Elven Academy

I used to be fascinated by romance in fantasy RPG’s. I played through Baldur’s Gate 2 multiple times to experience the different romance arcs with Aerie, Jaheira, and Viconia. I’m happy that Baldur’s Gate 3 is continuing in that tradition.

I recruited Fall From Grace in Planescape: Torment just for her backstory and attractiveness. I completed romance stories in Skyrim and Dragon Age.

I was very disappointed when SWTOR pulled romance out of their game at launch. I was disappointed more recently that Planescape: Tides offered no romance arcs, especially since the lead writer was an erotica writer.

I was also disappointed that a real romance arc was not offered in Assassin’s Creed: Odyssey, especially since The Witcher has such legendary writing in this regard.

Recently I’ve considered taking my game project in a more R-rated direction, so I researched the Book of Erotic Fantasy. It is a very old D&D supplement under the OGL v1.0a. Here are my notes and reactions from the reading. Another, more exhaustive treatment is found here.

Basically, most of this text just doesn’t merit a deep analysis from where I’m at, so let’s look mostly at the gems.

Review of the Book of Erotic Fantasy

The BoEF is broken into seven chapters: Love, Sex, and Roleplaying, Rules, Skills, and Feats, Base and Prestige Classes, Magic, Items, and Adventures and Organizations.

Most of the book consists of lists of spells, classes, creatures, and magical items for your adventure campaign. There is a list of 100 “Adventure Ideas”, but a lot of these ideas boil down to just “something happened”. The something is often: “it happened, good to know”, or “someone is raping and must be stopped.”

A few ideas were cute and doable, however, like the band of halflings that challenge the adventurers to a game of sexual endurance.

Humor was one of the main takeaways from this elder tome. Sex has always gone hand in hand with humor, and therein lies its most valuable asset, since we do play these games to have fun. So why isn’t sex more prominent in RPG’s? Here is my take on the problems.

• Sex and romance offer poor gameplay. (Roll dice to see whether you have an orgasm, etc. is just lame.)
• It doesn’t advance the main story.
• It often doesn’t develop character unless done very well.
• If used as a final reward to a story arc, it loses its ability to advance a story arc.

If we don’t boil sex down to just a reward, like banging the prince after you save him, then there are good reasons to have it: develop a character (NPC or PC), and advance a plot. Romantic titillation and roleplay in themselves are also valid, but not as powerful.

The BoEF touches on these issues in a few actually insightful paragraphs sprinkled into the text. Plot, character, and humor. I was disappointed in the “adventure ideas”, so I wrote some of my own, broken down into the categories where sex can actually be best used. Here are my starter lists that I brainstormed in an hour.

Ideas to develop a non-player character. The NPC:

• Reveals something about the racial sexual customs in an interracial experience, possibly amusing.
• Reveals poor character, i.e. implies it’s free, but now wants money, has a boss to threaten the PC with.
• Reveals they are surprisingly the opposite personality in bed.
• Reveals they are deeply vulnerable in some way, emotionally needy for some reason.
• Reveals they have secrets on the pillow, i.e. this was the point of seducing the PC.
• Reveals tattoos that tell a story about past deeds, exploits, beliefs, mottos.
• Reveals tattoos or marks that indicate of a gang, a cult, physical abuse, sex work.
• Reveals a prosthetic limb, an implant, a welded cuff or a collar suggesting wounds or an owner.
• Reveals deformities, fur, or other evidence of non-human crossbreeding in family.
• Reveals they are a shapeshifter or have an enchanted form, i.e. a dragon or someone really hideous.
• Reveals they have a husband/wife/someone else really jealous.
• Reveals they have a fetish, must have something specific to become aroused.
• Reveals they have an STD. Sexual transmitted diseases are just not fun, unless you’re using them just to whimsically punish a player for fun. It could be used as a consequence of a failed saving roll, however.
• Reveals they are conflicted about sex, they were trying to be chaste, etc.
• Reveals they were a virgin, and now you’re in big trouble with someone or something.

Ideas to develop the player character. The PC:

• Is allowed an actual love romance that leads to a long term relationship.
• Is then allowed to recruit a henchman or henchwoman that provides perks in a relationship, or even bring them along on adventures.
• Is allowed to feel powerful.
• Is allowed to feel powerful by submitting.
• Is allowed to be a prostitute for money, themselves.
• Is allowed to use character skills in new and creative ways, if the sex scene is gameplayed.
• In forming a relationship, creates conflict in terms of faithfulness, promises, and infidelity.
• Offers a roleplay path to retiring a character to the married life in a castle, and possibly children which can form a new adventuring party.

Ideas to advance a plot through the NPC. The NPC:

• Sleeps with the PC, but then falls more for another member of the party.
• Is trying to use sex because they want something from the PC.
• Is using the PC as an alibi for something.
• Actually dies in the PC’s arms, leading to accusations of murder, or demonic possession.
• Incapacitates the PC to steal a map, a book, treasure, horse, sword, etc.
• Reveals a quest on the pillow. PC can offer help, or can try to get to the treasure first.
• Insists that according to their cultural laws, they are now married to the PC (Firefly, etc.)
• Reveals a life-threatening situation they are in, and their desperation for help.
• Is trying to persuade the PC to join a cult, sex club, etc.. This leads to quests.

In many of these cases, the primary question becomes: what does the NPC want? If you establish powerful wants on the part of the NPC who the PC is having sex with, good writing naturally flows from it. This is hard though, and I’ve failed at this to some extent.

It may also help to ask, if the NPC is a possible romantic interest, then who or what are the attracted to, and why? This can also reveal a lot of character.

A big sticking point to incorporating all of these ideas is the gender-locked nature of the gameplay. To incorporate romantic encounters at important points in your plot, you would almost need to have a gender locked protagonist.

Or you would have to “cheat” and change the gender of the NPC to the opposite of your PC, and then assume the PC is straight. What a mess. Maybe that in itself is a big reason why romance isn’t used much in a meaningful way in RPG’s, and why the Witcher franchise seems to stand so tall in this capacity. (I haven’t played the Witcher games personally due to not liking to play male protagonists.)

The BoEF also touched on the idea of “ratings”. I’ve been grappling with that lately myself. Here are the proposed ratings, which are the American scale of course:

PG-13 – Deals with mature subjects including sex, but without explicit scenes or descriptions. Love, flirting, and seduction are all acceptable, but the actual sex occurs offstage.

R – Nudity and sexual situations are common, although level of detail stops at gratuitous details that could be described as pornographic.

Other useful points from the Book of Erotic Fantasy:

BDSM is now mainstream, not a fetish or taboo. Clubs have BDSM nights, it’s a fixture in the fashion industry. Love between Human and non-human (Vampires and Werewolves) is also mainstream.

Assigning an alignment to a type of lover is interesting to help a player to play their character.

Assigning an alignment to an entire society is also useful. The alignment becomes a sort of shorthand for thinking about sex norms in different societies and regions of the game setting.

Not so useful points:

Some things in the book are just silly. A “masterwork” condom, for example.

I also wasn’t a huge fan of the photos, but they’re OK. Consistent, quality artwork throughout would have been very expensive and time-consuming most likely.

Tantrist, Kundalini. I strongly disagree with using real-world Earth terms like this in a D&D setting. These come from Hindu and Tibetan religions. Maybe the authors were trying to be non-specific in terms of campaign setting, but this is just worse.

I skimmed the ‘bestiary’ in the BoEF, which did not really interest me, as my campaign setting is well-developed, for better or worse. Some interesting entries, however, were the half-devil, half-giant, and pleasure golem.

That’s about all for my reactions and notes on this thick, lengthy tome of erotic treasures. It’s well-worth a perusal, and I find myself curious about trying to design some erotic gameplay. The sections of the book dedicated to gameplay, like the mini-scenario at the end, seemed very short of practical examples.

The book lists play-testers in the credits page. I’d like to hear their feedback. Because honestly a lot of this could boil down to the vanilla D&D rules, but spiced up with adventures in brothels. And how do you ‘succeed’ at a sexual encounter? How would this work?

1. Simply getting the NPC naked and/or into a compromising situation is enough to complete many character developments or plot advancements.

2. Physical success (Agility, Toughness, Romance (techniques), Engineering (toys, ropes, who knows)): pleased your lover X times, resulting in advancement or quest success.

3. Emotional success: (Empathy, Psychic) need to achieve some kind of intimacy to solve the puzzle and advance. Physical skills don’t matter.

4. The opposite of #1, the NPC getting the PC naked and into a compromising situation is enough to slip the PC a pill or wake up tied to the bed, etc. and move the plot forward.

If your plot hinges on this encounter, the design concept of “Failure with Consequences” might be useful. You moved the plot and achieved your goals, but failure on your rolls means the success is only partial, or you received no extra reward or treasure, or something bad happened, but you still moved forward on a technicality.

That’s all for my reactions to this book. Good luck, and happy gaming.

This week I added six ‘classes’ to Elven Academy. You choose a class when you create a character. This was done for multiple reasons, but mainly to provide roleplay templates for both the player and for me as a designer.

I put ‘class’ in single quotes because I need to think of a better name, i.e. path.

The previous classless design led to weak player characterization. I used Charm and Cunning stats as a primary way to think about dialogue options, which equated loosely to Lawful and Chaotic. What about rogues? Rangers? Scholarly types? I didn’t have a good handle on the types of characters to design for.

Now I have 6 classes, split into 3 character archetypes. This provides a simpler framework to help design dialogue and options. These archetypes will be supplemented with Gay, Lesbian, Boss, and Serpent (i.e. Slytherin) tags etc., if the player identifies their character as such.

Bard and Fairy Witch/Wizard: charming, fun, goofy, kind, lawful, compassionate, romantic. (Hobbits, Gryffindor, Jedi)

Druid and Hedge Witch/Wizard: practical, earthy, plant-loving, animal-loving, wise. (Rangers, Dwarves, Hufflepuff, Grey Jedi)

Fate and High Witch/Wizard: snarky, cynical, rebellious, intelligent, scholarly, humorous in a dark way. (Slytherin, High Elves, Thranduil, Sith)

So now it’s my plan to go back and improve my dialogues to better support these archetypes, as well as support the individual module outcome variables I’ve firmed up and implemented. And to support this effort, I did a lot research on the internet.

It’s actually quite hard to research elements of game design on the internet. It’s a mess of abandoned and little-used websites, and decades-old posts on old school blogs, such as that of Alexander Freed. Alexander was a staff writer at BioWare for six years before departing in 2012. More recently he has written official novels for Star Wars, including Rogue One. So he’s doing quite well for himself.

Alexander has an old and abandoned blog on writing for video games, which turned up in my searches. I literally read all of his blog posts today. I took notes, a few quotes here and there, added brainstorms of my own, and re-wrote some things into just a few simple bites that I could better grasp with my relatively feeble mind. Here are my working notes and reactions.

From Notes on Branching Conversation Systems: Five Parts.
Part One. Part Two. Part Three. Part Four. Part Five.  Freed’s Blog.

Takeaways:

Use branching dialogue for character development. Gameplay is knowing and understanding the NPCs and their personalities, and how they might respond.

Two main design formats for dialogue:

Hub and spoke – player makes a choice, goes down a sequence of dialogue, then returns to the hub for another choice. Example: Planescape Torment. Best implementation makes player feel in charge of how to approach the conversation. Bad is making the NPC an information vending machine, where you are just punching the buttons to get everything.

Waterfall – there is no going back to the initial hub. This is more ‘realistic’, but difficult because you need to ensure the player gets the needed outcomes and information no matter which path they choose.

Blended approach – some games end the initial waterfall flow with a hub, giving the player a choice to explore more about the lore offered by the NPC, or just leave. This can feel ‘gamey’ however.

Seeing the NPC react strongly to whatever your character said can be immersive, fun, and rewarding.

Response options can be tailored to be rewarding for specific roleplay class archetypes.

Be wary of every single forced dialogue line, and the danger of making the player feel like it’s not something their character would have said.

“Your number of options should reflect the “default” array of personalities available to the Player.”

“Most dialogue-heavy games tend to go with 3-4 options for most Player choices–two choices often feels too limiting and unnuanced, while more than four becomes slow and difficult for the Player to digest.”

Don’t hand code conversations or try to parse them into your game off an excel spreadsheet.
https://www.inklestudios.com/inklewriter/ primarily intended for more prose-heavy, Choose-Your-Own Adventure-style games. Freed says this costs money for commercial use, but that appears to be outdated. It’s free.

It’s easy and common for writers to fall into the trap of using the player character’s guided interactions to develop their beloved NPC’s. This is a trap because the player should be the star, the protagonist, and the center of focus.

The player should always have the best lines and the coolest story points. The player responses should drive the flavor of the story, ideally. If they want to be naughty, then go there. If they want to be nice, go there.

Don’t forget writing fundamentals. A dialogue should be treated just like a scene. Conflict, increasing tension, climax, resolution, driving the plot, etc.

Ideally decisions are made by the player at dramatic high points. (Personal note – this can be a ‘signpost’ in itself if done consistently.)

Try for active dialog from the player, and avoid passive. Questions tend to be passive. “Tell me about the shop.” is better than “Who owns the shop?”

Forced player lines. Try to be sure that the line is either neutral enough to fit any player character type, or it is dynamically adapted to fit the players character.

Notes And Commentary On Other Blog Posts From Alexander Freed:

From: On Cutscenes And Viewpoint Changes

In general these (cutscenes) are bad in a game because they break immersion. Otherwise can be handled like a movie or novel. Can you make the cutscene interactive instead?

“Is your game comedic? Is the cutscene funny? Then you can get away with pretty much anything.”

From: Writing Romance in (non-Romance) Games: Linear Romances

A key aspect is how to make the player care about the romance at all. You can employ it just like another other subplot or theme, but it’s a lot easier to go off the rails with such a an emotionally and politically laden topic.

Don’t force the player into anything. Make the romance worth the effort.

Very good, engaging banter between the two characters helps the premise that they work well together.

Humor is good, the typical funnies and foibles of two people trying to fall in love.

An interesting idea is to write the player character as already in this relationship at the start.

Make the romantic interest impossible to dislike.

From: Writing Romance in (non-Romance) Games: Branching Romances

‘Branching’ in this context is the ability to make significant plot choices and decisions about how to treat the romance.

If possible, don’t make assumptions about how a player will react or feel in any given situation.

Make sure romance options are “signposted”. Whether to initiate a romance, or break one up, the decision should be clear to the player. Try not to surprise them with something they didn’t want, and is irreversible.

Don’t try to please everyone. Not even yourself. You can’t do everything.

Cheating. No, not cheating on your romantic interest. Cheat the NPC’s dynamically into being more what the player wants for romance. A straight character will be gay, a male character changes completely to female if the player makes a straight male to start the game, etc.. This is difficult to program, but it can work.

Some ideas I hadn’t thought about:

Gifts.
Romance that is super hot, but doomed.  This made me think of the Viconia romance in Baldur’s Gate. In a good way.

From: Player and Player Character Motivation in Video Games

“Bridging the gap between player motivation and player character motivation is one of the the most important factors in a game narrative’s success. .. Player motivations and player character motivations should, at a minimum, converge, even when they do not overlap.”

In interactive entertainment, the player has to make a lot more effort to advance the plot etc.. So even more attention needs to be paid to aligning motivations and engagement.

Ideas to achieve constructive alignment of motivation:

Hating the antagonist.

Ways to fail at this:

Force the character to do something really stupid, as part of the plot, which the player disagrees with, doesn’t like (i.e. feels is annoying busywork), or has no reward valued by the player.

Wow, that was a sparse list of ideas to achieve motivation and engagement.  We could add solving a mystery and getting a treasure.  These are all of my notes.  This is just a tiny collection of gold nuggets that I saved from Freed’s long, exhaustive essays on these topics on his blog.  Maybe someday Alexander Freed will return to making video games.  We can hope!  In the meanwhile, I hope this blog digest with links might be helpful to someone and amplify Freed’s old essays a little bit.

The game pages on my website are currently being blocked (false positive) by Malwarebytes, for ‘suspicious activity.’ I plan to report this to MWB.

This is probably due to the large amount of Javascript that runs the game, including the complex UI and the 2D game engine, which runs scripts that might look similar to crypto mining or something.

It’s all just game code running locally on your browser (after it loads) in webpages corresponding to game content modules, which use local storage in your browser to read and write an alphanumeric save code. There are no JS connections to any server at this time.

In fact, after you start a module you can disconnect from the internet and finish it. The game is designed to be a download playable offline, which is how I playtest before uploading stable ‘builds’. (There are known issues with the savecode on Firefox doing this, however.)

Unless the actual JS files have been hijacked on the server by a third party, they are safe. I looked into that, uploaded fresh files, and don’t see any issues.

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.