Mass combat is one of the toughest things to do in RPGs. The idea of having huge armies fight each other is cool, more so in a game about giant robots. Just upscaling the regular rules for smaller skirmishes doesn't work in most games. If you have a hundred NPCs on each side, plus the PCs, the GM would basically be playing solitaire. Not the best of ideas to spend your roleplaying time. BCG has a few ways to help you with this.
On the side of the bad guys you have Squadrons to multiply mook numbers by four, and you could even make a Colossal boss that represents a huge mob of enemies. You're not supposed to be throwing Superbosses with Capstones all over the place, and a Colossus-type wouldn't represent more than a couple dozen enemies anyway, but if you want your PCs to face overwhelming numbers you have the tools to make it work. Just stick to fifty baddies per big battle instead of a hundred.
Allied NPCs are done mostly through Supports and Reinforcements, depending on whether the PCs can give them orders or not. Because of this, Reinforcements are essentially independent Support Upgrades with a few Genre Powers thrown in for good measure. They help the PCs carry the battle without taking up multiple turns to do so. They mostly have offensive buffs and enemy debuffs though, plus a few direct damage abilities, so they are completely useless at keeping the PCs alive. If Reinforcements had their own set of special abilities instead of repurposing Supports and Genre Powers, they would do a much better job of being... Well, Reinforcements.
So we'll make some of those. And while we are at it, maybe we could also give them a way to simulate NPC on NPC combat too. Nothing intricate, but at least have something in case Enemies would like to fire at them instead of the PCs and we don't have to curse those useless NPC allies for losing by default if the PCs have to retreat.
We'll keep the Reinforcement Points and Level system, but we'll touch it up a little. We'll be replacing Support Upgrades and Genre Powers with Reinforcement Powers. Reinforcements would know one Power per Level, having 3 Reinforcement Points to use them per Level. They also recover one spent Reinforcement Point back each Turn, so they can help through the course of the whole fight if they stick to the cheap ones.
Enemies can attack Reinforcements to remove some of their Points. Grunts remove PL+1, Rivals PL+2, and Bosses PL+4. If Reinforcements ever hit 0 RP, they're defeated.
What would Reinforcement Powers do? Well, they'd cover the kind of things you'd expect from friendly NPCs that those
two don't get and we can't really give them. The rest would
mimic the best Supports and Genre Powers for the purpose of
Reinforcements: Granting Aim or Suppression bonuses, dealing flat Damage and restoring Threshold.
For example, here is a thing that wouldn't work for PCs but NPCs should be able to do:
I’ll Grant you Power
Reinforcement Power (1 RP)
Effect: One Ally gains a single Genre Point.
An experimental Overcharger variant with several experimental modes of function to suit potentially any purpose.
This kind of ability is way too situational to be worth GP or MP, but as a bonus given by NPCs it is perfect. These Reinforced Reinforcements solve the current problems with allied NPCs, and they make great buffs to give ad-hoc as Plot Powerups. There's enough variety in Reinforcement Powers that you could theoretically even have a Mecha-less PC to commandeer all the allied forces. It is obviously not as deep as having your own giant robot, but now it is a possible option, and that wasn't really the case before.
Jun 29, 2014
Jun 22, 2014
The Long Road to Printing
A big chunk of game design does not actually involve designing any game parts, but rather the best way of presenting it. Some of it needs other people to step in (illustrators and editors, mostly) but there's another element that is crucial and you need to work it out: Text presentation. By that I don't mean choosing the right words to express something (that's for your editor to worry about) but rather choosing the right look for your words.
This is relevant because I spent several days fixing issues that came up when I talked with a local printer. The issue is more complex than it seems, even though I was already familiar with a lot of prerequisites, I still missed some. You don't see a lot of discussion about this aspect of game design so I figured I'd offer my experience and thoughts on the subject.
Put on a Happy Typeface
Characters (the symbols, not the fictional people) are the atoms of writing. And one of the most subtly important steps of proper presentation is to choose the right typefaces and fonts for your text. But first a clarification: A typeface is not the same thing as a font, rather, fonts are individual styles of typeface. Verdana is a Typeface, but Verdana Bold is a font. I call typefaces fonts all the time in everyday talk, but this is one of those instances where the difference matters. And now that we all have learned something of mild usefulness we can move on.
Your typefaces must fit your style. Sometimes the best way to explain something quickly is with an example, and I am going to use a controversial one: Comic Sans is actually a pretty decent typeface, it just doesn't go well with anything you want to be taken seriously. It looks super goofy and cartoony and yet people use it for their Linkin Park AMVs made with Windows Movie Maker and I have no idea what they're thinking. There are hundreds of thousands of typefaces out there for pretty much any style you can think of, you have to find one that works. Don't just use Times New Roman and Arial for everything, because you are missing out.
Your typefaces must be comfortable to read. Times New Roman and Arial work with eveything partly because they are solid typefaces and partly because we are so used to seeing them everywhere our brains already recognize the words written with them automatically. Point is: The more distinctive and unique your typeface is, the harder it is to read and the slower the text is to digest. Fancy fonts make cool headers and titles, but are terrible for reading full sentences.
Balance serif typefaces with sans serif typefaces. There is some research indicating that typefaces with the pointy ends (the serifs) to be easier to read on printed paper, while the reverse is true for sans serif typefaces and text on a screen. Honestly a lot of it is ambiguous and highly subjective so I don't particularly subscribe to the idea, but it bears keeping in mind. I personally find serif typefaces to be an overdesigned blight on my eyes, but sans serif fonts annoy a lot of other people so I try not to go overboard with them. What I get out of this is that you need to use them both. My method of choice is to use headers in sans serif and body text with small serifs.
The less typefaces, the merrier. Good design is as little design as possible, and that extends to the number of typefaces you should use. All your headers should have the same typeface, as should all your tables, and basically everything you can think of. You do this because you want readers to recognize the parts of the text that interest them the most immediately, and also because you don't want your text to read like a ransom letter. Distinctive, unique sections can have their own typefaces if you want them to stand out, but for the most part you want to have no more than three or at most four typefaces per page: Chapter Header, Paragraph Header, Body Text and Table Text.
Get the Layout of the Land
Ease of use beats fancy visuals. If you can fit a whole section of rules text in one page or can split it into two pages with some art in the middle, you should do the former. Games are meant to be played. I'm going to care a lot less about how pretty your book is when you make me flip back and forth between 10 pages just to check out the descriptions of the weapons in your huge weapons table.
Mind your Margins. Margins are not a problem as long as you are working with just .pdf files, but they become very important if you want to print things out. You don't want to accidentally have large chunks of text missing, after all. The amount varies depending on page size and publication type, which is why you ought to figure out both of those before you commit to writing anything. Hardcovers need more inner margin space, color books need a sizable gutter and bleed. There are too many variables to list, really.
Backgrounds are nice but they should be unobtrusive. People have been reading black text on white backgrounds for hours at a time since forever without any significant problems, but now there's this trend where RPGs need to have the text on a background with pretty colors and give their sidebars ornate borders and so on and so forth. Sometimes this is helpful, but the grand majority of the time it doesn't add anything and only gets in the way.
Don't be afraid of splitting text into columns. If you need to write many short text blocks with short sentences in your page, you should split it into columns because you can fit more text in one page that way. I could fit 10 weapons in one page by using two columns, or I could fit six without columns. It is a matter of practicality. Don't use them if you don't need them though, and you should not have more than two, or text will be too small to read at a glance. Newspapers get away with it because you're supposed to take your time with them.
In my case I had to change the body text typeface and make a few extra milimeters of space in each margin. This may not sound like much, but I had to basically go over every page readjusting the columns and making sure the text still fit within its borders, because the same characters have different lengths depending on their typefaces.
It got so troublesome that I decided the book interior will only be in black and white. I already have some things in color but the requisites to do something good in color would require me to cut on text or increase pagecount considerably. The positive side of this is that it'll be cheaper for everyone involved.
It basically took two weeks and the better half of a third but that hurdle has now been solved.
This is relevant because I spent several days fixing issues that came up when I talked with a local printer. The issue is more complex than it seems, even though I was already familiar with a lot of prerequisites, I still missed some. You don't see a lot of discussion about this aspect of game design so I figured I'd offer my experience and thoughts on the subject.
Put on a Happy Typeface
Characters (the symbols, not the fictional people) are the atoms of writing. And one of the most subtly important steps of proper presentation is to choose the right typefaces and fonts for your text. But first a clarification: A typeface is not the same thing as a font, rather, fonts are individual styles of typeface. Verdana is a Typeface, but Verdana Bold is a font. I call typefaces fonts all the time in everyday talk, but this is one of those instances where the difference matters. And now that we all have learned something of mild usefulness we can move on.
Your typefaces must fit your style. Sometimes the best way to explain something quickly is with an example, and I am going to use a controversial one: Comic Sans is actually a pretty decent typeface, it just doesn't go well with anything you want to be taken seriously. It looks super goofy and cartoony and yet people use it for their Linkin Park AMVs made with Windows Movie Maker and I have no idea what they're thinking. There are hundreds of thousands of typefaces out there for pretty much any style you can think of, you have to find one that works. Don't just use Times New Roman and Arial for everything, because you are missing out.
Your typefaces must be comfortable to read. Times New Roman and Arial work with eveything partly because they are solid typefaces and partly because we are so used to seeing them everywhere our brains already recognize the words written with them automatically. Point is: The more distinctive and unique your typeface is, the harder it is to read and the slower the text is to digest. Fancy fonts make cool headers and titles, but are terrible for reading full sentences.
Balance serif typefaces with sans serif typefaces. There is some research indicating that typefaces with the pointy ends (the serifs) to be easier to read on printed paper, while the reverse is true for sans serif typefaces and text on a screen. Honestly a lot of it is ambiguous and highly subjective so I don't particularly subscribe to the idea, but it bears keeping in mind. I personally find serif typefaces to be an overdesigned blight on my eyes, but sans serif fonts annoy a lot of other people so I try not to go overboard with them. What I get out of this is that you need to use them both. My method of choice is to use headers in sans serif and body text with small serifs.
The less typefaces, the merrier. Good design is as little design as possible, and that extends to the number of typefaces you should use. All your headers should have the same typeface, as should all your tables, and basically everything you can think of. You do this because you want readers to recognize the parts of the text that interest them the most immediately, and also because you don't want your text to read like a ransom letter. Distinctive, unique sections can have their own typefaces if you want them to stand out, but for the most part you want to have no more than three or at most four typefaces per page: Chapter Header, Paragraph Header, Body Text and Table Text.
Get the Layout of the Land
Ease of use beats fancy visuals. If you can fit a whole section of rules text in one page or can split it into two pages with some art in the middle, you should do the former. Games are meant to be played. I'm going to care a lot less about how pretty your book is when you make me flip back and forth between 10 pages just to check out the descriptions of the weapons in your huge weapons table.
Mind your Margins. Margins are not a problem as long as you are working with just .pdf files, but they become very important if you want to print things out. You don't want to accidentally have large chunks of text missing, after all. The amount varies depending on page size and publication type, which is why you ought to figure out both of those before you commit to writing anything. Hardcovers need more inner margin space, color books need a sizable gutter and bleed. There are too many variables to list, really.
Backgrounds are nice but they should be unobtrusive. People have been reading black text on white backgrounds for hours at a time since forever without any significant problems, but now there's this trend where RPGs need to have the text on a background with pretty colors and give their sidebars ornate borders and so on and so forth. Sometimes this is helpful, but the grand majority of the time it doesn't add anything and only gets in the way.
Don't be afraid of splitting text into columns. If you need to write many short text blocks with short sentences in your page, you should split it into columns because you can fit more text in one page that way. I could fit 10 weapons in one page by using two columns, or I could fit six without columns. It is a matter of practicality. Don't use them if you don't need them though, and you should not have more than two, or text will be too small to read at a glance. Newspapers get away with it because you're supposed to take your time with them.
In my case I had to change the body text typeface and make a few extra milimeters of space in each margin. This may not sound like much, but I had to basically go over every page readjusting the columns and making sure the text still fit within its borders, because the same characters have different lengths depending on their typefaces.
It got so troublesome that I decided the book interior will only be in black and white. I already have some things in color but the requisites to do something good in color would require me to cut on text or increase pagecount considerably. The positive side of this is that it'll be cheaper for everyone involved.
It basically took two weeks and the better half of a third but that hurdle has now been solved.
Jun 15, 2014
June 15 is Father's Day
I'm going to be out of the house for a good chunk of the day so I won't have time to write anything.
Yes, that makes it two weeks in a row without a post. What is the world coming to?
Yes, that makes it two weeks in a row without a post. What is the world coming to?
Jun 8, 2014
Spent the latter half of this week sick.
This has left me without the energy to be informative slash entertaining today.
Jun 1, 2014
Two Routes to Attributes
Today will be quick and to the point. Testing has been progressing fairly well and I now have a poll for you concerning the future of Attributes. But first, a recap of what brought us to where we are.
Once upon a time, I thought that Starting XP should be split between Attribute XP and Ability XP. You would have a considerably high number of points to assign your Attributes and a considerably lower number of points to get your Skills, Weapons etc. The logic behind it was that this way you couldn't accidentally make a character with Attributes too low or too high.
The problem was that you would often end up with leftover Attribute XP, so if you didn't want to risk forgetting that you have spare points (that don't count towards your Power Level XP and can only be spent on Attributes) later down the line, you had to do some extra math to get them sorted out. There were various templates you could use or easily modify to bypass this, but it was still somewhat annoying for Players who wanted to do everything by hand.
So I tried to think of a way to fix this without requiring drastic changes to the rest of the game, and came up with the idea of Dual Rank Advancement, which is to say that you could enhance Attributes by 2 Ranks apiece instead of 1. This way each Enhancement would cost a multiple of 5 and would completely eliminate any math complications. It had a noticeable downside in that it took away from your freedom to assign stats however you wanted to, so it wasn't quite a strict upgrade to the previous system.
Well I have been trying out another alternative, one that goes by the name of "Just free up starting XP so you can spend it on whatever you want." which I'll call Single Rank Advancement for the sake of simplicity. You still have leftover points sometimes, but having 1-4 extra XP that you can spend on anything (and the book would clearly state you can spend those points later but they don't count towards your Power Level) is much better than the original method.
Both systems have their ups and downs compared to the other, and I can't really call any of them a superior choice from where I stand.
Single Rank Advancement
It offers more freedom in Attribute distribution: This one is obvious. For some builds (like those dependent on Energy and Systems) a difference of one point can be a pretty big deal, and being able to eke out a 5 instead of having to purchase a 6 can make or break their functionality at a Power Level. It also means you can represent better specific concepts, for example a 3 in Fitness puts you at the lower end of average while a 4 is the higher end, it might not seem like much but sometimes the little details make the difference when it comes to flavor.
It is less punitive towards dump stats: This one is important for optimizers and specialists. Single Rank Advancement lets you have an Attribute at 1 or 3 to save up points for something else, which Dual Rank Advancement can't do. Both let you have an Attribute at 2, but for Dual Rank Advancement that costs 5 while it only costs 3 points with Single Rank Advancement, so this one is a pretty big strike in favor.
It lets us have more diverse Energy costs: It should go without saying that having a bunch of Upgrades and Weapons that cost 5 Energy to use when you can have 4 or 6 Energy but not 5 is kind of irritating. With Single Rank Advancement we can have stuff that costs 1, 2, 3, 4 and 5 Energy. With Dual Rank Advancement we'd have to stick to costs of 2 and 4 (rebalancing things around that if necessary) plus the occassional ability that you can choose to activate for 1 or 2.
Dual Rank Advancement:
It makes creating NPCs faster: When I first gave this a try by creating a whole lot of NPCs it took me half as long as it usually does. That is a lot of time saved that can be better spent elsewhere. The extra simplicity is especially relevant for high Power Level Bosses, because you can take their Attributes over 10 for just 30 points and that essentially covers a whole Power Level apiece. When advancing a Rank above 10 costs 11, 12, and 13 the math gets more complicated and bothersome to work with.
It eliminates leftover points: To go with the simplification and ease of creating characters, you have the benefit of never having to worry about whether you'll end up with one or two (or three or four) points you can't do anything with. Letting Players spend those points later is a workable alternative, but it still feels slightly bad when it happens and you have to remember that those points don't count towards your Power Level.
It lets us round up halved numbers: The entire reason that BCG rounds down numbers with fractions is because of all the stat halving in the game. Rounding up would skew the math in favor of odd-numbered stats which are cheaper and just as good when halved. If Attributes are even numbers by default we won't run into this problem though because they will almost never give us fractions (well a 6 getting halved into a 3 and then into a 2 would, but it is far less of a problem there) and once we can start rounding up again the game will speed up slightly. Not in a particularly significant way, but it will be a factor. And besides, rounding up feels better than rounding down doesn't it?
Choose your own Attributeventure
So there you have it. Both tested decently in different ways and I'm honestly not sure if I genuinely prefer one over the other. Both systems uphold different values that are very important to the game, so I don't have a favorite, though I think I know which one will be more liked in general. Like always, but now more than ever, I'd love to hear your opinions on this.
Once upon a time, I thought that Starting XP should be split between Attribute XP and Ability XP. You would have a considerably high number of points to assign your Attributes and a considerably lower number of points to get your Skills, Weapons etc. The logic behind it was that this way you couldn't accidentally make a character with Attributes too low or too high.
The problem was that you would often end up with leftover Attribute XP, so if you didn't want to risk forgetting that you have spare points (that don't count towards your Power Level XP and can only be spent on Attributes) later down the line, you had to do some extra math to get them sorted out. There were various templates you could use or easily modify to bypass this, but it was still somewhat annoying for Players who wanted to do everything by hand.
So I tried to think of a way to fix this without requiring drastic changes to the rest of the game, and came up with the idea of Dual Rank Advancement, which is to say that you could enhance Attributes by 2 Ranks apiece instead of 1. This way each Enhancement would cost a multiple of 5 and would completely eliminate any math complications. It had a noticeable downside in that it took away from your freedom to assign stats however you wanted to, so it wasn't quite a strict upgrade to the previous system.
Well I have been trying out another alternative, one that goes by the name of "Just free up starting XP so you can spend it on whatever you want." which I'll call Single Rank Advancement for the sake of simplicity. You still have leftover points sometimes, but having 1-4 extra XP that you can spend on anything (and the book would clearly state you can spend those points later but they don't count towards your Power Level) is much better than the original method.
Both systems have their ups and downs compared to the other, and I can't really call any of them a superior choice from where I stand.
 |
| Some say this thing is overdesigned and others say it is perfect for a fully decked out suit. This may or may not be relevant to our poll between more options and simplicity. |
Single Rank Advancement
It offers more freedom in Attribute distribution: This one is obvious. For some builds (like those dependent on Energy and Systems) a difference of one point can be a pretty big deal, and being able to eke out a 5 instead of having to purchase a 6 can make or break their functionality at a Power Level. It also means you can represent better specific concepts, for example a 3 in Fitness puts you at the lower end of average while a 4 is the higher end, it might not seem like much but sometimes the little details make the difference when it comes to flavor.
It is less punitive towards dump stats: This one is important for optimizers and specialists. Single Rank Advancement lets you have an Attribute at 1 or 3 to save up points for something else, which Dual Rank Advancement can't do. Both let you have an Attribute at 2, but for Dual Rank Advancement that costs 5 while it only costs 3 points with Single Rank Advancement, so this one is a pretty big strike in favor.
It lets us have more diverse Energy costs: It should go without saying that having a bunch of Upgrades and Weapons that cost 5 Energy to use when you can have 4 or 6 Energy but not 5 is kind of irritating. With Single Rank Advancement we can have stuff that costs 1, 2, 3, 4 and 5 Energy. With Dual Rank Advancement we'd have to stick to costs of 2 and 4 (rebalancing things around that if necessary) plus the occassional ability that you can choose to activate for 1 or 2.
 |
| One point can be what separates the prototype and mass production versions. |
Dual Rank Advancement:
It makes creating NPCs faster: When I first gave this a try by creating a whole lot of NPCs it took me half as long as it usually does. That is a lot of time saved that can be better spent elsewhere. The extra simplicity is especially relevant for high Power Level Bosses, because you can take their Attributes over 10 for just 30 points and that essentially covers a whole Power Level apiece. When advancing a Rank above 10 costs 11, 12, and 13 the math gets more complicated and bothersome to work with.
It eliminates leftover points: To go with the simplification and ease of creating characters, you have the benefit of never having to worry about whether you'll end up with one or two (or three or four) points you can't do anything with. Letting Players spend those points later is a workable alternative, but it still feels slightly bad when it happens and you have to remember that those points don't count towards your Power Level.
It lets us round up halved numbers: The entire reason that BCG rounds down numbers with fractions is because of all the stat halving in the game. Rounding up would skew the math in favor of odd-numbered stats which are cheaper and just as good when halved. If Attributes are even numbers by default we won't run into this problem though because they will almost never give us fractions (well a 6 getting halved into a 3 and then into a 2 would, but it is far less of a problem there) and once we can start rounding up again the game will speed up slightly. Not in a particularly significant way, but it will be a factor. And besides, rounding up feels better than rounding down doesn't it?
 |
| Statting this guy goes from "only technically possible" to "actually quite easy". |
Choose your own Attributeventure
So there you have it. Both tested decently in different ways and I'm honestly not sure if I genuinely prefer one over the other. Both systems uphold different values that are very important to the game, so I don't have a favorite, though I think I know which one will be more liked in general. Like always, but now more than ever, I'd love to hear your opinions on this.
May 25, 2014
The Collateral that Kaiju Do
So I just watched Godzilla (2014), and I liked it. I didn't love it, but what was good about it mattered more to me than what was bad. That's my review, thanks for reading.
Because I am me, I could not stop thinking about Kaijus and the things that make them so cool but applied to Roleplaying. My favorite thing is that they are huge and unstoppable, they level cities just by walking around and kill anyone caught in the crossfire. Godzilla tradition is that the only thing that can beat a giant monster is another giant monster. Sometimes one of those monsters is "good", other times it is a giant robot, but even man-made machines created to stop Kaijus will leave devastating collateral damage in their wake.
To quote another movie about giant monsters: To fight monsters we created monsters of our own.
Mecha fiction often treats giant robots as a metaphor for nuclear power, this unstoppable force that can do great good and great harm. Kaiju, by the way, represent natural disasters and sometimes the wrath of nature itself. Consider that Japan is not just the country of Hiroshima but also from where we got the word Tsunami and our silly giant robot entertainment feels a lot more culturally meaningful.
Great Power and Great Responsibility
One of my favorite things about giant robots in roleplaying is just how much power they put in the hands of the PCs. There are few ways to make someone feel like their PC is important and matters than giving them a walking weapon of mass destruction. The Mecha that are more down to earth diminish this considerably, but even Gundam touches on the issue a few times: If a beam weapon hits the reactor of a Mobile Suit, the Minovsky reaction causes an explosion devastating to the environment and other MS nearby. This forces Gundam pilots to engage in close quarters combat and defeat the other without hitting them there.
In summary, giant robots are (and pardon the pun) a big deal. Getting that point across when you are running a game makes everything feel more powerful, it makes your victories more visceral and your failures more crushing. It is a matter of establishing the tone and gently pushing your Players to convey the mood, then reinforcing it with rules.
I've been writing rules for essentially two years, and it has been a long while since I wrote any actual campaign material. Contrary to most other people writing RPGs, I find fluff to be harder and less fun than crunch, but it is still a thing that I like to do and I kind of miss it. The good thing is that I am getting closer to the point where I can begin exploring other facets of Mecha as a whole, facets that might not be suited to the core universal system because most games wouldn't want to touch them.
I am talking about collateral damage, or the effects that Mecha have on the battlefield. Shows like Daiguard, Big O and Evangelion put a lot of weight behind the robots themselves, destroying the city wherever they go. If you want to explore that kind of thing, it would be cool to have some advice and rules for it, wouldn't it?
How Would it Work?
I don't quite know yet, but I've got a few goals I know I want to prioritize.
Collateral should be a long term deal. If you have to protect a city from monsters or other robots, then damage done to that city should be a lasting feature. Let's say your city can take up to 10 points of Collateral before it becomes uninhabitable If your city takes 3 points of Collateral during one terrible and devastating Operation, it should heal maybe one per Episode or one per Arc, but not more than that.
The rules should be easy to work with. I don't want to have a dozen new Terrain types to differ Urban, Industrial and Rural Zones with their own rules concerning what happens if you, say, use a Blast Weapon there. It is not about tracking how many cows are dead or which houses got crushed. It should be something simple, but I admit that is probably going to be the toughest part.
It should feel somewhat random. You should not ever feel 'safe' just allowing Collateral damage to happen thinking that you can keep it under control. Maybe you think having the school crushed is fine because it is a sunday, but what if there were kids trapped inside and you never knew? This is one of the few instances in which I would advocate the use of rolling on a table to get random results to check if those points of Collateral were worse than expected.
The consequences should be felt primarily during Intermissions. Related to the above, an unexpected consequence would be along the lines of "One friendly NPC is first missing and only found after several days of searching injured or dead." or "The Police department is destroyed leading to several days of riots and looting." It should not cut the ability to repair PC Mecha, put a PC in jail, or cause something that forces someone to sit out of the game. At least not by the rules as written. If the group thinks that should happen, then that's a different matter.
There is a lot of virgin ground left unexplored and it is going to be fun once I can start tapping all that untapped potential. For now though, I've got to focus on Battle Century G core and I should have some news on that front soon!
Because I am me, I could not stop thinking about Kaijus and the things that make them so cool but applied to Roleplaying. My favorite thing is that they are huge and unstoppable, they level cities just by walking around and kill anyone caught in the crossfire. Godzilla tradition is that the only thing that can beat a giant monster is another giant monster. Sometimes one of those monsters is "good", other times it is a giant robot, but even man-made machines created to stop Kaijus will leave devastating collateral damage in their wake.
To quote another movie about giant monsters: To fight monsters we created monsters of our own.
Mecha fiction often treats giant robots as a metaphor for nuclear power, this unstoppable force that can do great good and great harm. Kaiju, by the way, represent natural disasters and sometimes the wrath of nature itself. Consider that Japan is not just the country of Hiroshima but also from where we got the word Tsunami and our silly giant robot entertainment feels a lot more culturally meaningful.
 |
| The power to be a God or a Devil. |
One of my favorite things about giant robots in roleplaying is just how much power they put in the hands of the PCs. There are few ways to make someone feel like their PC is important and matters than giving them a walking weapon of mass destruction. The Mecha that are more down to earth diminish this considerably, but even Gundam touches on the issue a few times: If a beam weapon hits the reactor of a Mobile Suit, the Minovsky reaction causes an explosion devastating to the environment and other MS nearby. This forces Gundam pilots to engage in close quarters combat and defeat the other without hitting them there.
In summary, giant robots are (and pardon the pun) a big deal. Getting that point across when you are running a game makes everything feel more powerful, it makes your victories more visceral and your failures more crushing. It is a matter of establishing the tone and gently pushing your Players to convey the mood, then reinforcing it with rules.
I've been writing rules for essentially two years, and it has been a long while since I wrote any actual campaign material. Contrary to most other people writing RPGs, I find fluff to be harder and less fun than crunch, but it is still a thing that I like to do and I kind of miss it. The good thing is that I am getting closer to the point where I can begin exploring other facets of Mecha as a whole, facets that might not be suited to the core universal system because most games wouldn't want to touch them.
I am talking about collateral damage, or the effects that Mecha have on the battlefield. Shows like Daiguard, Big O and Evangelion put a lot of weight behind the robots themselves, destroying the city wherever they go. If you want to explore that kind of thing, it would be cool to have some advice and rules for it, wouldn't it?
 |
| Why do you look so satisfied with the city in goddamn ruins? |
I don't quite know yet, but I've got a few goals I know I want to prioritize.
Collateral should be a long term deal. If you have to protect a city from monsters or other robots, then damage done to that city should be a lasting feature. Let's say your city can take up to 10 points of Collateral before it becomes uninhabitable If your city takes 3 points of Collateral during one terrible and devastating Operation, it should heal maybe one per Episode or one per Arc, but not more than that.
The rules should be easy to work with. I don't want to have a dozen new Terrain types to differ Urban, Industrial and Rural Zones with their own rules concerning what happens if you, say, use a Blast Weapon there. It is not about tracking how many cows are dead or which houses got crushed. It should be something simple, but I admit that is probably going to be the toughest part.
It should feel somewhat random. You should not ever feel 'safe' just allowing Collateral damage to happen thinking that you can keep it under control. Maybe you think having the school crushed is fine because it is a sunday, but what if there were kids trapped inside and you never knew? This is one of the few instances in which I would advocate the use of rolling on a table to get random results to check if those points of Collateral were worse than expected.
The consequences should be felt primarily during Intermissions. Related to the above, an unexpected consequence would be along the lines of "One friendly NPC is first missing and only found after several days of searching injured or dead." or "The Police department is destroyed leading to several days of riots and looting." It should not cut the ability to repair PC Mecha, put a PC in jail, or cause something that forces someone to sit out of the game. At least not by the rules as written. If the group thinks that should happen, then that's a different matter.
There is a lot of virgin ground left unexplored and it is going to be fun once I can start tapping all that untapped potential. For now though, I've got to focus on Battle Century G core and I should have some news on that front soon!
May 18, 2014
Complex Business
Game design is about communication and like with any other thing where two (or more) people interact with each other, there is room for misunderstandings. To communicate in a way that is clear a game needs to be elegant, simple and concise. The more clutter your game has, the more likely it is that people will not understand the rules, be confused about what is going on in the middle of a game, or think they understand it all when they actually don't. Designing a game is a quest and Complexity is the dragon you must defeat to complete it.
But here is the thing: Complexity is also fun. If I wanted a game that did away with its complexity I'd be playing tic tac toe or rock paper scissors instead of doing this. You don't have to kill the dragon, just make it your ally - then you have a kickass dragon on top of whatever it was you were questing for. The point is that you don't have to get rid of complexity, you just have to know how to use it effectively.
As far as RPGs go, complexity works on three levels that I can identify. Some games stick to only one level, but most use all three. Today I'll go into those a little and how BCG uses them, while elaborating on what makes them good when done right or bad when done wrong.
Concept Complexity
Concept Complexity is the simplest of the three levels, and is the one we usually talk about when we say that a rule is simple or complicated. Concept Complexity is a combination of fluff, the rules of the game, and using language efficiently. More Concept Complexity makes each special character ability unique from a flavor and rules standpoint. But the more of them you have, the more complicated they have to be to keep them all unique. Having ten pages of weapons or spells distinctive from each other is the hallmark of a game with a lot of Concept Complexity.
At the core, Concept Complexity is about making the game's nuts and bolts unique. When you execute it properly, Concept Complexity makes each of the components in your character sheet stand out because each one is a different cool thing. When you execute it badly you end up with rules that are either poorly explained or carry a ton of unnecessary baggage.
For an example I'll use Combinations, one of the most difficult things I've ever had to design, more specifically Component Unit.
Component Unit
Internal Upgrade (10)
Effect: Choose one of the four External Areas belonging to the Unit you will combine with. After you have Combined, the lead Unit gains all of your External Upgrades and Weapons assigning them to the chosen Area and it may use your Might, Guard, Systems or Speed in place of theirs if it is higher. You are now a Subpilot for the lead Unit. If the chosen Area is Maimed the lead Unit does not lose you as a Subpilot nor do their Attributes return to normal.
Parts of your Mecha have been clearly designed to be linked up and shared with other giant robots. Maybe it can form the arms of even larger Mecha’s torso, or turn into a giant backpack for another Mecha.
This has quite a bit of text, so it ranks pretty high on the Concept Complexity chart. When you read it for the first time and break it down sentence by sentence the process should be something like this:
-I have to choose an Area? I wonder what that will do.
-Oooooooohhhhhhhhhhh I see I can use this to turn into the head! And this gives the other PC my Attributes. Cool.
-And I am now a Subpilot. Okay that makes sense, I'll look up what that means later.
-If the Area gets beat up I can still help. Neat.
-Oh hey the Subpilot thing is right next to this ability. How convenient! Subpilots can take Utility Actions and don't get to Move for free. That's fair.
In rules terms there is a lot going on here, but most of it is pretty intuitive if you've ever watched a show with combining Mecha. By making "Subpilots" their own thing in a sidebar we unclutter the rules text and because the rule now has a name it is harder to forget what it does. It is not all that difficult to memorize it after using it two or three times.
Could Component Unit be even simpler? Yes, but not without losing some of its flavor or utility value. Tilt the Concept Complexity too much towards fluff and you get a hundred guns with their own range, clip size, weight, loudness and other things that are supposedly relevant but often aren't. Tilt it too far towards rules and you get gimmicky things that are different for the sake of being different and don't really resonate conceptually. Cut corners when editing and you end up with something that is confusing and needs to be read like three times over.
Most RPGs have a lot of Concept Complexity, the exception being the most freeformish or storygamey of the bunch. The problem is usually not in having Concept Complexity at all, but in not managing it well. Sometimes less is more.
Play Complexity
Play Complexity is the most extreme of the trio, because games tend to either revel in either having all they can get or avoiding it as much as humanly possible. Play Complexity emerges from the choices available to a given player in the middle of the game, depending on what else is going on at the time. In BCG you have to keep track of things like Terrain or Tension that make some of your Upgrades and Weapons more or less useful depending on context, so it has a decent amount of Play Complexity. But you don't have to keep track of visual ranges, acceleration speeds or fuel usage so it is not all that complicated when you compare it to other similar games.
The flip side of the coin is that games with too little Play Complexity limit your options to shooting your guns at the bad things until they stop moving. Some PC abilities use existing rules to create Play Complexity, like Techniques do with Tension. Others create new spaces of Play Complexity, like Restorations, which have their own little rules system somewhat independent from the rest of the game.
Play Complexity also exists in the form of abilities that react to triggers, like how Active Defenses can be used in response to an attack or Invincible Alloy keeps you alive with 1 Threshold when you would have normally been destroyed. Every single one of those is another thing to keep track of in the middle of the game. Failing to remember a key modifier at the right time can lead you to lose when you ought to have won and that is pretty frustrating.
When you pull it off, Play Complexity makes for dynamic and intense game sessions. When you mess up the execution, Play Complexity makes for fiddly and wonky mechanics that get more in the way than they help you have fun. Play Complexity can be tricky because the rules can be simple individually but complicated when you get them all together. A single Enemy with Commander Type is one NPC with essentially two Actions you have to take into account, and each new Support makes said accounting more difficult.
Build Complexity
Build Complexity is about the choices you have when creating a character or powering them up. In some games all you have to do is choose whether to be the fighty one, the brainy one, or the charming one and maybe pick a favorite skill or piece of equipment then you're done. BCG has quite a bit of Build Complexity, but since the entire point is that you're supposed to make a pilot and giant robot to taste, that issue is more of a feature than it is a bug.
Customizing your PC to your liking can be a fun minigame in itself in a good game, and that is what BCG aims for. Not just that, but your choices of Skills and Upgrades tell the GM more about the kind of game you'd like to play. If all your sheet says is "Elf Wizard" then you're probably interested in learning more arcane secrets. But if you chose Stealth, Survival, Animal Person and Danger Instinct for your PC you are telling the GM that you expect to see action outdoors and that you can work well on your own if you have to do it, and they can use that information to plan something suited to your character.
Build Complexity also has an element of long-term strategy to it - if you figure out ahead of time how you want to make your character grow and work towards that plan, you'll have a stronger character. It rewards optimization and number crunching a fair bit more than spontaneous decision making, but this is basically true of any game that puts the Player in control of character advancement. What there are things I can do to mitigate it: We have templates to help you with choosing your initial sets of Attributes + Cool Stuff, Mid-Scene Upgrade can make up for weaknesses in your loadout and the book outright encourages rebuilding or switching Mecha if they aren't working out for you.
Build Complexity adds a lot of replay value to the game because you can have similar characters that play out in different ways. You just have to be careful not to turn the process of character creation or advancement into homework by having way more options than you could need. BCG minimizes the amount of options by condensing similar ones together like how the Temperature Miracle does both heat and cold (with the option to specialize in, say, fireballs and do nothing else if that's your thing) or Terrain Specialist works for ground, aquatic, or 0g environments but makes you choose one.
That Wasn't so Complex
Complexity is a double-edged sword, and knowing how to use it will open up new venues of play that other games lack. You can minimize complexity if you don't want to deal with it though, and that works if you don't mind having less options. Battle Century G is all about op
tions, but keeps complexity at arm's reach rather than fully embracing it. Part of why I like complexity as a designer is that it makes my job easier - it is easier to describe a flamethrower's rules in a hundred words than ten - but as a GM and Player I also want to have a game that can be played with minimal trips to the rulebook to look up stuff you don't remember.
It is difficult, but that's what makes it so satisfying when it works.
But here is the thing: Complexity is also fun. If I wanted a game that did away with its complexity I'd be playing tic tac toe or rock paper scissors instead of doing this. You don't have to kill the dragon, just make it your ally - then you have a kickass dragon on top of whatever it was you were questing for. The point is that you don't have to get rid of complexity, you just have to know how to use it effectively.
As far as RPGs go, complexity works on three levels that I can identify. Some games stick to only one level, but most use all three. Today I'll go into those a little and how BCG uses them, while elaborating on what makes them good when done right or bad when done wrong.
 |
| Just remember some people will get it wrong no matter what you do. |
Concept Complexity
Concept Complexity is the simplest of the three levels, and is the one we usually talk about when we say that a rule is simple or complicated. Concept Complexity is a combination of fluff, the rules of the game, and using language efficiently. More Concept Complexity makes each special character ability unique from a flavor and rules standpoint. But the more of them you have, the more complicated they have to be to keep them all unique. Having ten pages of weapons or spells distinctive from each other is the hallmark of a game with a lot of Concept Complexity.
At the core, Concept Complexity is about making the game's nuts and bolts unique. When you execute it properly, Concept Complexity makes each of the components in your character sheet stand out because each one is a different cool thing. When you execute it badly you end up with rules that are either poorly explained or carry a ton of unnecessary baggage.
For an example I'll use Combinations, one of the most difficult things I've ever had to design, more specifically Component Unit.
Component Unit
Internal Upgrade (10)
Effect: Choose one of the four External Areas belonging to the Unit you will combine with. After you have Combined, the lead Unit gains all of your External Upgrades and Weapons assigning them to the chosen Area and it may use your Might, Guard, Systems or Speed in place of theirs if it is higher. You are now a Subpilot for the lead Unit. If the chosen Area is Maimed the lead Unit does not lose you as a Subpilot nor do their Attributes return to normal.
Parts of your Mecha have been clearly designed to be linked up and shared with other giant robots. Maybe it can form the arms of even larger Mecha’s torso, or turn into a giant backpack for another Mecha.
This has quite a bit of text, so it ranks pretty high on the Concept Complexity chart. When you read it for the first time and break it down sentence by sentence the process should be something like this:
-I have to choose an Area? I wonder what that will do.
-Oooooooohhhhhhhhhhh I see I can use this to turn into the head! And this gives the other PC my Attributes. Cool.
-And I am now a Subpilot. Okay that makes sense, I'll look up what that means later.
-If the Area gets beat up I can still help. Neat.
-Oh hey the Subpilot thing is right next to this ability. How convenient! Subpilots can take Utility Actions and don't get to Move for free. That's fair.
 |
| Not included: Explaining how combining is supposed to work. |
In rules terms there is a lot going on here, but most of it is pretty intuitive if you've ever watched a show with combining Mecha. By making "Subpilots" their own thing in a sidebar we unclutter the rules text and because the rule now has a name it is harder to forget what it does. It is not all that difficult to memorize it after using it two or three times.
Could Component Unit be even simpler? Yes, but not without losing some of its flavor or utility value. Tilt the Concept Complexity too much towards fluff and you get a hundred guns with their own range, clip size, weight, loudness and other things that are supposedly relevant but often aren't. Tilt it too far towards rules and you get gimmicky things that are different for the sake of being different and don't really resonate conceptually. Cut corners when editing and you end up with something that is confusing and needs to be read like three times over.
Most RPGs have a lot of Concept Complexity, the exception being the most freeformish or storygamey of the bunch. The problem is usually not in having Concept Complexity at all, but in not managing it well. Sometimes less is more.
Play Complexity
Play Complexity is the most extreme of the trio, because games tend to either revel in either having all they can get or avoiding it as much as humanly possible. Play Complexity emerges from the choices available to a given player in the middle of the game, depending on what else is going on at the time. In BCG you have to keep track of things like Terrain or Tension that make some of your Upgrades and Weapons more or less useful depending on context, so it has a decent amount of Play Complexity. But you don't have to keep track of visual ranges, acceleration speeds or fuel usage so it is not all that complicated when you compare it to other similar games.
The flip side of the coin is that games with too little Play Complexity limit your options to shooting your guns at the bad things until they stop moving. Some PC abilities use existing rules to create Play Complexity, like Techniques do with Tension. Others create new spaces of Play Complexity, like Restorations, which have their own little rules system somewhat independent from the rest of the game.
Play Complexity also exists in the form of abilities that react to triggers, like how Active Defenses can be used in response to an attack or Invincible Alloy keeps you alive with 1 Threshold when you would have normally been destroyed. Every single one of those is another thing to keep track of in the middle of the game. Failing to remember a key modifier at the right time can lead you to lose when you ought to have won and that is pretty frustrating.
 |
| Basically don't be the guy on the left but be the one on the right. |
When you pull it off, Play Complexity makes for dynamic and intense game sessions. When you mess up the execution, Play Complexity makes for fiddly and wonky mechanics that get more in the way than they help you have fun. Play Complexity can be tricky because the rules can be simple individually but complicated when you get them all together. A single Enemy with Commander Type is one NPC with essentially two Actions you have to take into account, and each new Support makes said accounting more difficult.
Build Complexity
Build Complexity is about the choices you have when creating a character or powering them up. In some games all you have to do is choose whether to be the fighty one, the brainy one, or the charming one and maybe pick a favorite skill or piece of equipment then you're done. BCG has quite a bit of Build Complexity, but since the entire point is that you're supposed to make a pilot and giant robot to taste, that issue is more of a feature than it is a bug.
Customizing your PC to your liking can be a fun minigame in itself in a good game, and that is what BCG aims for. Not just that, but your choices of Skills and Upgrades tell the GM more about the kind of game you'd like to play. If all your sheet says is "Elf Wizard" then you're probably interested in learning more arcane secrets. But if you chose Stealth, Survival, Animal Person and Danger Instinct for your PC you are telling the GM that you expect to see action outdoors and that you can work well on your own if you have to do it, and they can use that information to plan something suited to your character.
Build Complexity also has an element of long-term strategy to it - if you figure out ahead of time how you want to make your character grow and work towards that plan, you'll have a stronger character. It rewards optimization and number crunching a fair bit more than spontaneous decision making, but this is basically true of any game that puts the Player in control of character advancement. What there are things I can do to mitigate it: We have templates to help you with choosing your initial sets of Attributes + Cool Stuff, Mid-Scene Upgrade can make up for weaknesses in your loadout and the book outright encourages rebuilding or switching Mecha if they aren't working out for you.
Build Complexity adds a lot of replay value to the game because you can have similar characters that play out in different ways. You just have to be careful not to turn the process of character creation or advancement into homework by having way more options than you could need. BCG minimizes the amount of options by condensing similar ones together like how the Temperature Miracle does both heat and cold (with the option to specialize in, say, fireballs and do nothing else if that's your thing) or Terrain Specialist works for ground, aquatic, or 0g environments but makes you choose one.
 |
| Having too many options makes it harder to find what you want. |
That Wasn't so Complex
Complexity is a double-edged sword, and knowing how to use it will open up new venues of play that other games lack. You can minimize complexity if you don't want to deal with it though, and that works if you don't mind having less options. Battle Century G is all about op
tions, but keeps complexity at arm's reach rather than fully embracing it. Part of why I like complexity as a designer is that it makes my job easier - it is easier to describe a flamethrower's rules in a hundred words than ten - but as a GM and Player I also want to have a game that can be played with minimal trips to the rulebook to look up stuff you don't remember.
It is difficult, but that's what makes it so satisfying when it works.
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