Elven Academy

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.

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 this post, I want to talk about adventure and story writing as a reaction piece to a recent publication by the makers of Tunnels and Trolls: T&T Solo Design Guidelines: How to Write A Solo Adventure. From Flying Buffalo, available at drivethrurpg.com.

This PDF is a collection of Tunnels and Trolls solo adventure guidelines and advice, which spans many years and a number of authors. The document was recovered and edited recently by Steve Crompton after the death of Tunnels and Trolls founder Rick Loomis.

The primary author is the legendary Michael A. Stackpole. Stackpole is a well-known and regarded fantasy fiction author, particularly in the genre of Star Wars. His Wikipedia page doesn’t have a T&T publication list, unfortunately.

In any case, Stackpole was the author of City of Terrors,  my favorite T&T adventure, and also the Elven Lords solo adventure.  I purchased Elven Lords and started playing it today.

I wanted to write down my thoughts as soon as possible about the Solo Design Guidelines, and then reflect on the design of Stackpole’s own Elven Lords after multiple play-throughs.

Stackpole is arguably one of the best T&T solo writers, along with Ken St. Andre.  He also has a lot of professional fiction writing credits. So let’s have a look at his early writing advice for adventures.

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Time In Adventure Writing

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In my last dev blog post, I wondered whether I could use time better in my adventure writing. T&T modules use a large amount of “telling” and summary to relate events. I tend to use a large amount of second-by-second dialogue.

I feel like my adventures could be better if I used more summary to enable more expansive adventures and more branching options, without having to create all of the needed art and moment-by-moment minutiae that a tight time focus would demand.

In other words, I could write more like a T&T module. Stackpole goes into time considerations on page 18 of the Guidelines. He notes that time movement is more important in a novel-type adventure. Geographical movement is more important in a dungeon delve.

Stackpole notes the Overkill adventure was the first T&T module to use “temporal progression.” I’ll need to play that to understand what he means. Stackpole also warns of a few major traps to avoid at all costs in temporal progression of adventures.

Temporal fugues: the text incorrectly acts like a character has already done something. This is a pretty obvious problem, and it’s shocking such a “bug” was actually published in Beyond the Wall of Tears.

Impossible Choices: the text incorrectly assumes a character has an item, or can do something that should not be possible (kill someone who is already dead.)

Looping: avoid the ability to loop infinitely.

OK. These things seem very obvious and simple. In fact, a lot of points in the Guidelines target very bad writers who were sending in manuscripts back in the day.

So I went to Google. I found the concept of Scene and Summary. When do you write a full-fledged scene? When do you just sum up events. You can open any fantasy novel and see how to do this. It’s sort of an art form.

In fact, Scene and Structure is a book that I’ve studied thoroughly. I’d recommend it. Am I doing it well in my RPG project? Not really.  I did it well in my novels.

The general rule, which seems obvious once stated, is to slow down time at times of the highest tension. When the blood, tears, or kisses are flying, you want to zoom in on every warm, wet droplet. When people are riding a train to Timbuktu and the next dramatic scene, you can sum up that train ride.

After playing Elven Lords, I see how T&T sums up time to its bare essences, the barest bones of a story.  In fact, one recommendation was to not have any paragraphs that do not offer a meaningful choice.

One very notable thing missing from the Guidelines is the actual heart and soul of fiction, which is characters.

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Characters: There Aren’t Any!

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I see virtually nothing about characters in How To Write A Solo Adventure. In fact, the second sentence of the advertising splash for this PDF says “how to develop NPCs” (last page of the published PDF), but there is nothing on this topic.

If you search “NPC” in the document, there is only one other use of the word NPC, which just says that Catacombs of the Bear Cult has a bunch of NPC’s. OK. Maybe that’s a good adventure then, but that doesn’t help us much. All “character” references refer to the player character.

So that’s a glaring mis-statement on the part of the advert. Actually, the best T&T modules do have the most memorable characters, but they are not discussed in this PDF.

That was a little disappointing, because I actually grabbed onto that advert sentence as a selling point for this PDF. This PDF is definitely worth the sale price of $4, and Crompton isn’t exactly going to rake in the dinero for his effort on this one. He should be commended actually.

I’m currently playing Vampire The Masquerade: Coteries of New York, and the characters there are a bit lacking as well. The takeaway is that characters are one of my strong points. I need to have better facial expressions for my NPC’s, reactions, etc..

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Flowcharting!

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Easily the most valuable part of the T&T Solo Design Guidelines is the concept of flowcharting an adventure design.  A big reason I am struggling with adventures is because they are much more complicated than novels.

Tracking all the branching paths is a big headache, so there tends to be less branching paths.  It turns out that no alternate paths is the path of least resistance!

Flowcharting is a great idea.  You will have to read and look at the PDF text for a full treatment. Stackpole’s examples include numbering the flowchart nodes to match your numerical system of categorizing locations.

There are also dead ends (literally you are dead), reward locations, exits to the dungeon, etc. all flowcharted. Stackpole notes that a repeating diamond chart (the way my adventures are going) tend to be boring.

On the other hand, Stackpole suggests he wants at least 30 playthroughs possible for the player, and that seems a bit insane.  He advocated for massive adventures, twice the size of City of Terrors.

To sum up, here are a few more takeaways from this easily digestible historical T&T development document, which I would recommend as a purchase for any adventure writers, historians, or fans of Tunnels and Trolls.

1. Try to give players heroic or moral choices, not road map choices.

2. When you need to make map choices, try to frame the choice within motivation, reason, or evocative language, something other than just a direction (“go north”).

3. According to polls on old T&T modules, replayability was highly correlated with enjoyment(?). The best adventures have lots of choices and ways to complete the module. This might be different in the modern day, however.

4. No explicit violence or sexual conduct due to age issues. Wait what? There are a few scenarios, including in Stackpole’s City of Terrors, where you can sleep with someone in T&T modules. I’m not sure what he means. Maybe explicit sex?

4a. Later in addendum #4, Stackpole mentions that Corgi publishing editors neatly skirted the COT and DED sex scenes. What does that mean? Which booklet edition did I originally play back in the day?

5. Try not to have any instant death choices without a saving roll.

6. Keep in mind your themes. (In other words, enrich the setting, but keep it consistent without anachronisms and without copyright infringement.)

7. Conflict is the fire in the the heart of fiction, and the heart is a character. Ok I might have mostly written that one myself. But even in T&T adventures with little character development or characters to speak of, there are plenty of ways that Stackpole creates conflict with monsters, factions, and the environments, etc..

To sum up, I wanted to get my thoughts down after studying the T&T Solo Design Guidelines: How to Write A Solo Adventure. I intend to play through Elven Lords a fair bit more (at least long enough to actually meet some elven lords!), then I may return to edit this post with some reactions and further reflection.

In the past two months, many, many improvements have been made to the game now called Elven Academy. Several more sound files are added. I’ve written a new game module and a new book for the in-game library: Fungus Facts!

I’m currently concerned about the 6 MMO-style faction reputation attributes. They aren’t fitting into a dialog-based single-player RPG. I either need to replace them with stats that provide more gameplay, or I need to find better ways to use them.

The elves and fairies are hardcore negotiators. They will steal your voice, steal your life, destroy your farm, and abduct your firstborn if you cross them.

Maybe I need diplomacy stats that offer gameplay, instead of the old boring reputation scores representing how much different factions like you, which only really offer rewards. So let’s research different diplomacy systems and ideas from articles and blog posts online.

Below is a digest of the each system, with a reaction summary. At the end, hopefully, we’ll have a useful conclusion.

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Vampire the Masquerade: Storyteller System

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The White Wolf wiki mentions the concept of “a character’s natural prowess and learned ability coming together to perform a task.” The “storyteller system” used by VtM/White Wolf, categorizes physical, social and mental attributes. These are for tabletop roleplaying, so we need to keep that in mind.

Social attributes:

Charisma
Manipulation
Appearance

Mental attributes:

Intelligence
Perception
Wits

Social Skills:

Animal Ken
Empathy
Expression
Intimidation
Persuasion
Socialize
Streetwise
Subterfuge (aka Deception in other systems)

Mental Skills:

(Various i.e. Medicine, Politics, Science, Computer, Academics, etc.)

Analysis: According to White Wolf’s Storyteller game System, an attribute + a skill creates a Dice Pool to roll to attempt an action. I’m not sure I want to use that in a CRPG, but I do want to derive character stats created by mixing skills and attributes.

Elven Academy has 6 attributes and 6 skills, so this approach seems promising. I really want to look at VtM:Bloodlines now (the CRPG), but let’s look at a few other tabletop games first.

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Tunnels and Trolls (Deluxe Ed. 2015):

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T&T has a talent system among its rule extensions in the latest edition. Looking through the list for ideas, I find:

Charming. This is literally the #1 stat in Elven Academy.
Cleverness. This is almost literally the #2 stat in Elven Academy. I didn’t copy T&T. I swear. Except for the Luck attribute. I’ll admit to an abnormal respect for Luck due to T&T, but it does fit into a fairy/elf/Irish themed setting.
Diplomat is included in a cultural category that includes History, Literature, and Poetry. I would like to do better in this area in an elf game, but stats could get bloated.
Persuasion. Leadership and Seduction are subcategories.

Analysis: This is why Tunnels and Trolls, although obscure, is an influence. It was created way back in the beginning as a KISS system. That’s why I started with it as a kid in the 1970s, and there is a lot of wisdom in that design principle.

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5E D&D:

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Neither the PHB or the DMG has Diplomacy or Reputation listed in their indexes. That’s a problem. 5E removed the Diplomacy skills.

Languages. Languages? D&D is still using languages for roleplay? Not something I ever considered as part of diplomacy, but it’s realistic and something to consider in game writing.

Feats of Actor, Leader, and Linguist.

“Fuck the 5E,” declared the party leader, with a grandiose tone. “No Diplomacy?”

Analysis: Is a dedicated Diplomacy skill useful? In my RPG project, I designated the attributes Charm and Cunning to be the primary diplomatic skill checks (currently), because they are personal. Whether you are more charming or more devious (as shown in the dialog text), you have more agency in the immediate outcome in the conversation.

Negatives: Diplomacy (as a skill) seems fitting for sitting down for a political negotiation in a meeting room. It works for a D&D live game where you want to sum up a scenario into a result/outcome instead of talking it all out. Surely 5E has a system, and I can’t find it in the books or online. So let’s go back in time.

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3.5E D&D (Baldur’s Gate 2, Neverwinter Nights):

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Appraise.

Bluff! Remember Bluff? Remember using Bluff in combat? That was silly. Then you have the Sense Motive skill in 3.5E to evade a bluff.

Diplomacy. DnD 3E and 3.5 had Diplomacy skill checks, with a DC based on initial attitude of the NPC (Hostile, Unfriendly, Indiffferent, Friendly, or Helpful). Success on the check moves the NPC’s attitude level. Charisma modifies the check

Disguise.
Forgery.
Gather Information.
Intimidate skill. The Persuasive feat gives a bonus.
Sense Motive.

Analysis: I like Intimidation. I do have a Fighter skill, which is underused. This and Cunning would go very well towards an Intimidation score. Suppose a monk is playing a Charm/Fighter ‘build’ in the game. Currently only Cunning can reasonably intimidate, since Fighter intimidation doesn’t really make sense in most elven diplomacy. Martial presence would just play a small factor. So I’m liking these amalgam diplomacy skills here.

Negatives: I can’t imagine using Bluff against elves very successfully. I notice these 3.5E skills again seem to be oriented towards tabletop, DM’d gameplay. There is a passage of time that’s awkward in an RPG? I need to work on expanding time in my CRPG. Allow actions that take much more time. Is worth an entire skill slot out of the 18 that I’m using?

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3.5E D&D (Neverwinter Nights 1 and 2):

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After reviewing D&D rules, it’s clear that many tabletop roleplay skills don’t translate well to a CRPG. So let’s study games again, instead.

NWN divided Diplomacy into Persuade and Taunt. Animal Empathy. Lore.
NWN2 brought in Diplomacy, Intimidate, Bluff, and Appraise.

Analysis: Someone in a NWN2 forum asked if party members contribute to Diplomacy. This is an interesting idea, since I’ve gone to the trouble of allowing the player to customize their party a bit when the embark on a module. Currently, I allow the player to ask a party member to handle something. I could consider modifications to rolls based on the company you keep.

Negatives: These options are underwhelming, made for a game where you are supposed to fight 90% of the time.

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Fallout 1,2:

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F1,2: Deception, Persuasion, Speech
F3: Barter, Speech (limited by Charisma)

Analysis: Fallout 3 actually removed a number of roleplay skills. Lame. I don’t really find other CRPGs that add to what has already been mentioned. Sadly.

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Knights of the Old Republic (KOTOR):

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Awareness (Wisdom) – used to spot mines.
Persuade (Charisma) – Level up to pass dialogue options.
Affect/Dominate mind – Jedi mind tricks! Worth considering.

It’s also worth noting that squad mates can help with skills in KOTOR. That’s about it. I searched Steam and found zero RPG’s tagged with diplomacy.

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Vampire the Masquerade: Bloodlines:

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Let’s look, at last, at the most promising inspiration for my CRPG design issues, which is the VtM:Bloodlines CRPG. Let’s see how they are putting attributes and skills together to form derived diplomacy-related stats, as mentioned by the White Wolf general game system wiki.

To be clear, I’m looking for inspiration, not emulation. The world of elves is very different from the world of vampires. For reference, I’m looking at a VtMB character sheet. https://vtmb.fandom.com/wiki/Character_Sheet

I have Charm and Cunning as main stats in my game. This sort of correlates to light side/dark side choices in Star Wars RPG dialogues. If I add an Appearance score to my character sheet, as a stat derived from quality level of outfit and perfume, that roughly correlates to the three VTMB social attributes.

I have a Perception stat as my third social/mental main stat of six. The other three are Toughness, Agility, and Luck. “Wits” in VTMB seems to be related to things like Hacking and Defense. “Intelligence” is not something I want. This post sums up my thoughts on it.

So I have three Social attributes: Charm, Cunning, and Appearance. Perception will also be useful. Next I’ll try to mix them with skills to create some new, useful diplomacy abilities, using everything I’ve gathered in my research.

Current learned skills in the game system:

Aesthetics (includes sense of fashion and style)
Scholar (includes history, literature)
Psychic (mind-reading, divination)
Craftsman (???)
Ranger (includes botany)
Fighter (???)

Learned skills used in other game systems:

Affect/Dominate Mind*
Animal Ken*
Barter
Deception
Empathy*
Expression*
Intimidation*
Persuasion
Socialize*
Speech (public speaking?)
Streetwise–will not use, this is a forest
Subterfuge–dupe of deception
Disguise.–not worth a skill
Forgery.*
Gather Information.+worth a look
Lie–dupe of deception
Jest–not worth a skill, just say the jest
Plead--persuasion
Fascinate–seduction
Perform–already have in aesthetics
Inspire–similar to Leadership

Analysis:

*Existing Aesthetics skill includes Expression, Socialize.
*Psychic skill could include Affect/dominate mind, Animal Ken, and Empathy.
*Craftsman could include Forgery.
*Fighter skill could contribute to Intimidation.

Gather Info is a time dilating/skipping skill, to be considered as a new game design approach. So the only categories not covered are Barter/Merchant. Deception, and Persuasion. Let’s move those down to a possible new diplomatic ability.

Possible derived diplomatic abilities:

Barter/Haggle/Merchant
Deception
Intimidate
Persuasion
Seduction dupe of Persuasion, Affect/Dominate Mind or Fascinate?
Leadership
Sense Motive.
Bluff, Lie–no, can be rolled into Deception

I need six derived diplomacy skills to swap out the boring set of rep scores and go “full diplomacy” mode. Do we have enough? It looks sketchy.

The problem I see is that Charm and Cunning are essentially lightside and darkside stats in the game. So a 100% build with one or the other will have trouble with certain diplomacy options. Seems fair, but they need to be balanced. That leads to a 3-stat derivation instead of two.

Charm-based Diplomacy:

Leadership** (includes Inspire): Charm + Ranger + Appearance
Empathy : (includes Sense Motive) Charm + Psychic + Aesthetics

Mixed Or Non-Charm/Cunning Diplomacy:

Mercantile (includes Haggle and Barter): Perception + Luck + Craftsman
Persuasion (includes Fascination, Seduction): Charm + Cunning + Appearance

Cunning-based Diplomacy:

Intimidation : Cunning + Toughness + Fighter
Deception (includes Bluffing and Lying) : Cunning + Perception + Appearance

Analysis: I’m remembering now why I created only 6 attributes and 6 skills. It’s because I was concerned I wouldn’t be able to create enough gameplay to satisfy the existence of more stats. The best RPG’s we have only use a small handful of simple diplomatic stats in conversations.

Also can I realistically add enough conversation options to satisfy these additional abilities? Will all of these stats confuse the casual player too much, and all be underutilized?

I do think they would satisfy the thinking RPG player who wants to get into the stats. I don’t think I need the complexity of the Storyteller dice roll system. I would definitely like to include more diplomacy in the game, with meaningful branching outcomes to dialogues.

At this time, I’m still keeping the reputation scores as invisible stats, quantified results of diplomacy. I need to find rewards to pay off the use of the diplomacy skills.

Final Bullet Points To Mull Over:

1. Natural ability + learned ability = Approach to a task (Storyteller system.)
2. Consider racial languages as a feature of the game writing.
3. Consider leaving immediate time sequence and writing diplomacy (or etc.) that skips a block of time, to leverage the player imagination into feeling a lot more is happening.
4. Allow party members to contribute to diplomacy?
5. Affect/dominate mind. Jedi and Sith. Vampires. These are huge favorites, worth considering in the gameplay and/or story writing.
6. Beware of diplomatic solutions giving significantly less rewards than violence.

**EDIT- after revising the game code for the new 6-skill diplomacy system, I decided to replace Leadership with Presence.  This is coincidentally a Discipline in in VTMB, which essentially boils down to mind control.

My concept is human presence, which encompasses Personality, Speech, Leadership, and other subtleties. I feel “Leadership” is not quite the right feel for a game that values emo, non-violence, tree-hugging, etc.

Thanks for reading. I hope this blog post helps stimulate some brain cells for someone out there in human land. In Part 2 of this essay, I will try to research uses of Diplomacy, how to handle it, ways to make it meaningful in game writing, etc.. Horse. Cart.