I'm thinking about Persona* a lot lately, partially because P3 Reload is out and I kind of want to play it but also it's $70 so fuck that shit. But partially it's because I realized while putting together the playlist for Valiant Horizon how well the two concepts overlaid with each other with only a little reflavoring/stretching:
Normalish people given extraordinary power
Powers come from discrete beings with archetypical distinctions that are intended to match with the character
Huge emphasis on relationships and building both towards understanding that archetypical power better and being closer to the person who wields it, is associated with it, etc.
*3-5. I know 2 has its fans but I've never played it and honestly it's a little longer in the tooth than I have patience for nowadays. I'm sure 1 has its adherents too but I don't know them.
Written for Prismatic Wasteland's "make a new mechanic and give it a name" challenge.
You have two approaches to a situation on either side of a spectrum. For example, let's say... Soundwaves and Emotions. Decide which is "high" and which is "low", then define your Number between 1 and 10, inclusive. A number skewed towards one side means that you'll have high chances of success but also high chances of consequences for the other side, and vice versa.
Or wouldn't want to play, I guess, if that's your goal. Basically try to make something that holds your interest.
Just feel it out, you know? You probably know what you want to do, practically speaking. Trust your instincts, they probably came from somewhere.
Unless you don't have any clue where you're going which is fine too. Sometimes it's about the journey. Sure helps to have a destination in mind though.
Be an absolute sicko about something in your work. This isn't really game design specific but it's good practice.
Design offensively, not defensively. Whenever you think you went a little too far, suppress that instinct and double down.
Every person posting about game design like they absolutely know what the fuck they're doing is a goddamn liar or has their head up their ass, including me. Just make the fucking thing. You got this.
You should always have 10 things on a list even when you can't think of 10 of them.
FREE SPACE
Your game needs at least one more railgun than it currently has. Get on that.
This post is about the various mechanical choices made in Valiant Horizon at a very high level. I group these into three categories: Diceless mechanics (stuff that works), Roll for Magnitude mechanics (stuff that works but you roll to see how much), and Roll for Success mechanics (stuff that works if a roll goes your way).
Diceless
The simplest kind of mechanic. This is what Assets, Exhausting Assets, and Burdens are:
Ah no I'm writing another dicelessness article by accident oh god help
Off the bat, one of the technological aspects I ran into is that Narrat is very particular about skill rolls. They're binary in nature, you have to define how they work up front, and you don't get the roll value on a check, just pass/fail.
ANOINTED's premise is that you are an immortal warrior (an Anointed) who has been locked away for years following ages of glory, intrigue, war, and disillusionment. When you emerge, you have no memories, but are called/drawn/etc to return to the side of the (long dead) king to whom all Anointed are beholden by ritual bond.
I don't have an actual cover for this one yet so for now you get a screencap from the SRD title. This one's still at pretty high level. But I did some of that high level work and I wanna talk about it!
Speaking of the SRD, this is the third Total//Effect game I initially proposed/outlined/etc on the Total//Effect SRD. My general (self)-pitch was:
Same idea, different game. I'd considered dicelessness for APOCALYPSE FRAME first, actually, but decided it wasn't worth putting it in the core game because I wanted it to come out ever. The big reason I'd do it is that rolling dice actually does slow things down quite a bit and for the most part players usually just reroll with Tension in combat so it's not like consequences come up that much unless folks are using low-die Armaments with low Tension or rolling low Attributes for some reason.
I had been thinking about the topic of randomness when writing entries for Regions for ANOINTED23, but Spencer Campbell (GilaRPGs, creator of LUMEN/RUNE/etc) wrote two blogposts (with a third on the way) that got me thinking about it. Specifically, I'm wondering if I could/should just remove dice almost entirely from ANOINTED, my GMless or GM'd/group or solo soulslike game in development.
So I'm thinking about what I'm doing with Professions in Liminal Void. A Profession is like...a class, kind of/sort of? It's got a starting skillset (basically a broad Skill category), a little passive ability that differentiates it, a few changes to being able to recover/reload/recharge in combat, and a starting equipment package (which includes an outfit, a capital-T Tool, and two consumables).
