Okay, I know, I need to finish up the combat model series of articles, but after reading this piece about “same engine different content maketh a new game“, I felt that I needed to elaborate on this more, but from an indie angle.

Let’s take the most notorious example here: Jeff Vogel’s games. Avernum 4-6 basically had the same graphics. Other than minor UI and layout changes, most art assets are reused from game to game:

Avernum 4

Avernum 5

Avernum 6

Well, spot any big difference? No? Didn’t stop his selling his games though. Now let’s take a look at Basilisk Games’ (funny how I remember Avernum was made by a person – Jeff Vogel while I can’t for the love of the unicorn remember who’s that dude behind Basilisk…) Eschalon series, currently on Book 2:

Eschalon Book I

Eschalon Book II

Other than slight UI changes, there’s virtually no difference. Again, art assets were reused for the next game, which featured one of the most anticipated improvement to the series: faster walking speed. Okay, jokes aside, this seems to be a trend in successful indie RPGs – same art assets, different game.

And why is it so surprising? In the era where people rise to the call to stop global warming, where plastic bag users are staked and burned in public and water usage are counted by milliliters, is that so hard to imagine indie devs recycling artwork to keep the cost down? And if it works for indie devs, why not commercial game companies too?

Creating art assets take time. I spent close to 8 hours just to do one character’s sprite for my InfestedRL, and many more to fine-tune it so that it blends well into the background. Animating a 3D model takes much more effort. If you’re going the mocap (motion-capture) route, you need to set up the equipment, schedule the actor, and then start capturing animation which alone could take a whole day per set. And then after that you need to clean up the animation, which takes time too. While there are mocap libraries for sale on the internet, they are friggin’ expensive (think $30,000 per animation set) and inaccessible for indie developers and small production studios.

PS: Friggin’ rats having a disco party on my roof…

But back to the point. The industry reuses art assets all the time, mostly in sequels. Mass Effect 2 don’t look that much different from Mass Effect 1 considering that a lot of textures, models, animations and even UI elements are recycled from the first game. There’s not much difference between Gears of War 2 and its predecessor too.

So why the big fuss? Calling a sequel a mod is just stupid considering that it is smart business sense to recycle assets to squeeze the most out of them. The thing that players should be complaining about is the move towards more fluffy cutscenes than spending those extra dollars on extra content.

Jeez, people bark up the wrong trees all the time.

While browsing through the Rampant Coyote‘s blog, I discovered this challenge: Make a game, sell 1 copy.

Ooooohhhhhh boy, this is tempting! Should I? Should I? Ah fuck it, I’ll bite! I got a quick idea floating in my mind, and I think this is the best time to realize it. So what game am I going to do?

Well, for starters, InfestedRL is still on track. It should be finished around 4-5th of October, which gives me plenty of time to work on this challenge. Alright, it’s on! Here’s the premise:

Evolution Chamber

Evolution Chamber is a game where you are in control of a bacterial culture. You can adjust the environment parameters to breed certain characteristics into a certain population of your culture (largely through natural mutations and natural selection), or you can spray them with a mutagen to accelerate (and randomize) the mutation process.

The fun thing about Evolution Chamber is that you can “join” your culture with another friend’s culture, and watch them duke it out. Turn your bacterias into acid spore spitting monsters with a hard carapace that is highly resistant against fire, and watch them slaughter your friend’s fire breathing bacterias!

This would be an interesting exercise in programming large scale decentralized AI, and a nice way to learn how to commercialize a game. I’m excited! Here’s a screen mockup of how it would look like:

Evolution Chamber mockup

Wish me luck!

This is partly an Avernum post, and partly a post on the lessons I learnt from playing the demo. First off, I must say that Jeff Vogel is somewhat of a role model to me. I enjoyed Geneforge, but not enough for me to buy it. I tried Avernum 6, and decided that the setting and story was well worth the money, but the interface leaves much to be desired.

In fact, the only thing holding me back seemed to be the extremely clunky interface.

I’ll explain. Avernum 6 is a primarily mouse-driven game, with keyboard helpers to give you quick access to various UI panels. But this is where it all falls apart, at least from my point of view. First off, item management.

Item Management

I might be mistaken, but in order to bring up the inventory screen, you either click on the bag icon on a character, or press 1-4 to select a character and then press “i” to bring up the inventory screen. All is well, until you want to close it. Pressing “i” again does nothing at all. You have to press the ESC key, or click on the close button to get rid of the screen.

Click on the bag to open the inventory panel

In my opinion, I find this counter-intuitive. I would expect the “i” key to be a toggle key in this case, and to be honest I don’t think this is a technical issue because the difference between a toggle key and an activate key are trivial to say the least.

Next, is the way items are picked up from the ground. First you have to press the “g” key, which brings up the loot menu. Thing is, the loot menu is exactly the same as the inventory panel, so I don’t understand the need for a redundant key binding. Secondly, like the inventory key, it should have been a toggle key instead.

Loot panel

Also, the looting mechanism isn’t really well laid out. Picking items from chests are done correctly, in my opinion. Click on a chest, and a window pops up with with the loot in the top right corner. It even reuses the inventory/loot panel, which is fine, but the problem crops up when trying to pick up items from the ground. You just don’t know if there are items on the ground or not – the world tiles doesn’t show. If I understand it correctly, you are supposed to pull up the inventory panel from time to time to find out what’s on the ground.

I think if Jeff managed to implement a clickable chest, why not implement clickable tiles as well when there are some loot-able items on the tile? I suspect that Jeff chose this way to reduce clutter on the screen, because as far as I understand there are a lot of loot-able items scattered around the world.

Finally, I need to whine about Equipment Management. There are 12 equipment slots on the paper doll, and the only hint you get as to which item type belongs to which slot is the tiny icon on it. There’s no tooltips, no quickhelp, not even a visual indication of which slot the item belongs to when you click on it. Below is a mockup that shows what I would have expected in the screen when I click on an item that I can equip:

Clicking on a sword would show the correct slot

I’ll stop here and reflect a little on what I learnt from this. There are many people who are turned away from indie games because of the sub-par graphics and old-school gameplay, but I think in general indie products should put more thought into UI and user experience design. For me a UI should simplify the tasks that I would perform frequently in the game and not get in my way instead. For Avernum 6, the rooms for improvements are obvious.

So what should I do with Splintered Core?

Lessons Learnt

Good UI should be designed from a user’s standpoint, instead of being built as an afterthought. Not that I’m saying Jeff did not put enough effort into UI and UX design though.

A good UI should simplify tasks, and the best UIs are usually those that look familiar and understandable at one glance. Granted, most games have their own UI and interaction method, but I think there must be common denominators amongst them.

Tooltips for one. Yes, Avernum 6 is an old-school game. Doesn’t mean that it shouldn’t include tooltips though. They are non-intrusive and goes a long way to helping the player understand the UI without the need of reading through long winded manuals or playing boring tutorials, so I don’t see any reason to exclude them from my UI design.

Next up, toggle keys. I play Avernum 6 with my index finger on the “g” key and my pinky on the “ESC” key. Try holding that for an hour and you’ll understand how tiring and unnecessary that is.

Starcraft 2 is a good example in this case. In Starcraft 1, hotkeys were spread all over the keyboard. Now, all hotkeys are binded to keys around the WASD area, making them easy to access without needing the left hand to traverse all over the keyboard. While some might argue that such arrangement wa primarily meant for speed, which is a critical factor in a real-time strategy game where there is a metric called actions-per-minute, I don’t see why the same philosophy shouldn’t be adopted to CRPGs too. It is convenient, keeps the left hand in one area, and keeps the players’ eyes on the screen instead of having him shift his sight from screen to keyboard and back again.

Therefore in Splintered Core, here are the default keybindings:

TAB = Next party member
SHIFT + TAB = Previous party member
1-6 = Select individual party member
A = Action menu toggle (lockpick, examine, disarm trap, steal, etc)
S or C = Stats panel (character stat sheet, game statistics) toggle (press to cycle)
D or I = Equipment panel (inventory) toggle
X or J = Journal toggle
Z or M = World Map/Local Map toggle (press to cycle)

As you can see, there are bindings for convenience (S, D, Z and X) and conventional bindings too (C, I, J and M). This means that for new players, the keys would exist where they expect it to be (conventional bindings), and when they finally take time to read the manual (or play the tutorial), they will be introduced to the convenience keys and hopefully would use them for the rest of the game.

I know, I know, I’m just theorizing and making a hell lot of assumptions about the user’s expected behavior. What I’m saying right now is that this would be my guiding philosophy when it comes to key binding placement and UI design, which would be supported by blind tests during the alpha and beta stage. It’s still a long way to go, but I think by defining what I want to achieve with my UI system, it’ll go a long way towards building an easy and convenient to use interface.

Character creation is half the fun in playing an RPG. At least, that is for me. Before we begin, let me do a quick rundown of some of my favorite character creations.

Darklands

Darklands Character Generation Screen

I have not played this game, but watching the let’s play videos on youtube I fell in love with the character generation sequence. Here’s how it works: First you choose a background, which modifies your base stats, and then distribute your stat points. After that, you choose a profession, which further modifies your stats and skill points, and then you get to distribute those points into your skills. This is interesting because it wouldn’t be hard to imagine players spending hours just min/maxing the values. I’m not sure how the background affects the game however. It’d be nice if there are specific plot branches that caters to different backgrounds or professions.

Darksun: Shattered Lands

Darksun Character Generation

While the character creation sequence is pretty typical, where you choose a race, sex, and a few other attributes, it stood out at that time due to the wide variety of interesting races and unique classes to choose from. Gladiators? Psionics? Elemental Clerics? Half-giants? Thri-Kreens?

The system itself is not outstanding, but the theme itself was.

Fallout 1 & 2

Fallout character generation

The first two Fallouts had outstanding character creation mainly due to the SPECIAL system. Since your seven attributes do not improve naturally through the course of the game, you had to make hard decisions even before the game begins. It’s pretty hard to power-game the attributes. Well, that’s until Fallout 2 was released, and then Fallout 3 had to take it to the “next level” where anybody can become a master of every fucking thing.

But back to character creation. After setting your attributes, you get to choose traits. Most traits provided gave both benefits and penalties, which is a brilliant touch. Then you get to tag skills, which doubles their rate of improvement.

So many things to do, so many different kinds of characters to choose from!

Splintered Core

As we can see, character creation could be fun in various ways. Darklands was fun because the backgrounds and classes that you chose were not just thematic flavors but had a real impact to your actual stats. Darksun was fun because of the fresh races and classes introduced. And finally, Fallout was amazing because there was so much to do, and none of them confusing at all.

Time to take cues from past masterpieces. Taking into account that our plot revolves around one single character (like Fallout and Baldur’s Gate) and that said character has a surprising background which is gradually revealed to the player (like Baldur’s Gate and Planescape: Torment) through the plot, we couldn’t really use Darkland’s backgrounds and professions. And since our stat system has been streamlined to only feature stats where attributes and skills are grouped together in one single term, we had to think out of the box to inject more fun into the character creation process.

This is what we came up with:

First you enter the character’s bios. Name, sex, body, and portrait. The body selection are not just aesthetic options; they have an impact in the game world. Choose to be a fat chick and you won’t expect to charm those who likes skinny girls.

Then you are given a bunch of stat points to distribute amongst the 30 general and specialized stats. Here, you can tag a few of the stats to reduce their stat point cost, which effectively means it can be improved at a much faster rate compared to the rest.

Finally, you get to choose traits, which are divided into two categories: positive and negatives. For every positive trait you choose, you will need to choose a negative trait too to balance it out. Also, traits directly modify your stats. Positive traits will raise certain stats while negative traits will reduce them.

How about that? A combination of Darklands and Fallout.

The goal of the NPC AI framework is to provide a general guideline to designing believable behavior of the NPC that reflects the consequences of choices the player makes through the game. Let’s take an example and break it down, as usual.

Tycho chats up with the player in the bar, knowing that he is a stranger in town and could do some errands befitting a stranger. He talks to him about a job with nice pay, after finding out that the player is a person who is willing to overstep the boundaries of law for personal gain.

Tycho recognition check: does not recognize player

Tycho moral compass check: player is chaotic neutral (for example)

He then “suggests” the player “remove” a particular NPC named Nancy, who he claims to be disrupting his business. Once Nancy is gone, the player can come back and collect the money. The condition is, the player must keep this a secret, and make the death look like an accident.

Tycho quest marker: quest initiated

The player then proceeds to Nancy’s and observes the NPC’s schedules for a while. He notices that Nancy often climbs down an abandoned well to pray in the bottom of the well, and schemes that a slight knock will cause the walls of the well tumbling down, crushing Nancy underneath.

The player casually walks up to the well and pushes the rocks in, and returns to Tycho for payment. Tycho tells the player to wait a few days to see if the job was done according to requirements.

The next morning, and NPC notices the well being broken and investigates. The NPC discovers Nancy’s body, and reports it to the Sheriff. The Sheriff comes and take a look, and then realizes that it is not an accident but a murder. He alerts the entire town to the murder and begin questioning suspects.

Townsperson recognition check: does not recognize well

Townsperson script trigger upon foreign data: investigate data

Townsperson discovery check: well is destroyed

Townsperson destruction check: ignore well (low priority)

Townsperson discovery check: Nancy’s dead body

Townsperson destruction check: report death (high priority)

Sheriff reaction check: death investigation (high priority)

Sheriff discovery check: well destruction is not natural

Sheriff reaction check: alert for murder in town (high priority)

Sheriff detective check: check NPC schedules

Sheriff detective check: no NPCs passed by

Sheriff memory check: player (stranger) is in town

Sheriff script trigger: murder dialog script with player

The sheriff proceeds to investigate all NPCs that happen to pass by that area, and finds nothing. Then he remembers that the player is in town, who is a shady stranger and proceeds to question the player.

Is this a nice way to create emergent behavior? Take for an instance the player kills an NPC. Nobody knows of the murder, right? After a few days, other NPCs tagged as the dead NPC’s friend’s will notice his disappearance and will investigate, eventually triggering the sheriff’s investigation script.

If the player leaves town before the news got out, he might be spared from the questioning, but the information bit would have been flagged and next time when he returns the sheriff will seek him out and have a world with him.

Would this be a good way to inject life into the game world? Will this be too much to handle?

Note that this framework only applies to major quests. Minor quests are not covered in this framework.

Quest Design

The premise of the quest should always involve conflicting needs of two or more parties, where there are no clear moral solutions. Each side offer their own perspective as to why they need the quest to be resolved their way, and the reasons for it should always be a matter of practicality rather than morality.

Remember that this is a world set in a post-apocalyptic era who had just dragged itself out of a bloody dark age. Morals don’t work the same way they do in our world.

Take for example the planned quest for the demo area Twilight. In this shady town the character will come across a large warehouse infested by rotworms. There are two corporations hiring mercenaries to clear out the warehouse, but both corporations have different motives: the Moonshiners want the warehouse demolished in order to protect his workers whose mine is in close proximity to the warehouse; while the Cocorunners want the warehouse preserved to handicap the Moonshiners’ mining operations which they believe to be destroying the town’s water source.

This quest pits a short-term solution (saving the Moonshiner miners) against a long-term solution (saving the town’s water supply). Players are forced to choose between the two, and even then the choice forces the player to make concessions. If the short-term solution is chosen, the town would prosper for a few years before the water runs out. The miners would migrate to other towns as rich merchants and live the rest of their lives in luxury. If the long-term solution is chosen, the town would lose its main economy source but allow the town to survive, eventually growing into a main checkpoint in the trade route along the coast of Oasis.

As you can see here, both solutions yield equally good results, and the value of the consequences is up to the player to decide. In this situation, the player is forced to choose the solution that he believes in, rather than the blatant good/evil/neutral choices.

Accommodating Failure

Failure is a mechanism that I would like to promote in Splintered Core. In the previous example, let’s say the player agrees with the Moonshiers and go look for dynamites to blow out the pillars of the warehouse in order to collapse it.

Let’s say the most obvious place to find the dynamites is in the storage room of a man called Bigdy, and the player decides to sneak into his house at night to steal it. Night rolls around and the player sneaks into his yard and tries to pick the lock. A critical failure sets off an alarm (Bigdy’s a little paranoid), startling the man, resulting in a very pissed shotgun-wielding guy storming down the stairs.

In normal RPGs, the player would have to fight Bigdy and subsequently kill him in order to resolve the situation, but in my design I prefer to carry on in the quest. Bigdy demands to know why the player is there and the player attempts a speech check to convince Bigdy that he is a security systems salesperson here to demonstrate how to compromise his security systems. A successful check will then allow the player to find out why Bigdy is so paranoid, yielding information about the Moonshiners’ brutish ways and illegal dealings.

Thus, imagine if the player had not decided to raid Bigdy’s house (buy the dynamite from a merchant instead) and failed the lockpicking attempt, he would not have been given the information regarding Moonshiners’ illegal dealings. Sure, the player can talk to Bigdy during the day and with different speech checks find out about the information, but by allowing the player a way out of failures (and discourage Power Word: Reload) I believe it would create a more dynamic and replayable world where failing at tasks do not necessarily mean reduction of gameplay enjoyment.

Design Checklist

Therefore, in order to ensure that all main quests are designed in a similar way, a checklist is needed to guide designers:

• Is there a clear good/evil/neutral solution? If yes, re-design it again.
• Are the justifications from stakeholders of the quest extensive? If no, re-design.
• Are the justifications of a good/evil/neutral kind? If yes, re-design.
• Are the motives of the stakeholders based on practicality? If no, re-design.
• Are there at least 3 ways to solve the quest along each of the stakeholder’s perspective? If no, re-design.
• Is the solution attainable only through combat? If yes, re-design.
• Does each of the quest’s approach accommodate for the player failing? If no, re-design.

Having lined out how the basic mechanics work in the previous post, in this post I’m going to attempt to define the framework for melee combat.

Melee combat is inherently different from ranged combat. In Splintered Core, it is the goal to balance out melee and ranged mechanics so that melee specialist builds have a fighting chance against ranged specialists. In the most extreme case, a ranged master build would have around 50% chance of winning an encounter with a melee master build.

Before we begin, let’s examine a few ways unarmed/melee combat can gain the advantage over ranged builds. To do that, we first examine the drawbacks of ranged builds. All firearms have a minimum range, and usually cost more to fire a shot. This is due to the act of target acquisition; aiming and firing being abstracted into one single action, which is far slower than unarmed combat. Which brings us to a balance design decision: while which build (ranged or melee) is faster is certainly a highly debatable issue, I will be making a balance decision here to ensure that melee builds are always faster than a ranged build of the same level.

Ranged vs Melee

This is partly due to the stat requirements of a melee build: for ranged builds, the senses stat tree is important; while for melee builds the atheletics stat tree would have priority. Development along these two branches would ensure that range builds will become great in determining enemy positions (e.g. a ranger-like build in traditional RPG conventions), while a melee build would instead of a powerhouse in direct physical confrontations (e.g. a warrior-like build in traditional RPG conventions).

The modus operandi of two builds would also be vastly different. Melee builds tend to have lots of special skills in negating reaction checks while maneuvering in the battlefield (mostly agility checks), and I would expect melee builds to invest extra stat points into either stealth or maneuvering, which is far more important to their survival on the battlefield.

The path to a target is always the most perilous of a melee build’s journey. Once the melee character enters a ranged build’s deadzone, tactical advantage would greatly favor the former as ranged characters suffer massive penalties when attempting point-blank shots. Sidearm masters would fare better in this case, but they would not have the necessary knowledge or experience to deal with disarming or grappling moves that melee characters would attempt once within melee distance.

Match Up

My intention in this design is simple. When a ranged build is matched up against a melee build, the tactical options for the former would be to maintain distance while attempting to successfully defeat the latter’s speed advantage. Shots from a firearm would deal lethal damage to melee builds who usually shun heavy armor in order to move faster or without encumbrance. Also, in this situation ranged builds would fair better if they changed to close quarter combat weapons like pistols, carbines, shotguns and submachine guns, sacrificing stopping power (damage and penetration) for volume of fire in close ranges (fire rate and AP cost).

Melee builds on the other hand, will spend most of their time plotting the approach. The key to a successful melee build is to know how to utilize the terrain to approach under cover, and undetected. Their lesser reliance on equipment protection allow them better chances against reaction and detection checks, and once they successfully make their way to the target they will have a wide variety of reaction-resistant movement techniques that would allow them to close the remaining distance without triggering deadly reaction fires.

And once a melee build closes to melee distance, the range build would have practically lost the battle already, unless he has some backup melee skills of his own.

Ranged builds, when fighting against melee opponents, would play a very defensive game while the latter would almost always be on the offensive.

Mechanics Test

It’s better for us to use a real-life example of how a fight goes, and then translate this into mechanics and combat rolls.

A is a master in striking arts, capable of delivering precise blows to vulnerable spots through his opponent’s guard with the “Serpent Strike” technique, and is a master of the “Three-inch Force” technique that allows him the capability to deliver full-powered blows from awkward and unpredictable angles with ease.

B is a grappler whose modus operandi involves taking down his opponent and then attempting to manipulate his opponent into submission holds.

A and B meets in the field. The bell rings, and the two combatants circle each other, looking for an opening. B is patient – he knows that a defensive starting strategy will give him a vast advantage against A, whose style he is familiar with. In fact, he had beaten several so-called grandmasters of said style before, and he knows the style inside out. He prepares himself for kicks that A’s style is so famous for.

A on the other hand isn’t that fortunate. He does not have much experience with grapplers, with rudimentary training in counter-grappling skills, but he knows he has one advantage: he had been training so hard in his style that he had reached the point where he can deliver a powerful blow from any angle, even from limited spaces.

Knowing that B would not take the first move, and that starting with a kick would be too predictable, A decides to switch it up and charges B. His tactic is to feint a charge and then at the last moment, sidestep and deliver a light, harassing cross to B’s jaw before quick stepping backwards to put distance between the two of them. He knows that close distance combat is B’s home ground, and thus keeping a distance would be his main strategy in this fight.

He executes his plan, charging in and then sidestepping. B couldn’t react fast enough and eats a light punch to his jaw, which dazes him for a split second. He tries to reorient himself and tackle A, but it is too late: A had moved out of his grappling distance. Knowing that A is much faster than he is, B changes his strategy. He takes the initiative instead and pressed forward, pulling up his guard to weather A’s flurry of blows to get close enough.

Bad idea. A does a spin kick and drives his foot between B’s guarding arms, landing a solid hit on his chest and knocking the breath out of him. B stumbles backward, his guard slackens, and A follows up with a vicious combo known as the “Hidden Tiger Pounce” where he closes the distance and lands a right hook; followed by a right uppercut, and then a one-two punch before ending it with a reverse leg sweep.

B successfully defends against the right hook but that leaves his guard open, and A slams the uppercut through his guard and flips his head backwards with the force of the blow. The one-two catches the rebounding head solidly, and B drops like a fly. The leg sweep was not needed at all.

Before B hits the ground, B realizes his fatal mistake. He had underestimated the striking precision of A’s techniques and the amount of force he could generate from virtually any angle. His guards were designed to block general blows, but to A they were laughable. Had it been any other striker, B would have gained the advantage by aggressively pressing on the attack with a strong defensive posture, but A had the ability to penetrate any guard with his style’s “Serpent Strike” and “Three-inch Force” techniques.

Fortunately, A deliberately avoided dealing B fatal blows, and B is merely knocked out.

I apologize for my horrible writing. I hope it does the job though, which is to give you a mental image of how the fight went. Now, to translate this into mechanics:

A’s stats:

Unarmed, Striking = 8, Mastery Level = 3 (Master, Three-inch Force)
Unarmed, Counter = 5, Mastery Level = 0
Dexterity, Agility = 8, Mastery Level = 3 (Master, Flash Step)

Equipment:

• Hands = Light Gloves (-1 Penetration, -2 Damage)
• Body = MMA pants (0 Penetration, 0 Damage)

Three-inch Force
+2 penetration and damage. Bonus applies even when clinching or grappling.

Flash Step
3 free movements immune to reactionary counters.

Hidden Tiger Pounce (Learned Technique)
Delivers a hook, followed by an uppercut, followed by a jab and a cross, and then ending with a reverse leg sweep. All actions are performed at 50% AP cost. If first hit connects, next hit is delivered with a +2 bonus mod; every hit that connects after the first gets a +2 accumulative bonus. However, if any move is dodged, the opponent gains the same amount of bonus to his counter-strike.

Striking Familiarity Level 3
Gives a +3 bonus to combat rolls involving striking maneuvers

B’s stats:

Unarmed, Grappling = 8, Mastery Level = 2 (Expert, Advanced Takedown)
Unarmed, Counter = 6, Mastery Level = 1 (Advanced, Flow Manipulation)
Dexterity, Agility = 5, Mastery Level = 0
Dexterity, Reaction = 6, Mastery Level = 0

Equipment:

• Hands = Light Gloves (-1 Penetration, -2 Damage)
• Body = MMA pants (0 Penetration, 0 Damage)

Advanced Takedown
Re-roll a takedown if unsuccessful on the first try with a -1 mod

Flow Manipulation (Passive)
+1 chance to divert damage from one body part to another

Grappling Familiarity Level 2
Gives a +2 bonus to combat rolls involving grappling maneuvers

Anti-Striker Familiarity Level 2
Gives a +2 bonus vs strikers.

The combat begins with both combatants aware of each other’s presence, so no surprise environmental factors are in play here. Also, since both of them are fighting in a ring, no external factor comes in either.

Thus it’s pure skill vs skill. One thing though… B has vast experience in fighting A’s style, and thus gains +1 familiarity level vs A.

Both roll initiative, but B wins the initiative. Both combatants are 2 tiles away from each other: within distance to kicks and extended punches, but beyond distance for grapples.

B prepares a counter vs kicks, giving him a +2 advantage towards kicking strikes.

A uses the flash step ability, which gives him 3 free moves. He takes 1 step towards B to close towards grappling/punching distance and throws a fast cross, targetted at B’s head.

A’s agility = 8, flash step = +2

Martial Technique Schools

Wildstrike

Wrestling

Archonite Hand-to-Hand Offense Neutralization System (ARCHON system)

Combine Grappling

Janissary’s Silakhas

Once again, my STEN system falls apart. Here are the things that I didn’t liked about it:

1. Too little room for modifiers
   With a modifier range of -3 to +3, it is kind of hard to create equipment with a wide variance in modifiers. Also, with the number of dices in the dice pool restricted to 15, I kind of feel like the game is much harder to design for. Too many factors to consider, but too little room for them.
2. Hard to determine framework for bonuses/penalties
   Again, with only a -3 to +3 range, it’s difficult to distribute these across equipments. Also, since it only modifies roll results, their impact is not as powerful as I originally wanted it to be.
3. Calculations are too complex
   If it is a good system, it should easily make sense. The basic mechanics should be simple enough to be explained on just one simple paragraph, but its simplicity should be flexible enough to accommodate more rules, factors and modifiers.

Thus, I’ve revised the STEN system into something that I really like so far:

Stats remain roughly the same, but instead of ranging from 1 to 10, the stats only range from 1 to 5. Added to this are “specializations”, which are sub-stats that provides an additional 1-5 levels to the main stat in special situations. To unlock sub-stats, the main stat must reach at level 5 first.

Game mechanics have been simplified too. Now, the character rolls SL+XL number of D10s, where SL is the stat’s level and XL is the specialization level. Equipment will further add 1-5 dice into the dice pool, while external factors might modify the number of dice in the pool from -5 to +5.

Having determined the initial dice pool, the player rolls the dice, and any score of 6 and above is considered a success. Any time the player rolls a 10, he is given an extra dice to add into the pool.

Mastery levels work by having the player roll ML number of 5D2 dice where ML is equivalent to the main stat’s mastery level, which should yield a range of 5-10 per roll. This score is substituted with the dice pool’s lowest score if it is higher.

Finally, if the total number of successful rolls are more than the success requirements of the task that range from 1 to 10, then the task is successful.

There, more room to breath. This basically means that there are only a few factors with wide ranges in the system:

Main Stat Levels = 1 to 5
Specialized Stat Levels = 1 to 5
Modifiers = -4 to 10
Mastery Levels = 0 to 3
Success Requirement = 1 to 10

Now, let’s revise the stats:

Combat Skills

• Small Arms
  • Sidearms - pistols, revolvers and submachine guns
  • Shotguns - hunting and combat shotguns
  • Rifles - carbines, combat rifles and sniper rifles
• Big Guns
  • Machine Guns – light, heavy and mounted machine guns
  • Explosives - mines, breeching charges and demolitions
  • Grenades - fragmentation, shock and smoke grenades
• Unarmed
  • Striking - forehead, arm, elbow, knee and leg strikes
  • Grappling - takedowns, ground-fighting and submissions
  • Counter - neutralizations, negations and intercepts
• Melee Weapons
  • Blunt Weapons - maces, hammers and knuckles
  • Bladed Weapons - machetes, polearms and axes
  • Piercing Weapons – crossbows, throwing knives and spears

Social Skills

• Intimidation
  • Coercion – force a person to change his stance/beliefs
  • Blackmail – exertion of pressure through threats of exposure
  • Deterrence – deter an action through intimidation
• Persuasion
  • Negotiation - discussion with the intent of leading to an agreement
  • Conversion - changing a person’s mindset/beliefs
  • Mediation - providing a voice of reason over two opposing parties
• Charm
  • Seduction - tempt or seduce a person through physical assets
  • Motivation - rouse another’s morale
  • Pacification - pacify an otherwise aggressive or hostile person
• Deception
  • Impersonation – pretending to be another person
  • Misdirection - attempt to confuse the target
  • Manipulation - influence a person through deceptive means

Utility Skills

• Fieldcraft
  • Stealth - ability to move around silently
  • Outdoorsman – knowledge of the wilds
  • Maneuvering – tactical movements in the battlefield
• Security
  • Lockpicking – ability to pick locks
  • Stealing – ability to pick pockets
  • Hacking – ability to bypass security measures or terminal
• Engineering
  • Manufacturing – creating new items using machining tools
  • Repair – fix existing equipment or vehicles
  • Computers – understanding and usage of computer terminals
• Medicine
  • Combat Medic - bandaging and healing with minimal equipment
  • Doctor – medical knowledge and usage of medical equipents
  • Surgery – knowledge of anatomy and general surgery

Attributes

• Athletics
  • Reaction - reflexes and speed in reacting to events
  • Agility - general speed and athletic capabilities
  • Coordination - hand-eye coordination and manual dexterity
• Body
  • Strength - physical might
  • Endurance - resistances and stamina
  • Recovery - healing rate and stamina recovery rate
• Mind
  • Willpower - courage, persistence and strength of mind
  • Concentration - mental focus
  • Comprehension - speed of comprehending information
• Senses
  • Hearing - aural senses and hearing range
  • Vision - visual senses, day and night vision
  • Awareness - general senses and perceptiveness of the environment

Phew. Now that’s the kind of depth in my character system that I’d love to have!

Here’s how it works. A character starts with 1 in every stat, and gains a number of development points during every level ups. Main stats have a level ranging from 1 to 5, where upon reaching level 5 will unlock 3 specialized stats, which the player can further invest up to 5 levels into.

The catch is, the cost to raise any stat by a level increases every level. To increase a level 1 stat to level 2, it takes only 1 development point; but to raise a level 4 stat to level 5, it takes 8 development points. Here’s a table to make it clearer:

• 1 to 2 = 1 point
• 2 to 3 = 2 points
• 3 to 4 = 3 points
• 4 to 5 = 4 points
• 5 to 6 = 5 points (level 6 is equivalent to a specialized stat’s level 1)
• 6 to 7 = 6 points (level 7 is equivalent to a specialized stat’s level 2)
• 7 to 8 = 7 points (level 8 is equivalent to a specialized stat’s level 3)
• 8 to 9 = 8 points (level 9 is equivalent to a specialized stat’s level 4)
• 9 to 10 = 9 points (level 10 is equivalent to a specialized stat’s level 5)

Therefore, given that we have 16 main stats (160 DP to max) and 48 specialized stats, to max out all stats would take 1840 development points.

The level cap for the first game is 15; while the second game is 30; and the third game is 45.

Thus, if a character gains 15 development points per level, by the time the character reaches level 45 he would end up with approximately 37% of his entire stat list maxed out. The development points gained per level can vary by plus or minus 5 points. This means that no character can be a jack-of-all-trades and master-of-all-too. They can only max out 1/3 of their stats, and that’s it.

Combat

Combat is still a one-roll affair. For ranged combat, the player challenges his skill + equipment against the difficulty of the shot (terrain cover + range).

Base Pool = Weapon Stat + Familiarity Level + Bullet Base Accuracy + Weapon Accuracy Mod – Morale Condition – Physical Condition – (Target Maneuvering / 2)

Weapon Stat = 1 to 10
Familiarity Level = 0 to 3
Bullet Base Accuracy = 1 to 4
Weapon Accuracy Mod = 0 to 3
Morale Condition = -5 to 0
Physical Condition = -5 to 0
Target Maneuvering = 0 to 5 (rounded down)

Success Requirement = Stance + Cover + Range

Stance = 0 to 2
Cover = 0 to 2
Range = 1 to 6

Therefore, let’s say in this scenario:

A:

Sidearm Stat: 7
Familiarity: 2
Mastery Level: 0
Bullet Base Accuracy: 2
Weapon Accuracy Mod: 3
Morale Condition: 0
Physical Condition: 0

B:

Maneuvering Stat: 8
Stance: 1
Cover: 1
Range: 4

Base Dice Pool = 7 + 2 + 2 + 3 – 8 = 6
Success Requirement = 1 + 1 + 4 = 6

Therefore, when A pulls the trigger,  he has approximately 8% chance of hitting B. Time to get a better weapon!

A changes weapon to his trusty sniper rifle:

Rifle Stat: 6
Familiarity: 0
Mastery Level: 0
Bullet Base Accuracy: 4
Weapon Accuracy Mod: 3
Morale Condition: 0
Physical Condition: 0

Since the sniper rifle has far better effective range than the pistol, B’s range ranking is reduced to 1.

Base Dice Pool = 6 + 4 + 3 – 8 = 5
Success Requirement =  1 + 1 + 1 = 3

Whoa, now A has a 53% chance of hitting!

Oh wait, A suddenly remembered that he has development points unspent. He quickly opens up the character screen and maxes out his sidearm stat, and changes back to the 10mm pistol:

Sidearm Stat: 10
Familiarity: 2
Mastery Level: 0
Bullet Base Accuracy: 2
Weapon Accuracy Mod: 3
Morale Condition: 0
Physical Condition: 0

Base Dice Pool = 10 + 2 + 2 + 3 – 8 = 9
Success Requirement = 1 + 1 + 4 = 6

A aims, and finds out that he has 40% chance to hit. Damn! Should have spent those points on increasing his rifle stat instead!

Post-mortem

It worked out pretty well. The modification to the success requirement turns out to give a far higher bonus than an increase in dice pool. Which works out to be realistic: a pistol is meant for close quarter battles, and it doesn’t make sense that a master pistol user would be able to hit targets at the same range as a sniper rifle.

This in turn gives equipment a vast advantage over stats, which fulfills the original objective of the character system I was looking for.

I’ll need more testings though, especially for unarmed combat.

In the next update I’ll be revisiting melee combat, task resolutions and opposed rolls!

I was about to write an article about Unarmed Combat but suddenly realized that I haven’t exactly noted down how ranged combat works.

In this post I’ll be explaining how ranged combat works.

In the Wildlands of Splintered Core, bullets are kings. They determine the base damage, base accuracy as well as base penetration level, while providing a bonus to range. Guns that fire them provide bonuses or penalties to damage and accuracy, and determines the base range. Here’re the formulas to make it easier to understand:

Penetration Level = Bullet Base PL + Weapon PL Modifier
Damage Level = Bullet Base DL + Weapon DL Modifier
Accuracy Level = Bullet Base AL + Weapon AL Modifier
Range = Weapon Base Range + Bullet Range Modifier

Simple eh? Now here’s how each variable plays into ranged combat:

Penetration Level is used to defeat Armor Penetration Threshold
Damage Level is used to defeat Armor Damage Absorption and deal HP damage
Accuracy Level is used to modify the combat roll
Range is used to determine the base modifier for the combat roll

Initiating a ranged combat roll

A ranged combat roll is performed when a character pulls out a firearm and fires it at something else. Each firearm is tied to a specific combat stat, and that particular stat’s level becomes the base number of D10s to roll.

Weapon Familiarity

Every firearm has a hidden counter in it that fills up every time the player pulls the trigger. Once the counter reaches a certain number, the player gains a level of familiarity on that particular weapon itself. For each level of familiarity, the player gains a +1 to his base dice pool, up to a maximum of +3.

Perk Bonuses

I haven’t decided what perks would be placed in the game but I think I can create a general category for them. There are 3 kind of firearm-related perks: Mastery Perks, Insight Perks and Unrealistic Perks. Mastery Perks basically increases the related stat by a certain number; Insight Perks give bonuses to familiarization speed; while Unrealistic Perks are those that are illogical or physically improbably like increasing accuracy, fire rate, and so on.

But when it comes to adding to the base dice pool, I think only “epic” level perks should be allowed to give a maximum of +2 dice to the pool.

Modifiers

In ranged combat, there are only 3 modifiers to worry about: accuracy, range, and cover. Accuracy provides the base modifier; range sets the success requirements; and cover adjusts the base modifier. Here’s how it works:

Every gun has a base accuracy level that ranges from -2 to +2. This is added to the cover modifier that ranges from -1 to +1. Range determines the success requirements that ranges from 1 to 5.

Accuracy Table

• Terrible Accuracy = -2
• Poor Accuracy = -1
• Average Accuracy = 0
• Good Accuracy = +1
• Excellent Accuracy = +2

Most firearms are either average or poor; mastercrafted firearms usually are either average or good; and only scopes firearms with custom forged barrels and action can have excellent accuracy. This value is added to the Base Accuracy Level of the bullet.

Cover Table

• Good Cover = -1
• Partial Cover = 0
• In the Open = +1

Good cover is defined by being dug in or protected by small arms proof obstacles like reinforced concrete walls, metal crates, trenches and so forth. Partial cover are items that provide concealment but does not do much to stop bullets from flying through. In the open refers to the character having no cover at all.

Range Table

• 1 = Within effective range
• 2 = Close to the edges of the effective range
• 3 = Within minimum range or just slightly beyond the effective range
• 4 = Point-blank, Grapple range or beyond the effective range
• 5 = Far beyond the effective range and near the edge of the weapon’s maximum range

Every firearm has three ranges: minimum, effective and maximum. Mastery levels in weapon skills extend the effective range of firearms.

Variable Constraints

So what do we have here? Before we go on, let’s look back at the constraints of the entire STEN system:

1. The initial dice pool can only range from 1 to 15 dice (not counting exploding dice)
2. The modifier pool can only range from 0 to 3 dice
3. The mastery substitution pool can only range from 0 to 6 dice
4. The success requirement can only range from 1 to 5

Initial Dice Pool

A stat has a level ranging from 1 to 10. It can never go beyond 10, or fall lower than 1. No items in the game world can increase or decrease stat levels. Perks and equipment familiarity DO NOT increase stat levels too; they merely give bonus dice in related rolls.

Perks can add up to a maximum of +2 levels. Equipment familiarity can add up to a maximum of +3 levels.

Not counting exploding dice, a character can thus only have a maximum of 15 dice in the initial dice pool.

Modifier Pool

I’ve been wondering, how many factors should I allow to every challenge roll and what kind of quota should I provide. Well, in most ideal cases, there should only be ONE factor that is calculated as a modifier. Only in special cases would a maximum of TWO factors come into play, and one factor should always range from -1 to +1 while the other factor range from -2 to +2.

Of course, there isn’t much of an issue to extend the modifier range to -4 to +4, which could theoretically make mixing of factors easier. But in any case, no more than TWO factors can play a part in the modifier pool.

Ranged Combat On Paper

Okay, having defined almost everything, let’s play.

Character A

Equipment

Sniper Rifle
Caliber: .50 AP
PL: 8
DL: 7
AL:
Min Range: 5
Eff Range: 15
Max Range: 20

Stats

Light Firearms: 8
Sniper Rifle Familiarity: +1

Character B

Equipment

Combat Armor
PT: 5
DA: 3
Condition: 10/10

Stats

Fieldcraft: 5
Perception: 3
OHP: 53

Let the combat begin!

B walks into the open, unaware that A is hiding in the bushes. He is walking at a comfortable pace, quietly pondering on life’s various mysteries.

A knows that B is 17 tiles away, and moving closer. He puts B in the crosshairs and pulls the trigger.

Combat Roll Begins!

Success Requirement = 3 (slightly beyond the effective range)

Modifier 1:

Initial Dice Pool = 8 + 1 = 9

Don’t shoot me. My previous post is about how the Magnum character system handles HP, and since I’ve switched to the STEN system, I’ve yet to discuss how HP works yet.

Like my previous philosophy of how HP works, I am a strong supporter of having epic level characters as fragile as level 1 characters. Years of experience makes you smarter, wiser and a tougher nut to crack, but it doesn’t magically make you capable of taking more bullets in the chest.

Granted, the term Hit Points is not a direct representation of a character’s health but rather a counter of how many hits a character can take before being incapacitated, I still think the mechanism needs a little more definition than being just an abstract numeric value for players to judge whether a character is still alive or not.

Another problem I have with most HP systems is that a character with 1 HP has the same performance as a character with 1000 HP. It doesn’t make sense at all.

So I’ve implemented 3 major concepts into my character system:

1. Conditions for each body part
2. Overall HP derived from 1
3. Efficiency system

This is notably different from my previous implementation, and here’s how it all works.

Conditions for each body part

Every character has these body parts:

1. Head
2. Torso
3. Left Hand
4. Right Hand
5. Left Leg
6. Right Leg

Each body part has a wound condition rating ranging from 0 to 5:

1. 5 = Disabled (Black) – 0% HP
2. 4 = Critically Wounded (Brown) – 20% HP
3. 3 = Heavily Wounded (Red) – 40% HP
4. 2 = Wounded (Yellow) – 60% HP
5. 1 = Lightly Wounded (Pink) – 80% HP
6. 0 = Healthy (Green) – 100% HP

Head

Any hit on the head is automatically counted as a critical hit regardless of whether the attacker had rolled a critical hit or not. Hits to the head affect social and perceptive stats like intimidation, persuasion, deception, leadership, insight, charm, engineering, crafting, science, willpower, perception and memory. Each increase in wound rating would incur a -x penalty to all the aforementioned skills where x is equivalent to the wound rating.

During character creation, the player rolls 4D6+10 dice to determine the HP for his head. This value never changes even when the character levels up. (In easy mode, players start with 34 HP).

Torso

Hits to the torso incurs a penalty to medicine, stamina and strength, which decreases by -y ranks per wound level. They are always hit in normal attacks, and losing hit points in this area does not affect any stats at all.

During character creation, the player rolls 6D6+10 dice to determine the HP for his torso. This value increases by 1 on every level up. (In easy mode, players start with 46 HP).

Hands

Critical hits of x3 and higher causes the character to drop his weapon, and each increase in wound rating would incur a -z penalty to the following stats: sidearms, light firearms, heavy firearms, explosives, heavy firearms, unarmed, melee combat, security and strength.

During character creation, the player rolls 4D6+5 dice to determine the HP for his hands. This value increases by 0.5 on every level up. (In easy mode, players start with 29 HP).

Legs

Critical hits on this area causes the character to stumble, and any critical hits of x3 and higher causes the character to fall flat on his face, suffering a heavy penalty to his agility and forcing him to expand AP during his round to get back up. Every increase in would rating to the legs would incur -a penalty (where a = wound level) to the following skills: fieldcraft and speed.

During character creation, the player rolls 4D6+10 dice to determine the HP for his legs. This value increases by 0.5 on every level up. (In easy mode, players start with 34 HP).

Overall Hit Points

Overall hit points are displayed next to the character portrait in the main screen’s UI, giving the player an easy way to gauge the general wellbeing of his character. To calculate overall hit points, use this formula:

OHP (Overall Hit POints) = Torso HP + ( Head HP x 0.5 ) + ( Arms HP x 0.25 ) + ( Legs HP x 0.25 )

So for example, a character has:

Head HP = 28
Torso HP = 30
Arms HP = 18
Legs HP = 20

OHP = 30 + ( 28 x 0.5 ) + ( 18 x 0.25 ) + ( 20 x 0.25 ) = 30 + 14 + 4.5 + 5 = 54 (rounded up)

Efficiency System

Now that we have an overall hit points to work with, it’s easy to calculate efficiency. In the original system, the lower a character’s efficiency, the harder it is to perform tasks (succeed in rolls). Looking back at the first concept… I wonder is it necessary to further penalize the player?

Hmm… I’ll need to sleep on this for a while.