the game would be rewarded with the truly good ending whereas someone who did bad all throughout the game would get the bad ending.

At the end of the day it really only boils down to pretty much what VD said anyway. All you're doing is responding to people's actions, giving them the option to do what they want and then giving them a real and tangible consequence of that action.

I can't see an evil guy killing the princess if he's smart. Maybe I've watched too many episodes of Kung Fu lately, but I'd think the evil guy would force the princess in to marriage so he gets POWER ++. Killing the princess is only if the guy is a psycho nut job or stupid. Marrying her and then locking her away while he wields the power of his new found nobility opress people, milk them of their hard earned money, and crush his enemies is much better.

Mulciber said:

How do you make a roleplaying system that appeals to and rewards roleplayers more than it suits the munchkin and powergamer types?

My idea is that you need to impose limits on the game itself that prevent or outright deny obsessive levelling. Fallout did it with a time limit, the DnD systems try to do it with expotential increases on the experience required to level, Vampire: The Masquerade does it by awarding points based on roleplaying outcomes rather than killing things.
Personally, I favor the imposition of a time-limit; lifespan or quest-duration. What do you think?

Click to expand...

*scratches head* You reward roleplayers by making roleplaying fun, not by sticking in a bunch of limits. Gamers who sit around expecting extra XP and loot for playing a gimp, staying in character, and remembering their "thees" and "thous" always just struck me as wannabe powergamers who suck too bad at math to pull it off. Roleplaying rewards just kinda strike me as powergaming for liberal arts majors.

If you want to make a game for real roleplayers, cut back on the hack and slash and throw in character options and consequences and such. Give them a chance to forget they're actually playing a game. There's just not much point in roleplaying if the end goal is always to "beat" the game by wading through the foozle's minions until you can smite him down in a stand-up combat.

DarkUnderlord said:

Here's an option I thought I'd raise. It works on the principle that bad people who do bad things are dismissed but when a good person does a bad thing, the penalties are much harsher. Lost of trust etc.. in someone they thought was good.

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I dunno, doesn't sound that great to me. I'd be more inclined to think people would expect the good guy who did a bad thing had his reasons, was framed, etc., while the bad guy who did a good thing was still looking out for his selfish interests. I mean, just look at most political discussions. When people think "their guy" is on the side of the angels, they'll forgive just about anything and come up with increasingly specious justifications for his actions. Likewise, "the other guy" is irredeemably evil, can never do anything good, and they'll seek reasons to undermine whatever good he might do by harping incessantly on minor details that paint him in a bad light and/or developing elaborate conspiracy theories to explain away any good that may come of his actions.

Walks with the Snails said:

*scratches head* You reward roleplayers by making roleplaying fun, not by sticking in a bunch of limits. Gamers who sit around expecting extra XP and loot for playing a gimp, staying in character, and remembering their "thees" and "thous" always just struck me as wannabe powergamers who suck too bad at math to pull it off. Roleplaying rewards just kinda strike me as powergaming for liberal arts majors.

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I agree with what you say, but perhaps 'reward' wasn't the word I should have used. I'm not asking what it takes to make a good roleplaying game in the sense of needing a story or a developed dialog tree. I meant to focus on the question of what is needed in the framework of a game- skill divisions, believable and constistent world rules, the amount and the way that rewards are portioned. If these factors are unbalanced, it can really hamper a game. Take Planescape: Torment as an example. It had the best story, the NPCs were well-developed, the world was wonderful, yet of the three character classes you could be, only one was really viable.

Whats needed is not just good or bad, or necessarily just more 'character' oriented dialogue(but it does help), but as Mulciber hinted at, is a game mechanic that supports a character type.

• What does it mean to be a warrior? Whats the supported gameplay?
  
  What does it mean to be a thief? Whats the supported gameplay?

These two are obvious, sure. If you're a thief but continue to fight soldiers face to face with a broadsword, regardless of skill level, you're rewarded less(rather not at all)...you're not playing a thief. A warrior slinking in shadows...no reward, and so on.

But these are too conventional...too obvious. What about:

• ... being a surly thief...
  
  ...or a bombastic fighter... <-- Saint insisted it had to be a fighter, not paladin!
  
  ...or the sorcerer with a heart of gold and strives to be immortal...
  
  ...or the royal guard that likes the ladies, and can't help but drink too much?

What are the 'gameplay conventions' that support these? For the most part it will boil down to dialogue...the real major outward expression of character...but is there more? Perhaps, when our royal guard passes a bar, he HAS to go in and have a drink. You as the player may not want to, and you dont HAVE to, but if you do, you're playing in character, and you get rewarded. NEVER punish the player of course, but encourage him if he plays to the character. The bombastic fighter should strike poses of grandeur in front of people, despite perhaps being chastised by the local priest for being a pomous ass. His dialogue choices should reflect not only base, common responses, but ones that would MOST suit his character, EVEN if it meant it got him into trouble. The surly thief, despite the danger of getting into a fight with the surrounding rogues, can't help but be a bastard and making the off comments that will surely get him into a fight. He could choose the 'safe' dialogue and be done with it, but chosing the dialogue that, again despite being dangerous IS something he would say, would gleen him a great reward; in the face of danger, he still played in character.

Some of the best PnP sessions I ever had were actually just watching a bunch of 'experienced' players actually enjoying more doing the bizarre things their characters would do, even if they themselves would not. They relished those opportunities, and the DM would encourage it by placing them in situations that would give the strongest character reaction. With good players this is very fun. With CRPG's, we just need to fill the world with enough interaction density and solid core gameplay rules that maintain consistency and support character gameplay style. These are/were the tihngs I dealt with in my game designs, to help expand past powergaming, and getting into the meat of world and npc interaction.


Cheers


ADD: I forgot to talk of the Sorcerer with the heart of gold. He's interesting as he has potential conflict, if the story is designed around it as such. He's a good person, cares greatly for those around him, but has this aching ambition to be immortal. Being immortal is one thing, but doing things against his "gold heartedness" to achieve it is something entirely different. What if he has to sacrifice people? What if he has to commit his soul to evil? Perhaps no one would do this, but what if the greater long term good outweighed the immediate bad. What if his longevity allowed him to save the people of the land of a great evil that would arrive in several hundred years? His desire to want to save his people from a thousand years of horror could allow him to do regrettable things in order to achieve the power he needs to save the land. Could be cool if the player is allowed to make these choices, and how he could bob and weave his way through to perhaps find a way to satisfy two goals so opposite of eachother in morality.

A significant part of redefining the genre by The Witcher is rewarding the player with b00bies.

I don't think a bombtastic paladin would work just because of the oath and such paladins take. Paladins by nature can't be too flawed because of their dieties, which is one huge problem I have with BioWare's handling of the class. I seriously doubt a diety would allow a nutso paladin to retain his abilities if he starts talking to rodents as if they were special nor allow a paladin to be so easily conflicted like Aribeth was.

However, imagine a bombtastic fighter who THINKS he's a paladin. He's partly delusional, brags about his abilities, and even puts the party in situations of dire consequences due to his delusion. For example, he thinks he can turn undead, so he opens the door for a bunch of ghouls and declares that the party should fear not because he will just turn them. Likewise, he can let a party member that's been wounded to slip in to unconciousness claiming they need to save the health potions and he'll just simply lay hands on the inured person.

There's a whole lot you can do with that while tip toeing around the issue of diety granted abilities. For even more fun, don't tell the players he's not an actual paladin. Leave that as a mystery to solve.

Mulciber said:

Take Planescape: Torment as an example. It had the best story, the NPCs were well-developed, the world was wonderful, yet of the three character classes you could be, only one was really viable.

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I multiclassed so I wouldn't know. I never felt as if any of the classes was significantly more important than the others though. Spells seemed rather useless, so even when I played as a wizard I usually just killed opponents with whatever weapon I had. At the end I used 20 drops of some blood or other that each gave 5% slashing resistance, but I was still a melee wizard, so I really don't see how any other class would've fared worse.

Bombastic (without the extra "t") seems like a fitting trait for paladins. Like a cape for a superhero. But maybe that's just how I like to see those holy warriors. How can they not be bombastic when they're trying to inspire everyone to be good and lawful?

Anyhow, I don't think that hindering powergaming is the same as rewarding roleplaying, just like taking money from the rich is not the same as giving money to me. So what are we supposed to discuss? Game mechanics for preventing powergaming or game mechanics to reward roleplaying? Game mechanics to enforce roleplaying?

The idea is that the positive or negative boost from when they break the mould is based on what they've done. Someone who's always done good should be severely punished when they do bad and someone who's always done bad should be handsomely rewarded when they do good, because they've obviously seen the light and saved the kingdom.

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First of all, I think the alighment or karma points is an obsolete characteristic. Alignment is a much more complex conept that can't be properly represented by some points that get added or substracted based on some preset "costs" of your deeds. I would get rid of personal karma system altogether. The roleplayer (if he does roleplay) must understand on his own what kind of character he's roleplaying, because it's basically his alter-ego, it's the extention of his own mind.
But there should be the reputation characteristic that defines the reaction of other characters on your alter-ego's actions. I liked the way Fallout dealt with that, making those independent city reputations. But most importantly, there should be a separate reaction integer of each and every NPC. That is, some people might not ever heard of you, even if you are some big-time hero, and judge you based on what you actually do unto them. Fallout, again, did great in this aspect, making player really feel the repercussions of his choices, and, oh my!, "see the anger in Marcus' eye!"
Buit, of course, there should be some global reputation integer. That's pretty hard to implement, it requires an analysis of all the town reputations, of the ratio of evil/good deeds etc etc. Some NPCs will have access to that integer, enabling them to actually recognize the hero even without personal contact, although some NPCs will be oblivious to that or just don't care about your reputation.


I think Fallout is the best CRPG in terms of actual roleplaying. It had no classes, so there was no strict limits on player's actions. Also, this game was very effective at reconciling the roleplaying and powergaming: you could actually do both at once. You could progress your character in the most effective way (gauss rifles, steal, speech, str only 6 etc etc), but that woulldn't hinder the roleplaying value. Hah, the fact that the most effective build requires speech is by itself an evidence of that RP-aspects are actually enforced. But of course speech alone is not roleplaying per se, it's only a means. Anyways, there was a certain balance between powergaming and RP in that powergamers were happy knowing that their character is uberly built, but thios uberness did not interfere with roleplaying at all.

Vault Dweller said:

A good CRPG aint a puzzle or some lost knowledge....Unfortunately, the appeal is limited, development is complex, and revenues are less than those from shooters and strategy games. That's why Fable is being praised for making RPGs more accessible for casual players, and ToEE was cursed for being so "rocket scientists only" complicated.

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So part of the problem is that it is now neccessary to make deep games 'accessible', which has come to mean the absolute antithesis of 'deep'.

Can 'true rpg' makers roll with the punches and attempt to make their game console-friendly? Or is this a lost cause or the inevitable path to darkness?

How about starting tutorial levels explicitly teaching how to roleplay?

And initial stages of the game providing more obvious non-munchkin rewards, like a bard getting better at playing a musical instrument garnering a bigger, cheering crowd when performing, or rewarding the drunk with 'cool' drunken visuals? Non-munchkin rewards could progressively get more sophisticated as the game goes on, to the sorts of things Section8 and others were talking about.

I'd dearly love to see a really deep RPG somehow smash through the charts big time because some incredibly savvy, yet integrity-diven developer managed to put in crowd-pleasing without the dumbing down.

And I maintain that Morrowind's success on the Box gives real hope. No matter how munchkinist that game may be, it has a shitload more depth and sophistication than *anything* else on a console.

Twinfalls said:

So part of the problem is that it is now neccessary to make deep games 'accessible', which has come to mean the absolute antithesis of 'deep'.

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Can you make a good deep book accessible to those who read trash? Can you make good music accessible to Britney Spears' fans? Same here, same with movies, etc.

You can't make a good RPG accessible to those who complain about reading, who couldn't find Cassius in MW, who thought that ToEE combat is for rocket scientists, who are confused by choices because they don't know what's the right one, etc. Some people are too motherfucking dumb. Sad, but true. Nothing you can do about it. What's even sadder is that those people will always represent the largest and very appealing market. Oh well...

How about starting tutorial levels explicitly teaching how to roleplay?

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http://www.rpgcodex.com/phpBB/viewtopic.php?t=9527
http://www.rpgcodex.com/phpBB/viewtopic.php?t=9653

I'd dearly love to see a really deep RPG somehow smash through the charts big time because some incredibly savvy, yet integrity-diven developer managed to put in crowd-pleasing without the dumbing down.

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No matter how successful a deep RPG might be, an action plug-n-play RPG will always sell more. Much, much more.

The only solution that I see is indie developers and digital distribution. That is the future for the genre, as we understand that word here. Look at PtD, Gearhead, GF, Avernum, EVN, M&B, Teudogar - great, interesting games featuring gameplay elements long forgotten or given up by the "professionals" who were QA people only yesterday.