Elven Academy

In previous posts, I’ve discussed what skills to use to create a diplomacy system in a fantasy RPG, and why. I skipped over an analysis of the basic premise and foundations of using diplomacy. So I want to backtrack and start at the beginning.

I am a weekend warrior making a retro web game with still graphics and basic animations, not a professional. I have a reasonable amount of fiction writing study and experience, however. Unfortunately, scholarly treatments like this one on this subject seem very difficult to find.

I can only do my best to see a vision above abject mediocrity, and maybe edit and add later, to better use this as a reference document.

“The Situation”: Character And Conflict.

It’s the GM’s role to create a story that requires diplomatic solutions. The most basic scenario, the heart of a fantasy tale, is character and conflict.

A player is roleplaying a character (player character (PC), protagonist) in the game, who wants something from another character (non-player character (NPC), the antagonist), and this conflict cannot be resolved by combat. The puzzle is how to win this conflict.

The player’s character in the game has a set of skills to use. Maybe the character is dumb, or attractive, or whatever. This character is like a swiss army knife for the player. The meta-game is for the player to choose how to use that knife to best advantage to beat the puzzle.

So let’s explore different aspects of this basic premise of the puzzle.

How to make diplomacy engaging?

Most players love to murder things. It’s a matter of life and death, so the drama and conflict are high. Most importantly, the stakes are high. The rewards are also usually high compared to diplomacy.

So let’s brainstorm a list of how the GM can make diplomacy compelling, instead of a dull, forgettable hurdle to jump over.

Up the stakes. It’s a matter of life or death.
Up the drama. Enhance the conflict like a soap opera or reality TV show. Manufacture reasons for these characters to be at each others’ throats.
Leverage. It’s possible the player character has leverage over the antagonist.
Agenda. The antagonist should have their own motives and agendas, and should show them.
Secrets. The antagonist may have secrets, which can be used as counter-leverage against the player.
Surprises. Unexpected reactions that throw a monkey wrench in the plans. Example: again and again  the detective or cop is foiled, and the suspect gets away before finally cornered.
Equal rewards to a resolution by combat.
An ideally emotional feeling that you accomplished something.

Leverage: Finding And Exploiting Character Weaknesses

Leverage is way to gain the upper hand in the diplomatic encounter. A good way to write a leverage scenario seems to be to write the NPC with a significant, character-defining weakness. The first half of the puzzle (for the player) is to determine or guess the weakness of the NPC.

I’ve thunk up list of signature weakness(es) of NPCs, then possible method(s) to exploit them, and added ideas for possible consequences of failed diplomacy.

Poverty, Greed. Player character (PC) has an item or money that the NPC desperately needs. Fail: NPC rejects being manipulated, and acts in rage. Or they would rather try to steal the item than give what the PC wants, due to fear of a greater danger from doing so (i.e. betraying the street boss.)

Lust. NPC is a known lush who desires women or men like the player character. Fail: rape, kidnapping, possible catastrophe depending on the NPC.

Avarice, Gluttony, Sloth. The NPC will respond to an offer of something they covet, or something that appeals to their most base natures, such as laziness and excess. This could involve an additional fetch quest.

Stupidity. The NPC has a track record of doing stupid things and making bad decisions. This can be exploited by an unethical PC. Fail: the NPC counter-cons the PC because he is surprisingly more streetwise than the PC, or he gets revenge later.

Naive. The NPC isn’t stupid, but is innocent to the ways of the world. Vulnerable to manipulation romantically or by false promises of money (long con).

Pride. The NPC is known to be arrogant and vain, and is therefore vulnerable to flattery. Fail: NPC sees through the attempt.

Vulnerability to intimidation. The PC has a significant advantage in force in some way, and is willing to threaten to use it. Fail: threat called as a bluff, or threat is rebuffed with a counter-threat.

Submissive. The PC will back down to a dominant personality, without threat of physical force. This could be guessed by the PC as a racial, gender, or sexual trait. Fail: NPC secretly being manipulated and de-escalated, but then acts with passive aggressiveness to subvert the outcome.

Vulnerability to blackmail. PC knows a secret about the NPC that would be significantly compromising if revealed. Fail: counter-threat of violence or damage in kind to PC or loved ones.

Gambler. The NPC is a known gambler, and loves bets and games of chance. The PC can enter a wager, but possibly rig the outcome.

Bigot, Hater. The NPC hates a person or group of people. The NPC can be manipulated by thinking the PC is also a hater, or a sympathizer, and more friendly to the NPC’s faction than in reality, as opposed to the PC actually earning reputation with the faction. Fail: PC is discovered as a fraud, possibly a catastrophic result from the scammed faction.

Diplomatic Rewards: How To Make Diplomacy Fun

Rewards for successful diplomacy seem like the hardest aspect of the diplomacy scenario to write. So let’s try to brainstorm some ways to feel satisfied as a player in a diplomacy scenario in an RPG. First of all, can we tap into proven examples where we’ve seen diplomacy feel rewarding in an RPG?

Roleplaying evil. (Deception, Intimidation) I had a lot of fun roleplaying a Sith in SWTOR. Fun to be evil. Torture, electrocuting people into submission.

Feeling powerful. (Presence, Intimidation) Roleplaying an immortal in Planescape Torment, or a vampire in VtM:Bloodlines. People fear you, or respect you. Your power can be used to do good as well as evil, of course.

Changing people. You can see this in games where you can influence the alignment of your followers, free someone from slavery, or lift someone from poverty. There is a feeling of importance from seeing yourself making an noticeable impact on the emotions and actions of others.

Seduction and Romance. Romancing NPC’s in an RPG can feel like a long diplomatic challenge, with a reward for getting in bed with your object of affection. How can this feel like a rewarding exercise aside from reaching the sex scene though? A conflicted NPC seems effective. You need to persuade them on a deeper level than just convincing them to fuck. An example is Viconia in Baldur’s Gate 2, who had an alignment conflict with you, or Jaheira, who had a current boyfriend. The diplomatic puzzle was also drawn out over time and made difficult using hidden triggers.

Easter Eggs And Hard-To-Unlock Content. Sometimes just unlocking hidden, secret conversations, events, and easter eggs with maxed-out dialog skills can feel rewarding.

What about some examples of diplomacy that just aren’t fun?

Annoying NPC’s. Some antagonists are just annoying in a bad way. There is no fun to be had ever in dealing with them in a diplomatic way.

Dice Roll, Done. You walk up to an NPC, you throw dice for diplomacy, and they surrender. You win. This is where my diplomacy design is failing. There is no puzzle to solve, or choices to make.

No consequences. Suppose you fail the roll. You move on with no consequences. What was the point?

Too many consequences. You are forced to play lots of combats, or a way you don’t want, because you just didn’t put enough points into a specific diplomacy skill. Or your ranger skill. Or you miss out on a critical portion of the game, or lose the game instantly by missing one roll. You basically have to keep reloading and starting over until you make this one roll. This can be annoying, but it depends on context. In some games many near-instant deaths is how the game is designed, and it can be effective.

Conclusion

To sum up some take-aways, we have:

Good fiction is a player character (protagonist) in conflict with another character (antagonist). The basic story is conflict, resolution.
The GM must create antagonist characters that are well-developed and well-written enough to have their own motivations, strengths, and weaknesses.
The diplomacy game is to guess or ferret out the weaknesses, which gives leverage to select the best choice of action. A side quest could be involved to gain leverage.
While the player’s puzzle is to play this detective game, ultimately the dice rolls are based on the stats of the character. That is kind of required by the definition of an RPG. (Maybe the Fighter is better at intimidation than seduction.)
The most rewarding diplomacy gives the player agency, and/or makes you feel powerful, and is multi-stepped. Like a good story, the conflict is drawn out through suspense and events that foil progress again and again, causing the stakes to get higher and higher, until the final scene is reached and resolved.

The player can then feel satisfied by using the clues gained along the way to make the correct choices to solve the conflict diplomatically.

As an older GM, I feel like I’m good at creating characters and conflict, but bad at letting players win and triumph in a satisfying way and frequency over my obstacles. Maybe it’s a good idea pretending I’m a babysitter, and focus on trying to amuse players with short attention spans who want to feel like teenage gods, while laughing at fart jokes, and ease up on just trying to kill them over and over.

As a writer, I can say a spreadsheet or something is a really needed to keep track of your characters.  My own spreadsheet has columns for: Description, Character Traits and Manners, Romantic Preference, Motivations/Story Goal, Family History, and Language Usage (their signature expressions like “zoinks” or “by the balls of Cerberus”.)

After writing this article, I can better see the value of breaking “character traits” into two columns for strengths and weaknesses.

I hope this article has been of some small use for your game development, although I’m sure it’s very incomplete and could be much better and more insightful, especially in the area of examples of what worked or didn’t work in existing games. I might play Planescape Torment again soon if it goes on sale on Steam. Feel free to leave a comment, and thanks for reading.

More Reading:

https://v1.escapistmagazine.com/articles/view/features/galleryoftheday/13818-8-RPGs-Where-Diplomacy-Matters

Diplomacy Roleplay In Video Games: Part One

Persuasion As A Diplomacy Stat

I’m currently done with WoW Classic for a while, and I’m back to work on Elven Academy. I’m working on B1: Down The Rabbit Hole. This is the first module in chapter B, which I believe will take the adventurer on a sea voyage to the Unseelie Court.

While writing scenarios for B1, I realized that I’m not using the Persuasion stat much at all. Instead I’m using the other diplomacy stats (Empathy, Intimidation, Presence, etc.) as finer-grained, better flavored methods of persuading in the game. This is bit of an issue.

So I researched my inspiration for using Persuasion as a stat, which was Vampire The Masquerade. Unfortunately I don’t find any in-depth Reddit posts on this topic addressing pen and paper gameplay. I do find a forum post for the VtM:Bloodlines CRPG titled “Persuasion is overpowered, seduction and intimidation are weak.”

According to this post, VtM:Bloodlines took the opposite approach as I am. They over-used Persuasion as a catch-all means of persuading someone, unless there was a clear-cut situation that demanded a specific way of Persuading. I feel like that is non-optimal. I’ve already discussed Diplomacy at length in a previous post: Diplomacy Roleplay In Video Games: Part One, but lets look again.

Alternatives To Persuasion

I could replace Persuasion, but I need yet another fine-grained way to persuade. I already have Presence (Leadership), Empathy (Sense Motive, Emotional Connection), Mercantile (Haggling), Intimidation, and Deception (Lying, Cheating).

Possible other ideas:

Manners – knowledge and use of social decorum and refined speech. A lot of this is in Presence.
Seduction – using flattery, attractiveness, sexual desire to persuade.
Logic – trying to reason with someone, appeal to intellect.

Manners sounds boring, but I’ve wanted manners to be important to the elves. The main problem with Seduction is that it overlaps with the Romance stat, which I’ve implemented currently in the skills/professions category.

A discussion on RPG StackExchange came up with some other ideas like Logic and Acting. Logic is interesting, but Acting is hard to implement in a scripted CRPG. Pen and paper would work better for both this and Manners, I think.

A reddit user spoke of breaking Diplomacy into sub-skills, which I’ve already done. They suggest skills related to socio-economic backgrounds, i.e. Aristocracy, Street, etc. This is something that has been tried, i.e. in Cyberpunk 2020.

So this would be a vote for a Manners-type stat, but how do you use this to persuade people, or make real action and decisions happen in the game? It’s sketchy in terms of gameplay without a GM.

Persuasion Based On Socioeconomic Kinship

So this idea is to break your Diplomacy ability as a whole into your character background: aristocrat, warrior class, street urchin, and priest class, for example. You’re better at negotiating with your own people. This makes a lot of sense.

This idea doesn’t translate to any gameplay, however. Gameplay would be the idea of Cyberpunk 2077, which is to create stories based on your background. Obviously we can give bonuses based on background. We could tie this into a reputation system. Suppose you weren’t born a warrior, but you’ve done a million quests for the warrior’s guild.

The effect would be equal. Background and Reputation both equate to roll bonuses, maybe non-overlapping. Whichever is higher, to prevent overpowered effects like the one cited in the post linked above.

Persuasion Based On Leverage

In the comment to the discussion on Diplomacy, a GM mentioned the importance of leverage in the game “Dungeon World”: “There’s a Move (action, basically) called Parlay, which sort of covers what Persuasion and Intimidate skills would cover in a different game. The trick is that you can’t make a roll unless you have some form of ‘leverage’.”

It seems to me that leverage is a continuum, and each end renders it useless as a mechanic to implement. This leverage can often be boiled down to a quest item. “Here is the XYZ, now give me the thing/fight me/etc.” Or the leverage is moot. “Will five gold coins suffice?” (Just use haggle or another diplomacy skill that in this case just costs money.)

In the middle of that continuum between 100% leverage, and leverage you always have (gold), you have bonuses to the roll based on the strength of the leverage.

Conclusion

Origins (Street, Aristocrat, etc.) and Reputation could be employed as simple roll bonuses towards diplomacy skills. This means each NPC needs to be coded with a faction, which I’ve already done. Another way to code the NPC’s is with a disposition. The original Fallout games by Interplay used disposition heavily when negotiating with NPC’s, and the change in NPC facial expression was graphically rewarding at the time.

Disposition is overly complicated for the goals of my simple RPG. I’m going with KISS (Keep it simple, stupid), which is consistent with the inspirations for my game. And I’m leaning towards not replacing Persuasion with Seduction, but rather re-defining Persuasion per se to be like a seduction. It is derived from the same stats that Seduction would come from, and used when Seduction would be used.

As an aside, I’m also planning to replace the icons for the Diplomacy skills into something more representative. How do you arrive at icons for Diplomacy skills? The only theme of icons that seems to work, at the moment, is close-ups of eyes and eyebrows. Mouths can’t express enough.

I thought about icons showing hands (i.e. a fist for Intimidation, a handshake for Mercantile.) Or stick figures (i.e. a ninja for deception). I also considered animals, because this is an elven themed game. A bear for intimidation. An eagle for presence. A snake for deception. What animal persuades? What animal is empathic?

That’s all for now. Thanks for visiting, happy gaming, and feel free to leave a comment below.

Mini Patch Notes – January 2021

I had time and energy over the holidays to work on Elven Academy. These were all edits and bug fixes. I am still working on the second dungeon (Geomancer’s Deathtrap). Here is a list of ‘patch notes’, which are now uploaded by not playtested on live at this time. This might break existing save codes, in which case you will need to start a new game.

General:

Ora’s affection is now equal to Owl River reputation.
Fixed broken modules on the live server, which were caused by an update to Ora = not affection enabled.
Fixed broken save code during a manual update validity check (again).
Added a quest notification sound (trumpet).
Fixed the overlapping music issues between scenes.
Worked on sound controls to some extent.
Connor has a six more facial expressions in his standard portrait set.
Implemented some of Connor’s new facial expressions in chapter A.
Added character traits isBoss, isGay, isLesbian.
Started adding some dialog for these tags.
Implemented individual module results to save code, so choices (might) matter more.
Enabled completion of modules out of order.
Updated game reference spreadsheet for all updated game functions.
Added total item bonus display to character sheet for blessing, jewelry, and charm.
Language selection should now save in your room and/or when your save code is saved.

Module A0:

Added total items owned #’s in wardrobe for male, and for jewelry and misc items.
Fixed owned common magical accessories not displaying properly in the dressing room.
Fixed several other bugs, mislabeled items.
Removed text indicating dungeons ‘levels 2-4’ in adventure select menu. Ambiguous meaning.

Module A1:

Fixed broken variables that blocked dialog options.
Added a honking sound effect to VW bus.
Fixed incorrect help text.
Fixed some typos and missing preloads, character sheet not updating properly.

Module A2:

Many cuts and edits to boil down overly wordy paragraphs.
Fixed a statue blessing.

Module A3:

Proofreads to the Spanish translation.
Edits to reduce wordy paragraphs.
Cricket and waterfall sound was reduced in volume.
Fixed overlapping sound issues.
Fixed a few typos.

Module A4:

Showing up late to the meeting now means something.
Shortened many overlong paragraphs.
Broken dialog.
Fixed some missing NPC portraits server side.
Fixed typos and made many corrections to Spanish text.
Added 2 new scenes, and facial expressions for Connor.
Added more flirting, since flirt is in the title of the module. So.
Added dialog branches for dominant and lgbt character traits.

Module A5:

Fixed many errors in the Spanish translation (a few of them super mangled.) Like a few other modules, it appears this translation never received much proofreading.

Module A6:

More refinement to long paragraphs.

Main Quests For Development:

Finish dungeon D2: The Geomancer’s Deathtrap
Complete a few new library books possibly re: oil painting, Tonalism and French painting at the end of the 19th century, and/or Fin De Siecle, Belle Epoque, Victorian periods in England and France.
Finish playtesting all existing content in Chapter A, for a Free-to-play download package. Then I can develop premium content so I can receive donations, and then I can think about promoting.

Side Quests for Development:

Develop more for situations needing specific skills and clothing/gear.

Need a dungeon theme songs and sound effects for d1 and d2.

Dump jQuery.
Playtest on Firefox, etc.

Constantine’s Coat is missing an outfit graphic (44f and 44m)

Consider challenge rolls to be a three-die bell curve instead of two-die. This makes gear and CR weighted more and luck of the roll weighted less.

Leonie needs upset mood portrait. (In A6 dialog 97 and elsewhere.)

Leonie’s hearts (only Leonie) don’t seem to be updating visually on the speaker panel??

Fretzel needs upset mood portrait in A6.

(Spoiler Plot/Character Issues:)

Where is Gregory’s Grimoire? Who has it? Aspen made a deal with Glumskayah to speak with the dead, got the information, and got the grimoire. Only Ora knows the grimoire is missing, but she isn’t saying. Now Glumskayah has it after she got Aspen.

What’s with Glumskayah’s fairy dragon wings?

Jeanie playing milkmaid? Serpent reversal?

Today I uploaded the upgraded vocabulary study module, Silverpaw Village, and an updated playtested/debugged version of main story B1. From your room:

Study With Someone -> Vocab With Maurette
Go Somewhere -> Silverpaw Village
Adventures -> B -> Grand Peacock Fashion Faire

When I first tried to load the homepage, my save code broke. This is due to additional data added to the save code. Technically I could work around this scenario, but I didn’t.

So you may need to clear cookies, or just delete local data for the website in Chrome. (Testing for Firefox is far, far behind.) Any previous saved code is also broken.

Vocabulary has a few new lists, including the most recent advanced list from my own personal study, mostly from watching Little Coincidences, a Spanish romantic comedy series on Amazon Prime.

Silverpaw Village is not completed, and not thoroughly tested. But there is plenty of shopping there, as well as the color swatch identification mini-game with a nice pile of gold for a reward.

I will expect to survive medical issues in the next week or two, and will be back with another update in August at some point soon.

I’m wrapping up the Dark Game epilogue now, which I started 2 months ago. It’s so long and full of content at the point that I plan to adapt it to be the first story module of chapter 2.

Chapter 2 is more about Dandelion (you) as a character. You start getting hints that you are more than you appear, you know, the classic story of the hero being special and all that.

Would I rather make the hero not special? It’s a tossup. Since I only have time to do this once before I die, I’ll go with the special. The non-special experience is in the non-story modules. The botany hikes, the dungeons, the crafting modules if I get to them, etc.

My original vocabulary study module got converted similarly into a main story module. So I am also working on another independent vocab study module.

I am also working on a shopping/mini-module for Silverpaw Village, which is an artisan village in the domain of the Peacock Queen.

This includes a mini-game of color identification. A local tailor shop needs scraps of cloth sorted by color into bins. Can you determine the elven colors of Periwinkle, Fuchsia, Orchid, Thistle, etc. just by looking at a linen patch dyed to the color? This is actually a fairly difficult game.

I also continue to have health issues, and will soon have surgery. As in next week. If there are no more updates to the game, then there will be no more updates to the game.

Production continues to be hindered by ongoing health issues. Here are the projects for March/April.

Vocabulary Training

This module extracts the vocabulary testing sessions of Story Module A6, to the end of pure vocabulary practice without the brackets of a long story.

In this followup mini-module, your goblin professor is questioning which teaching style is better: nice, good elven rewards for doing well, or goblin punishments for doing badly. Let’s run some tests on you to find out! Maybe you will learn something.

Mainly I need more words for lists to practice with, and this will be done. You can also create your own lists locally on your computer if you have a bit of coding ability.

Dark Game Epilogue (A7): The Grand Peacock Queen Fashion Festival

This epilogue ties up the dark game story after the Owl River curse is resolved. What is Glumskayah plotting? What is happening to her many prisoners? What is inside her mysterious black book?

Approximately 30 drawings completed, including animated elven and succubus fashion models. The dramatic story might shake up the student council a bit.

Light Game Epilogue (A8): Mermaid Isle

This epilogue ties up the light game story after the Owl River curse is resolved. What happened to your mother?

Light game is the Soul Pirate storyline, so we see more pirates, more mermaids, and more mysteries.  Romance, sea monsters, and possibly some betrayal? At least there will be a nice sunset and wine for you to enjoy, if you choose to.

Misc:

Continued playtesting and debugging the Cursed Tombs.
Dungeon brainstorming for future adventure modules, including pirates and a mage tower.

I’m going to start doing more oil painting this month, so development will be slow.  To create this project, I need to be an elf.  In other words, I need to care for my soul.  Humans are always rushing!

The main project this month was illustrating the game’s first dungeon. Another fight was added for a total of 4. The areas are fully illustrated. The fights should be better illustrated. The ‘beta’ is uploaded, direct link here.

The character sheet has also been completely revamped to be more readable and make more sense. Another gear slot was added, with support for potentially 50 more magic items. I have been sick the entire month, so this has limited production somewhat. Here is the monthly list of updates.

Feb. Updates:

Illustrated the first Owl River dungeon, approx. 70 pieces of art in 1 month despite having a virus and working full time.

Added a fourth fight and two more rooms.

Some playtesting, still needs Spanish translation.

Redesigned character panels to be more like a familiar classic character sheet.

Added another gear slot “Jewelry” slot, to go with the previous “Accessory” slot. Jewelry is now a separate and equal category to Accessory, which includes misc. trinkets, tomes, magical belt buckles, whatever.

Recruited a new dungeon developer, who is working on a second dungeon.

Planning and plotting second chapter of main storyline.

The main project this month was writing the game’s first dungeon. Currently there are 79 locations, 37 dialogs, and 3 fights. Possibly one fight is a giant rat of sorts. This actually isn’t big enough.

I’m working on the maps now, and the maps are too sparse. They are not nearly impressive enough. So I thought I was being clever writing the dungeon without constraints of map or art, and now I’m adding locations to the map. And more locations. That means more coding. I’d like this to be the largest module so far, and right now it’s not.

I revisited the Tunnels and Trolls app this week. They’ve revamped it since launch, and it’s much better now without throwing you into Naked Doom to get going, iirc. (Or maybe that’s just the one I originally chose. I don’t remember.)

Reflections on the gameplay so far:

The combat is still a boring experience of dice rolling. I continue to be very motivated to do it differently – an experience of puzzle solving and decision-making with educated guesses combined with some luck and the familiar HP attrition.

I was disappointed by the result of only 2 attribute points as a reward for gaining level 2. At that rate, I’m going nowhere in terms of surviving higher level dungeons and encounters.

I was reminded, however, of how a level represents a major goal of achievement in a small-scale RPG like this. I’ve played so many MMORPG’s in recent years that another level is like another raindrop falling.

Recently I added a “bonus XP” feature to Elven Academy adventures. I am currently planning to try giving these to the player to allocate at the end of an adventure, instead of the way they are now randomly awarded during the adventure. This is consistent with my use-skill-to-improve design as opposed to the level design used by T&T and D&D, etc.

Another issue in T&T is that the app is warrior-only, and a few races are much better warriors. This is the same problem in WoW classic. Forced to play a specific race (to wit, not an elf) or be significantly gimped.

Unfortunately, since I’ve purchased a fair number of T&T adventures and products in softcover and PDF formats, I’m just not going to invest any money into the T&T app, thereby buying the product twice.

So here are this month’s patch notes for Elven Academy.

January 2020: Updates/Fixes

A3: More bug fixes, added Seelie Court rep. Archmistress Glumskayah now has wings? Not sure about the wing thing. I wanted to make her more devilish and less human, basically. I have a big problem with all of my non-human NPC’s managing to look lamely human. More dialog and options. Fixed removal of Learaiche’s wand.

A4: A few minor bug fixes, dialog cuts and improvements, added a skip option for theatre talking.

A5: Several bug fixes, broken conversation lines. Preloads.

A6: more bugs fixed, extended ending, new longest, most complicated module by far. Preloads.

D1: First dungeon is in development.

Tarot Training– added preloads for tarot cards

French Club – fixed more bugs, broken dialogue, Spanish language

Connor library – edited, translated.

Help – another edit through the dialogs to update for diplomacy changes

Library – fixed map, reduced high rate of special encounters prior in place for testing

General

Playtested server version of the game to find bugs related to delivering content by server, and files not uploaded properly with lower case file names. Fixed many loading issues with preloads.

Fixed broken save code regex-checking after recent diplomacy/affection changes

Improved text field backgrounds.

Improved timeskip splash panel with new graphics and function.

December, 2019

The main thing this month was adding Diplomacy skills, and updating existing story modules to use those skills.

Content Updates:

New book – The Fey: Culture, Magick, And Politics library book for lore, not illustrated.

New book – Fungus Facts, library book fully illustrated.

Completed a few new illustrations for Pirates and Devils books.

Debugged and improved scoring endings for Botany and Fungus books.

Wrote a new, updated, single-document rules guide.

A1: Added another short side path to the intro module with 2 x new art. Impemented a re-roll skip feature to character creation, for a relatively quick random character.

A2: edits, bug fixes, added clues to mystery of Dandelion’s heritage

A3: Another pass to fix a stupid amount of bugs still in the most complex module, and update dialogs for diplomacy skills. Added dialogue.

A4: A pass to add dialog, add diplomacy skills, update plot for endings.

A5: A pass to refine dialog, working on ending.

A6: Added 2 more scenes, many lines of dialog to the ending, hinting at secrets about Ora.

Help: wrote a new, combined FAQ/game rules. This was intended to replace the current in-game help module, but javascript will not allow me to open a new tab due to potential for abuse (I assume.) So for now the in-game roleplay help module remains, but it may be out-of-date.

Gift shop: included a fashion chat with Ana, and a small introduction to the new Appearance stat. Planning to add more, like where to shop for things, etc.

General:

Fixed another lowercase filename handling (image file not found) bug on server, saving roll icons were not displayed.

Fixed some cases of slow image loading on server by adding pre-loads, needs a lot more.

Implemented English and Spanish-only language modes.

Implemented convenient highlighting of the next story module in the selection list.

Simplified language button controls.

Made progress bar opt-in for development instead of default.

Added a background to the time skip splash screen.

Added a custom font for time skip.

Changed the name of the hosting site from Rio Buho (Owl River) to Elven Academy.

In-depth research of Diplomacy systems in games, wrote blog post.

In-depth research of T&T-style adventure writing, wrote blog post.

Changed the Fighter skill to Romantic skill.

Added six Diplomacy skills, which replace most Charm and Cunning rolls.

Charm and Cunning will contribute to the new derived Diplomacy skills, as well as Spell power.

Charm and Cunning will also still improve as currently, via light side and dark side conversation options, but not as quickly as when they were the only diplomatic roll options.

In my last post, I reviewed the Tunnels and Trolls Solo Design Guidelines: How to Write A Solo Adventure, which was written mostly by Michael Stackpole many years ago. The most useful takeaway from that PDF was to make a flowchart.

Over the Christmas holiday, I completely played through a couple of the best adventures for T&T—Elven Lords (Deluxe) and City of Terrors (Deluxe), both authored originally by Michael Stackpole. I flowcharted them as I went, per his adventure writing advice. (See example image.)

So this blog post is a writing analysis of Elven Lords and City of Terrors. Both of these were the most recent deluxe versions purchased from DriveThruRPG.com, and they are chock full of beautiful artwork from my favorite pen and ink fantasy illustrators, Liz Danforth and Rob Carver.

I’ll go over Elven Lords pros and cons, then City of Terrors pros and cons, then finally sum up with some takeaways to use in my own adventure writing. Hopefully!

Elven Lords (1987)

First the negatives.

1. Author/reader contract failed. Don’t buy this module looking for elves. It’s like they had to pick a title, so they chose the one elf scenario. So there was a failure to live up to the author/reader unspoken contract. This is a thing in fiction. Readers expect to be paid off for taking the time to read, and a book title and cover make promises.
2. Characters. I mentioned the lack of advice from Stackpole on this topic in my previous blog post. He doesn’t mention characters at all in his guide. Elven Lords is consistent with this weakness. Some important characters have no names in this module (or weak ones like Mr. Big), including the titular elves.
3. Paths are too short. Stackpole tried to live up to his stated goal of 30+ endings. Turns out many of those are far too short. City of Terrors is designed better, because short episodes loop you back to the hub, where you can hunt for the longer stories.
4. Moral decisions with no clues. A frequent shortfall of T&T modules seems to be giving you decisions that are just plain random. Pick one door. Good luck! I really feel like something to go on is worth the effort and words, even if it amounts to nothing.
5. Unbalanced rewards. Final boss fight ended with no conversation or ceremony, same XP as any other storyline.
6. Stackpole is revisiting Gull, but it isn’t as good. Elven Lords is set in the same city as the City of Terrors module published years earlier. As an artist/writer, I have to assume Stackpole wanted to improve on his original effort. (I would.) The question is why? Or was he just writing a sequel for the money, and, well, it’s a sequel. Maybe it’s as simple as that.

A list of positives next.

1. Some saving rolls are blind, some not. Sometimes you know how hard something is before you try, other times you are surprised. This a realistic way of handling SR’s.
2. Choice of attributes to roll against. Solving a puzzle with your luck vs. your agility, for example.
3. Saving rolls are consistent with adventure themes. If you choose a roguish path, you get more agility and luck situations. If you choose a scholarly path, you get some INT rolls. Solid design.
4. Start a scene with a mini-mystery hook. Once or twice, the text mentions something very strange in a scene right away, which makes you wonder what it’s about, but you have to read on for some paragraphs to find out. This was very effective. This is also a contract! You’d better pay off the reader.
5. Superlative art as a reward. In a few cases, an important scene has gorgeous art. This could be seen as a payoff. Big budget video games do this today with spectacular cut scenes for example. It’s just not something you normally think of as a reward.
6. Meta paths. Elven Lords has outstanding design in terms of short paths unlocking longer, more important storylines. Unfortunately the dead end paths really needed to loop around like in CoT.
7. Final boss. In a few T&T modules, there seems to be a concept of a final boss (even way back 40 years ago.) This seems effective.

City of Terrors (1978)

Negatives first.

1. Cover Art. I don’t like the colored cover. It sucks compared to the original line art back in the day. Sorry, I just needed to get that off my breast plate!
2. Number/letter system. I like the numbers better than the number/letter combos for various reasons.
3. Incorrect use of the verbs Lie and Lay. Come on, guys. Laying in bed is not a thing (also one instance of this in Elven Lords— ‘You lay low and…’)
4. A missing page. Page 12. I was unable to go to 12B from 56B.
5. Moral options don’t have clues. See above with Elven Lords. There are some situations where your pick turned out to be moral, but it was totally random. You had no chance to choose correctly. I don’t like that.

That’s it. That’s all the negatives for City of Terrors. The positives for City of Terrors mostly mirror the design takeaways for this blog post. So I’ll just go right into them.

Adventure writing insights from T&T modules:

1. Illustrations show action. This was design advice in an Amazon prime documentary I watched recently, featuring the greatest old school fantasy art painters. Make fantasy art with action happening. The concept is working here. The trick is that T&T has the style of showing a random adventurer dying, or whatever. You sort of have to go all-in on that style of presentation, and it might not appeal to most today. I’m just used to seeing it due to T&T.
2. Short paths loop, long paths end the adventure exclusively. I like looping back to a road, instead of the adventure just ending. The optimal adventure design, I think, would be for all short and medium adventure paths to loop back to the beginning. The only true exits are by boat (i.e. voluntarily quitting from the main hub), or an exclusive long story line finale. There are only a few story finales, and you can only complete one. After that, you can’t run the adventure again.
3. Mixed telegraphed and blind roll difficulties. So, in some cases you know how hard something will be (climbing a pillar). In other cases, you don’t know until you go through the door or whatever, in which case the saving roll will be blind.
4. Permanent attribute losses as a penalty for failure. Maybe your foot got caught in a trap and maimed. Permanent loss of DEX. Or you were burned in a fire. Loss of CHR. This is a solid idea. It’s not instant death, but the player will have to decide whether to start over regardless.
5. The gods are not pleased. This was an interesting ‘thing’. If you’re a coward, the gods curse you, basically. I’m a big fan of divine powers in fantasy settings. It expands the universe, the feeling of magic and enchantment, basically everything without much drawback. The Temple of the Beetle in CoT brings in this aspect, which is missing from Elven Lords.
6. Places to rest. There is a healer shop in CoT. I was not rolling dice or doing any combats, but surely adventurers get worn down. Or are you supposed to heal between every combat? In any case, I think more opportunities to rest along the adventure and gain a bonus or healing would be an immersive thing.
7. Options have agency and roleplay. Other T&T modules are boring because options are very, very dull. “Go east?” “Go southeast” “Go down?” Etc. etc. Stackpole warned about this in his designing advice, and implemented choices that allow you to roleplay your character (if you’re a rogue, you can sneak in the back.. etc..) This is kind of obvious.
8. Sex. City of Terrors has as much or more than any other officially published T&T module (I believe. I don’t own literally all of them.) Elven Lords had some hard drug scenarios, where you can run drugs for example, but those were pretty eh.

So. Sex. Stackpole warns against sex in his design guide, citing the importance of writing for all ages, but then he writes sex scenes? Since this is a big question in my own adventure writing, I wrote down examples from these T&T modules.

I feel like I want the classic, Age of Conan experience with handsome, bare-chested studs and wenches. I’m concerned about criticism, since I also want my game to be educational, but I also want to do what I want. The game has mature themes.  That’s the Fey/Underworld setting.

By the way, I’m 100% committed to gender equality in Elven Academy. Literally if there is a ‘scantily clad’ (cringe) woman, there is also a scantily clad male to roughly the same degree.

If you can sleep with a female dwarf, you can also have the chance to sleep with a male ogre, for example, somewhere.

In any case, here are the cringy classic “sexcerpts” I found for future reference. I’m interested in the standards for erotic suggestiveness in fantasy fiction today. The popular stuff on the bookshelves.

I also clipped the associated artworks in these modules showing partial nudity, but I decided not to post those. I don’t want to anger the gods.  You’ll just have to check out the modules for yourself.

Elven Lords

196 Since this is a family publication, we’re going to be a bit delicate here. As much as you would like to deny any desire to be there, you actually are curious (…) At the end of your service, you’re released into the world, maybe a little bit wiser, and definitely a whole lot sorer.

240 The book you pluck off the shelves is a lusty old romance tome entitled “I Was the Death Empress’ Love Slave”.

City of Terrors

40C If you want to make love to her, go to 50E.

46A You feel her reaching for you and moaning softly. She calls for you to make love to her. (If no, you are admonished for leaving a woman in need.)

50E It takes a real degenerate to proposition an old lady … She makes love to you after she casts a modified Bigger is Better spell on you.

1C You find she is an amorous lover. It is one of your greatest experiences. As you lay panting, she advances again.

37C You find the Sheik’s brother in bed with a beautiful woman (with illustration).

Thanks for reading, and happy gaming. Feel free to leave a comment.