Elven Academy

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.

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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.

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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.

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.

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“The Situation”: Character And Conflict.

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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.

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How to make diplomacy engaging?

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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.

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Leverage: Finding And Exploiting Character Weaknesses

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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.

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Diplomatic Rewards: How To Make Diplomacy Fun

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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.

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Conclusion

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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.

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Alternatives To Persuasion

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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.

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Persuasion Based On Socioeconomic Kinship

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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.

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Persuasion Based On Leverage

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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.

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Conclusion

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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.

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.