Indie Lurking III: Vermys

[V_K]

there is no such thing as "outdated"

Oh, but there very much is. Bloodletting as a method of treatment is very much outdated, and so are public executions as a form of entertainment. Just to cite a couple of examples.
You just shouldn't confuse things that went out of fashion, but have nothing intrinsically wrong about them (and therefore can get back in good graces at any point), and things that humanity left behind for good reason.

also I have no idea what QTEs have to do with dungeon design now... i am completely lost.

I was referring to the gif CryptRat posted, and then I thought of platfromers in general, and then of Dark Souls (another game that loves trolling the player)... Yeah, that wasn't a very clear point. :D

 

[aweigh]

obsolete is not the same as outdated. bloodletting is not the right analogy h ere.

 

[oklabsoft]

Hot off the press... too tired to proofread... The lore (plot?) of Vermys...

As the ancient tales tell, the exceedingly great and ferocious wurm Tumidus laid waste to the land and its inhabitants. The races ceased to war amongst each other and united in purpose against this bitter foe. When the end seemed near, one Thriftis of the elfin folk took up his blade of adamant and looked once last upon the tombs of his fathers and of his family. He wept then, and going forth, the earth brought him rumor of the coming of Tumidus. He hid himself then, within a cleft in the barren stone. Soon the swollen coils of the vermys passed nigh to his head as the brute passed over and nearly, he swooned at the foul stench. With all of his strength, he stabbed upward with his blade which pricked deep into the foul underbelly of Tumidus. A deadly blood as black as the depths of moonless night spewed forth, and he was overcome. Thus, though Thriftis lived no more, the peoples rejoiced to be rid of the wurm. But they were all of them deceived; for Tumidus had cunningly hidden her brood in secret across the land, and the peoples knew not.

The offspring of Tumidus hatched and slowly grew as is their wont. The races, ignorant of their peril, soon returned to war, vying for for the lands and wealth and resources that remained in the wake of the reign of Tumidus. And the hand of Nix, the dwarf king, grew strong. Into the North he led his great armies against the nomadic troll peoples, coveting the veins of mithril that glittered in the darkness of the many caverns of the Frostmarch concealed deep in the heart of that kingdom. With Nix went Grond, king of men, and a great host of his warriors. For many days and nights they drove the great trolls ever deeper into the North. But when victory seemed certain, the great hunter Alibah issued forth from the foothills of the Frostmarch leading a great legion of elves in aid of the trolls, for the elves above other races harbored respect for these. And even as they bore down upon the armies of dwarf and man, it could be seen that many of the halfling people also had ridden upon stout mountain ponies in support of the elfin cause, for the halflings had long enjoyed peace and friendship with the elves. The legendary battle of five armies lasted not long, for no sooner had the fiercest of fighting begun than all stopped and stood as if stricken as the very earth shook. Turning their gazes northward, all witnessed the coming of Crystallo, the frost vermys. Most quailed and fled at the sight of the great wurm. Nix, being stout of heart, rallied such brave souls as would stand against the beast to his banner. Long, it seemed, they vied with Crystallo upon that frozen field. Yet in reality it was but a brief time, for Crystallo was not yet full mature and had not yet stood tested against the wiles of the fiercest of the land's inhabitants. Thus Nix dealt a great blow upon the wurm, and hewed the thick neck of the beast. But as he so did, Crystallo turned his head at the last and gnashed his teeth, and Nix was rent, and the light left his eyes.

Now tale of these deeds went far and wide, and rumor was heard that other vermi also plagued the land anew, the dread offspring of Tumidus. The wars of the races were again forgotten, and the peoples lived in fear and locked their doors and drew their shutters. The vermi became ever bolder, harrying and slaying the peoples of the land. But the bravest went forth to deal with them. And Pirata sailed forth into the seas, and did seek out the seawurm Maris. After long seeking, they met, and battled amidst a great storm, and were battered by the raging sea. But Maris was slain, and the vessel of Pirata was broken, and he has not again returned to the shores. Now Alibah rued his own cowardice, for he had fled the field of the Frostmarch. And he took again his arms and went out alone unto the deserts. Haranae, the sandwurm, he found there. And they did battle. And Alibah was wounded even unto death. But Haranae already had become proud, and he gazed about to see if any soul had witnessed his victory. And Alibah took then his great bow of yew which had fallen near him. And drawing his last arrow with all of his strength, while yet upon the ground he loosed it, and it found somehow the heart of Haranae. And Haranae fell upon Alibah, and Alibah was no more. Now Lucretious was of the halflings, and his ways were wily and subtle. And he ever sought wealth. In hope of reward, he ventured into the blasted lands. Amidst the ash and dust and lava vomited of the earth he found Ignys, the firewurm. Long he lay in wait biding his time and observing the movements of the vermys. In time. Ignys did take rest. And Lucretious crept near, administering the most deadly of poisons to the blackened lips of the beast. But Ignys did wake, and it is said that they spoke together for a time before the poison overtook Ignys. And as Lucretious came forth, it is told that a strange and fell look was upon him, and he cast himself into a deep pit, and was no more.

In those days only the great earthwurm Petram remained, the last of the vermi. And he took up in a yawning cave in the face of a great rock wall in the NeverRange. Ever he emerged to slay and destroy and ever the races sent sorties to challenge him. But none could assail him in his stronghold for ever would he witness their approach over the open plains and lie in wait to destroy them. Stout adventurers would sit in the waning evening light and tip tankards of ale at the public houses across the lands, speaking of the threat of Petram in his impenetrable stronghold. No longer did they laugh at 'dragon-slaying' for deep down each knew that none had ever actually done so, and none that had ever succeeded lived to tell the tale. But from the broken ruins of an ancient hall near towne crawled one day a man. His armor was rent, his helm was dinted and his sword was dulled and broken. He had many wounds. Three words could be discerned as they were uttered from his dry throat before the light left his eyes... “secret... passages.......vermys”.

 

[aweigh]

oklabsoft

a bit too much lo and unto thee bible speak but killing an uppity worm is a good enough reason to go crawl some dungeons. i hope all those worms show up as bosses and that you can steal shit from them with your party thief.

what're you thinking of doing regarding racial attributes, modifiers and class attenuations, if anything, btw? the more layers the better. race, primary attributes, skills (either class skills, racial skills, or generalised skills, or any combination of them all), secondary attributes (if any, but this can be a catch-all category for misc. options for the player that are dependant on character and party composition), etc.

what type of spell system are you thinking of using? Wiz-style vancian casting or something else?

you ever given thought to borrowing some already-done ideas in previous Wiz-clones such as implementing racial affinities (wizardry empire series) where each race has a +1, +2, -1 and -2, or "0", disposition modifier towards another race and their Alignment, so that if you for example fill a party with half-devils they they'll sport a -1 affinity penalty, and then (in the wiz empire games) the sum total of pluses/minuses is calculated and a Party Affinity Rating is given to the player's party and this modifier can end up being a -1, a +2, a -2, a +3, etc, and that number is then added (or substracted) to every character's primary attributes!

obviously i'm not saying you should copy or even implement that system just letting you know about it as it's something (that i know of) no other turn-based dungeon crawler has done before.

as for classes: how are you gonna do them? are you thinking of using "sub-classes" that co-exist with the original class of the character or something different?

but... the absolute most important question I want to ask you: are you planning on using the Wizardry style loot-by-floor and tier system?

IMO one of classic Wizardry's greatest strengths that has stood the test of time is the fact that treasure chests appear after you defeat the enemy, but they are not tied to that enemy nor any enemy group; instead in Wizardry each dungeon floor has 3 different "tiers" (common / uncommon / rare) and those 3 tiers are meticulously hand-picked by the designers, such that there is no random loot in Wizardry, and then each dungeon floor is assigned 3 tiers of chests which will drop after battle.

the type of enemy fought has absolutely zero bearing on what tier of loot drops, or if a drop happens at all, as that happens only via "fixed encounters". Even though wizardry features random battles and random encounters the ingenious design of the first 5 scenarios and the later japanese-developed Wizardry games is that the treasure chests (loot) is gated by encounters that are not random, and these encounters can "farmed" via various ways (exiting and re-entering that dungeon floor being the most common), however they take care to place "fixed encounters" where appropriate and they always make sure that they matter beyond the fact that they drop chests.

random encounters serve a different purpose (in earlier scenarios) where instead of dropping chests (although there is like a 0.2 % chance of them doing so in a few of the scenarios) instead the random encounters have a random chance to be "friendly" and this provides the player with the opportunity to choose to fight the enemies or to leave them in peace; an incredibly simple mechanic that functions as a way of keeping the character alignments (and thus party alignments) constantly fluid throughout the cours eof the entire game.

you can expound on these concepts and make them your own as they are such simple, and such elegant game design decisions that while seemingly simplistic serve to dovetail infinitesimally throughout every single mechanical layer that the games are providing.

The fact that loot is tied to floors in Wizardry (and thus Elminage, and many other Wiz-clones) means that there will always be a valid reason for the player's band adventurers to continue exploring further deeper into the dungeon as the lure of danker loot (and more dangerous encounters, more difficult puzzles and more extravagant navigational challenges) will always be just one floor away.

Some people mistakenly think Wizardry and its clones utilize "random loot" but it absolutely does not, which is why I wanted to explain how the loot systems work, and also in the off chance you didn't know about it to give you food for thought as it's one of the most simple and elegant ways to design a naturally symbiotic itemization map of progression for the player and the game.

Games that allow every enemy to drop all that they were carrying, when not handled well (OBlivion, Skyrim, etc) will lead to haphazard itemization (being generous here) and when treasures are made as literal random drops from random encounters (Grimoire, StarCrawlerz, many more, etc) then it can easily lead to "yay, more random junk" syndrome for the player.

itemization is one of the most difficult things to implement well in an RPG and I think studying how Wizardry 1-5 and Wiz Empire and Elminage series of games do it will most definitely serve as creative inspiration for anybody, as 30+ years onwards and there is still no other RPG that has managed to make a better skinner-box implementation than Wizardry and its legions of clones.

TL;DR: you should post about the nitty gritty stuff you want to implement, hehe; as for example I'd love to know what the primary attributes and char. class are for those wurms.

 

[oklabsoft]

Well I have already fallen victim to the random loot trap in L1 even though there is a 'rarity index' attached to items it does not prevent you from 'winning the lottery' early on so I will absolutely follow this paradigm you have described here (which indeed I was not aware of). I chose to leave out age and alignment (for now at least). I made an editor of class and race defs which I will probably be playing with numbers for a while. Attributes are str, int, agi, wis, vit, charisma and luck. Races are human, elf, dwarf, halfling, and troll. Current classes are basic and are warrior, sorcerer, cleric, burglar, ranger (can use bow med combat skill and slow sorcery), enchanter (slower sorcery and blessing plus light armor), paladin (good combat plus slow blessing). Also started throwing out some lower attain skills to mix classes at higher levels but right now just trying to put some things in place until I can see how it works out later but I made an editor to easily edit class and race definitions which load into game. Resistances are heat, cold, magic, fear, stone, poison, infection and one more I can't remember right now.

 

[aweigh]

i added some more of my thoughts regarding the 2nd layer of conflict resolution that wizardry implemented via the "trapped chest scenario" and how I think it is a shining example of how to do emergent gameplay in the simplest way imaginable.

it's in the wizardry series thread most recent post. this is not to say that the trapped chest is some sort of pinnacle in RPG design, far from it, it is however one that has stood the test of time and serves as an example, a freaking "class is in session kids" lesson, in how a game's cascading layers of systems, game play mechanics and mathematical approach to striving to make sure that each instance, scenario or incident or choice or conflict that the player encounters while playing, no matter how simple or overt it may be, should be in a constant feedback loop with every other layer of every other game play mechanic and design system in the game.

the trapped chest is not just something that gives loot: it is a secondary and additional layer of conflict (and thus resolution) that they implemented in order to not have the combat engine, the individual fight encounters, become the focal point of the player's brain space.

after conquering those bad enemies, and after being lucky enough to receive a tiered drop, now the player is presented with a chest that is trapped and must be inspected via the utilization of the skills (thus the classes, which is another reason "pumping points into disambiguate skills" is an inferior implementation as it pertains to party and class composition; the chest may spring its trap unexpectedly on the player due to a failed inspection, or it might succeed, but the important thing that it is not a random event.

the chest might reveal its trap, but now the psychology of the trapped chest scenario presents itself: should the player risk his party of adventurer's well-being for the chance to acquire what may be something good, or something bad? Wizardry designers made damn sure to inform the player that the traps inside chests are far more dangerous to a player's party than the majority of the fighting encounters and enemies!

It becomes a bona fide miniature skinner-box situation and the player must weigh his options carefully: does he have enough resources to, say, maybe cure poison if the trap shoots poisoned darts and poisones some party members?

and, of course, Wizardry makes damn sure to let the adventuring party know immediately that what happens inside the dungeon carries weight and consequence. The very thing this player probably noticed upon entering the town shop is that apart from the magical items, the most expensive items are the healing and restorative and the antidote potions/scrolls.

This means that getting poisoned is serious. But it's not necessarily a death knell, as the player can then decide to try to make it back to town, even though every single step his party takes inflicts damage due to the poison in half his party.

Now he is thinking about a second problem: even if he makes it back to town (after all, only half his chars got poisoned), if the afflicted chars actually don't make it and die then that means he will probably not be able to resurrect them due to the ridiculous expense of it; and not only that: what if this player decided that one of his poisoned chars, let's say his Mage, didn't need all that VITALITY, and during his rolling for bonus points he ended up making a lopsided mage with very high INT, high AGI (gotta get those spells to fire off before the enemy acts!!!) and woeful VIT, and guess what...?

Low VIT affects the chances of a dead character not being strong enough to accept a resurrection, even if it is one paid for at the town temple. They turn into a ghost. (LOL).

Everything constantly leads back into everything else. Every single aspect of every single thing that comprises Wizardry, regardless of their simplicity, manage to perfectly exist in as a combine and not as individual mechanics, not as pieces of a hub or a system, but rather in symbiosis: without one aspect of anything, every other aspect could not function to its fullest, as for example what if they'd "forgotten" to make VITALITY affect resurrection? Just as a quick example.

Heh, you don't need to read that post now since I basically re-wrote it again here but in a more serious tone but I blab about the psychological aspect a bit more there, and also the fact that the simple, very simple "scenario" of a Wizardry party getting poisoned and having to carefully manage their resources and even count their steps in order to make it back to the stairs and back to town and safety is the very definition of emergent gameplay and it is a shining example of how very, VERY simplified implementations of a concept or premise (the aforementioned trapped chest scenario) can become greater than the sum of its parts by making a game complete in its design.

That is one of the hardest fucking things an artist can hope to accomplish, in any medium, and Wizardry did this shit like it was nothing and to this day the games not only hold up but are heads and shoulders above most others due to the elegant beauty of its simple and symbiotic game design.

They took the D&D "trapped chest" premise and successfuly made it their own; they transformed it into RPG games' first legitimate skinner box scenario and did it while simultaenously accomplishing the rare feat of leaving it entirely up to the player.

There is no one forcing the player to do anything at all, least of all open trapped chests. It was his greed that got him poisoned. But unlike many other games, that doesn't end in failure states, instead it allows the player to begin and continue playing in a different way than he previously was.

That!

That is true "choice and consequence".

Codex.

 

[aweigh]

holy shit, you were right about the quotes not inserting. heh.

yeah, that sounds awesome man, the editor i'm downloading it right now. basic classes are always the best, imo, because they represent the core foundation of everything the game purports to allow the player to experience, and that means they are the hardest classes to get right.

 

[aweigh]

what does each primary attribute affect, directly/indirectly?

edit: are they capped to a certain amount depending on the Race, or perhaps even what class, or both? Or is there a universal "cap" on all attributes (i don't recommend that but that's just my opinion).

the way Wizardry handles attributes is that they utilize exponential progression: below 15, a STR value will not provide any benefit whatsoever, and in fact if it is below 12 (might be 13 in some games) it will actually give a malus.

however, post-15 (16, 17, 18, 19, etc, with the maximum amount being determined by what race this character is) every additional +1 exponentially gives benefits.

they do the same with INT and PIETY: a Mage with 16 INT will have (i'm just spit balling a number here, as I'm not looking at any reference sheets right now) perhaps an additional 5% chance for his sleep spell to be effect, along with the amount of turns it is effective for...

...however a mage with 18 INT, only 2 points higher, will not have 15% extra, but rather much more. A mage with 20 INT (if i remember correctly would have to be an elf probably, or a devilish character in japanese Wiz scenarios) can be said to literally have TWICE the success rate, TWICE the damage output, etc, as a mage of the same race with only 17.

it seems like the gap isn't big, only 3 points, but each point is so unbelievably important that suddenly the fact that races determine the max amount their primary attributes can reach becomes... very important.

Of course then you have to make sure that it doesn't devolve into the player always choosing the same shit, i.e. going for this hypothetical elf mage every playthrough. That's bad design. The fact that each attribute matters so damn much also means that this hypothetical elf's low maximum of 15 VIT (compared to 20-22 max VIT on a Dwarf for example) means this elf mage will not only always gain very small amounts of hit points on every level up, but it also means he will be a high-risk character if killed because the resurrection spell/temple might not work on him.

This is a very quick-and-dirty example but that's how they did it, and while it's not necessarily the best approach it does lend itself to making the player begin to care deeply about weighing the pros and cons of each race's maximum attribute caps, and that in turn dovetails into classes, and party composition, and all that shit.

They didn't do the exponential progression on some stats, though, like AGILITY. That would be crazy because then a 20-22 AGI hobbit or whatever would always go first, and that would be bad. Agility, unlike STR and PIE (in Wizardry) gives linear benefits.

Pillars of Eternity's approach is the complete opposite: obsidian made it so that every primary attribute affected something, and more to the point: multiple things. This kind of works but at the same time completely dilutes the importance of the overall attribute scheme and the player ends up not pondering the pros and cons but rather attempting to min/max as much as possible.

min/maxing is... not indicative of "perfect design". Not that it ain't fun though, of course.

 

[oklabsoft]

Nothing... Yet.
Str: Max encumbrance, hit bonus
Int: sorcery
Wis: magic max
Vit: hm, poison/inf damage
Agi: evade, battle init, ac bonus
Cha: NPC interaction, shoppe pricing, rally party as leader
Luck: lots of little bonuses
Piety: blessings

These were my thoughts

Oh and I think I was giving like 10ish points to designate at creation

 

[TigerKnee]

In terms of what I want to see in a Wiz-clone, I would rather see something more along the lines of 6-7 than 1-3, because I feel the Japanese has already covered the latter pretty well and are still doing so. I know some people are going to say "But Animu Art is shit so I can't play those" but since it doesn't bother me personally, all I care is the gameplay and the standard systems of Wiz 1-3 is already pretty stale to me.

But I guess the final deciding factor will be the strength of the puzzles/dungeon design so I will say that I prefer lateral thinking ones better than "slow grind trial and error puzzles" like minefields/poison floors/teleporters. Dark Heart of Uukrul is a really good example of the former.

 

[aweigh]

EDIT: BTW, we haven't talked about Dark Heart's awesome magic system. Instead of using magic points, mana or vancian casting it utilizes magic very sparingly as the player has to earn spells by visiting Shrines which are usually "hard to find", heh, and the Shrines themselves hide their knowledge (i.e. you getting the spells) behind runic language and symbols (product of a previous, more advanced, civilization, perhaps? game doesn't answer it does it?).

Anyway using magic in Dark Heart feels cool and important, and it feels like proper magic: runic, mysterious, dangerous, and very powerful.

But there are no Wiz-inspired crawlers made that ape Wiz 1-3. They all ape Wiz 5 and cherry-pick the good bits from Wiz 6; and in the case of Elminage series they completely surpass Wizardry by polishing every single mechanic to their highest possible degree and with their addition of new races, classes and an item Enchantment system along with gotta-catch-'em-all Summoning thanks to their new Summoner class.

I mean, if you're saying you're tired of "mazes, puzzles, turn-based combat, limited inventories and an emphasis on resource management then yes, those are all Wiz 1-3 and none of that is present overtly (if at all) in Wiz 6-7 (btw, why leave out 8? It's an amazing game).

now a Wiz 6 "clone" would be interesting, but the japanese approach of cherry-picking bits of 6 to add to Wiz 5 blueprint while additionally adding 1 or 2 new systems (such as enchanting items and summons) seems to me the best possible marriage of both worlds.

Wiz 7 however would be a huuuuge, enourmous undertaking. Honestly I would then suggest just making something open world instead and go full-tilt on puzzles, crazy NPC adventurers running around, inexplicable shit/towns/places you wander into without any context, and occasionally spending an hour or two fighting trash mobs inside a linear cavern/ruin/place.

Also Wiz 6 is much better written than 7, and I dare say at some parts (mostly in the beginning) almost even... evocative... and atmospheric, in a way Wiz 1-5 never were. It devolves into nonsense half-way through about around the time you are tasked with collecting rubbar bands for a clan of dwarves in order for them to use the rubber bands to make some sort of catapult or some shit and then I think they wanted send a message some where?

It goes full Bradley afterwards when you indiana jones your way into the amazonian territory where the strong women ask you to go kill the big evil boss of the game.

And needless to say Wiz 6's ending... ahem... the party defeats the resurrected Vampire King (who, in a surprising feat of competent story telling by Bradley ties into stuff the player reads/experiences right from the first area of the game) and then defeat his pet dragon/thing (I think it had guns for arms or some weird shit) the party finds a space ship.

And they board it and fly the fuck off to space and officially say goodbye to the Wizardry name. Heh.

Wiz 7 NPCs are where Bradley really let loose and they are just very badly written. (To me) it is obvious he spent too much time in making empty over-land areas and writing the most nonsensical npcs/puzzles/"lore"he could think of he simply forgot to put an actual game in there.

I will agree with you on this, TigerKnee: I also am tired of 1:1 "clones" of Wiz 1-5, and always have been, and it is why you never see me going on about the lesser japanese Wiz-clones like Stranger of Sword City (which, btw, sells like 10 times more than Elminage series...); I want to experience a bit of the old, with a bit of new stuff sprinkled in, and have the focal point of the experience be what truly matters: excellently designed mazes to explore, brilliant itemization and great turn-based combat that is fueld by varied classes that are all strongly defined and "useful" with multiple layers of stuff like attributes, abilities, spells, conditions, elements, properties, modifiers, maluses, traits, classes, and everything else.

We already have Wiz 1-3, and Wiz 5, I honestly don't think any Wizardry fan wants to keep playing 1:1 clones of those games. What for? The people who say games like Elminage ltierally are that, 1:1 "clones" of those scenarios, are mistaken.

tl;dr Yes I also agree that I would not be interested in playing Wizardry 5 in a different skin. I don't think any Wiz fan wants that. Like I said, what for?

Speaking of this topic how badly do you think Bard's Tale 4 is gonna get fucked up?

 

[V_K]

obsolete is not the same as outdated

Oxford dictionary disagrees:

outdated

ADJECTIVE

• Out of date; obsolete.
  
  ‘outdated equipment’

I'm not a native speaker FWIW.

 

[V_K]

Hot off the press... too tired to proofread... The lore (plot?) of Vermys...

This is way too long, unfortunately. Better condense the bits that are most relevant to the party's motivation to enter the dungeon to a single paragraph, and spread the rest across the dungeon as lore bits (maybe also use them as parts/clues for puzzles).

BTW, we haven't talked about Dark Heart's awesome magic system. Instead of using magic points, mana or vancian casting

DHoU actually has magic points. You're talking about spell acquisition which is a different mechanics.
Personally, in terms of magic systems I strongly prefer reagent-based ones. They give you more flexibility than vancian, and at the same time have more strategic resource management considerations than both MP and vancian (since reagents aren't restored at rest). oklabsoft, if you're feeling up to the challenge, look at the magic system in Trazere games - it gives you the ability to write your own spells by combining runes and reagents.

 

[aweigh]

I've always thought that adapting classic Vancian casting and then marrying it with well thought out reagent-based magic system wherein magic will always be presented to the player as rare, dangerous, exotic and powerful and more importantly: the product of the players own ingenuity due to the (obviously!) introduction of a basic template for crafting the spells, which can then also lend itself to providing means for the player to make non-magical products such as a healing herb or some shit.

It's the perfect combination of:

- Limited spell casting per day.
- Spells are not plentiful and must be prepared in advance by a knowledgable character due to being comprised of reagents.

And the most lovely part is that the regeants can obviously be integral to the itemization design; with the rare being just that, and the common being more than meets the eye, just like a decepticon!

The more I think about it the more sense it makes: the only thing Vancian casting "needs" is something like this; since vancian casting is immutably tied with the roots of D&D (and thus true resource management, i.e. the appropriation and thoughtful and strategic usage of a character's hit points, spells, abilities and skills, and nothing whatsoever to do with ridiculous item management)--

--making some of the spells (no need for every single spell to only be to exist via cooking it, after all) the product of the player's willingness to explore and hunt down truffles or whatever-the-fuck.

It lends itself so unbelievably well to all aspects of a good dungeon crawl that I can't believe it's not been done yet.

Perhaps Magic Candle did it, but right now I can't remember if Magic Candle utilized vancian casting: all I remember is that the game devolved half-way through into stockpiling mushrooms as it was otherwise tedious/nigh-impossible to win the later encounters without having everyone always eat 25 bags of shrooms.

A cautionary tale already!

 

[aweigh]

concerning that dictionary definition you brought up I can only say that it doesn't mean anything.

out of date
ˈˌoud əv ˈdāt/
adjective
adjective: out-of-date; adjective: out of date

1. old-fashioned.
   "everything in her wardrobe must be hopelessly out of date"
   synonyms: old-fashioned, outmoded, out of fashion, unfashionable, frumpish, frumpy, outdated, dated, old, passé, behind the times, behindhand, obsolete, antiquated; More
   
   antonyms: fashionable, modern
   • no longer valid or relevant.
     "your passport is out of date"
     synonyms: superseded, obsolete, expired, lapsed, invalid, (null and) void
     "many of the facts are out of date"
     antonyms: current

I believe you when you say you find the early Wiz scenarios to be tedious and full of unnecessary "filler" in the form of "mapping exercises", and that's fine, but see the key part of that definition of "out of date" is that it hinges on the premise of relevancy.

You won't find many, if any, posters here who will say RPG mechanics of any type are "irrelevant", and I dare say most will champion RPG design that has stood the test of time, to put it mildly.

Perhaps you simply don't enjoy mazes. There's absolutely no problem with that, but previously I posted for you the historical definitions (albeit very brief snippets copy/pasted from non-professional websites) concerning the history, the etymological and symbolic leanings behind what we nowadays dub "mazes" and "labyrinths", it is quite obvious that (specifically mazes) that mazes have always been a "mapping challenge".

Dunno if you read the entire post but I also mentioned briefly the dichotomy between the maze and the labyrinth and that each stimulates and evokes different areas of a person's "soul", if you will, but more scientifically the sides of their brain.

I "ended" the post by simply acquiescing that a good CRPG dungeon crawler that as a focal point has the player exploring dank dungeons and whatnot should be made by people who know how to make mazes and who know how a maze and a labyrinth magically complete and add to each other.

I also expressed that if, howeve,r your main source of complaint is simply bad mazes in crawlers, well that's no fault of the sub-genre. I even typed out the most obvious example, the starting room/starting area-maze in Wiz 4 which is the single most odiously conceived execution of a "puzzle" that has ever been done to unsuspecting players. That was bad design (although not quite literally as Wiz 4 mazes are the pinnacle of maze design in the Wiz series and head and shoulders above all else, with the possible exception of Dark Heart); bad design in that it was lazy and not well thought out.

That sort of thing can happen in any media/scenario/etc. When a maze is done right then it will fulfill the promise of challenging the maze explorer in every single way it can, because that is the entire point. I think if you played more good Wiz-clones, or more games like Dark Heart, you'd realize that you're imagining "Wiz-clones" and their ilk as all being comprised entirely of that odious room in the beginning of Wiz 4.

BTW, one recent example of a bad dungeon crawler with very mediocre design (and no, not going to bash StarCrawlers again...) would be Grimrock 2. The first game featured average-to-competent mazing and exploration but the sequel suffered drastically due to their want in "expanding the scope", whatever the fuck that even means.

Funnily enough they also begin Grimrock 2 with the player locked in a little cell, although obviously, since they actually want to sell units, the wooden stick which opens the thing you're in is but a brief pixel-hunt away .

You know, I don't dislike "logic" puzzles (if you want to call nonsensical fetching and retrieving, such as the bulk of Bradley's puzzle output) as they will always serve as a good reprieve from the other stuff the player has been doing, but my true disdain is for incompetently executed adventure game-style "pixel hunt" shenanigans.

If the only way to progress through a game's "puzzle" is by moving your mouse all around the screen... that is a gigantic sign that lets you know that you have been taken for a fool. That is not in any way whatsoever conducive to good game play.

Obviously this is an extreme scenario I'm mentioning, but it is very, very easy to "slip up" and just end up with multiple areas where you might have missed something because you didn't exhaust yourself searching every wall and mousing over every surface of the screen.

One might as well play a screen saver for all the intellectual stimulation that provides!

 

[Iznaliu]

If the only way to progress through a game's "puzzle" is by moving your mouse all around the screen... that is a gigantic sign that lets you know that you have been taken for a fool. That is not in any way whatsoever conducive to good game play.

There's many games out there where that is the whole game (mainly crappy point-and-click adventures).

 

[oklabsoft]

The long 'history' post was meant more to be the type of thing you might read in a manual that came in the box with a game. It will also help me maintain consistency in design of scenario and levels. I also was terrified to throw such a cliche plot out there without trying to support it somehow. I was originally headed into the 8 levels x 6 spells/blessing per, learn some when you level up, find the rest, if you have the mp you can try to cast territory. For me this would be easiest and quickest as I am most familiar. I like the rune combo idea a lot though. If I went that direction I would probably go with words over symbols. I suppose I could even add classes and do more than one school/style of magic although my plan was to stay simple at first but make things very editable and expandable.

 

[Iznaliu]

You won't find many, if any, posters here who will say RPG mechanics of any type are "irrelevant", and I dare say most will champion RPG design that has stood the test of time, to put it mildly.

When most people make games, they try to reach outside the walls of the Codex.

 

[aweigh]

EDIT: Regarding the existence of Myst.

I know. But when that is done well, then it is no longer what I described. It ceases to be a pixel hunt. When motivation and urgency and reciprocation between the game, the developer and the player is achieved then the mechanic of interaction becomes disengaged from particularity and regression.

Obviously I'm saying that when a point-and-click premise is executed competently it is no longer a "point and click", it is simply a game. When any game mechanic, or any game design intention is developed it ceases to be a a case of scenarios and incidents and play sequences and rather it becomes a game where the player is motivated by what is being presented to him for whatever reasons and is fully engaged with the established gaming mechanics of this hypothetical point and click.

In books and shit, this is called an authorial contract, although I read right here on the Codex in some other post that that comes originally from some french concept of auteur theory. Simply speaking the game authors present you with this point and click, and you become fully engaged by it because they did not "break" the "contract" that is unspoken between the player and the developers (or the reader and author, etc).

It's more complicated than that tbh but I don't really know that much about auteur theory other than a breezy example wherein a novelist abruptly keeps changing genres on his reader but it breaks the authorial contract because he does it without any subtext, message or meaning to it.

 

[JarlFrank]

there is no such thing as "outdated"

Oh, but there very much is. Bloodletting as a method of treatment is very much outdated, and so are public executions as a form of entertainment. Just to cite a couple of examples.

That's essentially the same as saying turn based combat, RPG mechanics and no handholding are outdated.

Don't assume what kind of entertainment I like, m8.

 

[JarlFrank]

The more I think about it the more sense it makes: the only thing Vancian casting "needs" is something like this; since vancian casting is immutably tied with the roots of D&D (and thus true resource management, i.e. the appropriation and thoughtful and strategic usage of a character's hit points, spells, abilities and skills, and nothing whatsoever to do with ridiculous item management)--

--making some of the spells (no need for every single spell to only be to exist via cooking it, after all) the product of the player's willingness to explore and hunt down truffles or whatever-the-fuck.

High level spells in pen and paper D&D require material components. In my P&P group where we play D&D 3.5, we always carry a pearl or two with us in case someone in our party dies because resurrection spells require a pearl or they won't work. Pearls are also pretty expensive (don't remember the exact value, btween 1000 and 5000 gold) so even though there is a resurrection spell, death is a setback.

I don't know of any computer RPGs based on D&D rules that have material components for some high level spells.

 

[oklabsoft]

Well, I have got plenty to go on for now to keep me quite busy. Thanks to all for input and the great links to external resources. I consider the codex to be a pretty accurate sample of those who would ever try my games so the opinions are invaluable info to me.

 

[aweigh]

Exactly why I got excited about the regeants + vancian casting thing. When I played D&D hardcore back in the day (2nd edition then later on 3.0/3.5) my two usual DMs were great at their DM'ing but they didn't give a fuck about material components for "mundane" spell casting. Only when high wattage shit was to be cast would they enforce the material components.

Hehe, then again, those would be the same 2 DMs who let me run amok all over one of our last campaign sessions power-gaming with my Half-Orc Fighter with Monkey Grip wielding a Large-sized Spiked Chain (15 feet reach, does not provoke AoOs) that comes with built-in bonus modifiers for any Tripping attempts; basically what I'm saying is I made a char that was ltierally only about showing up places and Improve Tripping motherfuckers from 15 feet away without fear of reprisal and then doing motherfucking Whirlwind Attack on the tripped enemy who now is, of course, "Prone" and thus suffering many maluses to his defenses.

lol I was such a douche. Technically speaking there is a case that can be made to argue against allowing a Large-sized Spiked Chain used in a whirlwind attack but, alas, the books were not... specific about it. Heh.

 

[V_K]

I believe you when you say you find the early Wiz scenarios to be tedious and full of unnecessary "filler" in the form of "mapping exercises", and that's fine, but see the key part of that definition of "out of date" is that it hinges on the premise of relevancy.

You won't find many, if any, posters here who will say RPG mechanics of any type are "irrelevant", and I dare say most will champion RPG design that has stood the test of time, to put it mildly.

I'm not arguing semantics. You said "outdated isn't the same as obsolete". As a non-native speaker, I don't see a principal difference, and apparently so doesn't the Oxford Dictionary. But if you'd prefer me to use obsolete, I'm happy to oblige: navigational "fuck yous" (spinners, hidden teleporters) are obsolete and should remain in the RPGs stone age.
My argument for that comes from a very simple philosophy: challenge should be fair. The player shouldn't be punished for not preparing for something he couldn't reasonable foresee. If your gameplay cycle is "Encounter X - Die - Reload - Do the obvious thing to prepare for X - Encounter X - Proceed" - it's not challenge, it's dumb busywork. As I've said, it's the same as QTEs, just on a larger scale.
It's the same issue I have with Vancian magic: at least in CRPGs, you are never given enough information to know what spells to prepare. If you die to a surprise encounter with fire elementals because you haven't prepared a fire protection spell on that particular rest - it has nothing to do with challenge or strategy, only dumb luck.
Now, both mechanics would be fine in a game that has intelligence-gathering as an interal and well-developed part, but I don't know a single RPG that does it. At best you have the detect monster/wizard's eye kind of spells that aren't usually very useful.

I've always thought that adapting classic Vancian casting and then marrying it with well thought out reagent-based magic system wherein magic will always be presented to the player as rare, dangerous, exotic and powerful and more importantly: the product of the players own ingenuity due to the (obviously!) introduction of a basic template for crafting the spells, which can then also lend itself to providing means for the player to make non-magical products such as a healing herb or some shit.

It's the perfect combination of:

- Limited spell casting per day.
- Spells are not plentiful and must be prepared in advance by a knowledgable character due to being comprised of reagents.

I would argue that a reagent-based system doesn't really need a spells-per-day limit. Having the possibility to decide whether to go all out with fireballs in one day (and potentially leave yourself vulneable for the next day if you blow all your sulfur on that), or save them for later, provides more interesting strategic scenarios than than having a hard limit on what you can do each day. Of course, the reagents should be scarce enough for that to work, but that goes without saying.

Perhaps Magic Candle did it, but right now I can't remember if Magic Candle utilized vancian casting

It doesn't - you can memorize as many copies of as many spells as you want (well, up to 99 of each), the only limitation is time/food while you do that. It also doesn't have reagents, casting uses stamina (energy) instead.

Funnily enough they also begin Grimrock 2 with the player locked in a little cell, although obviously, since they actually want to sell units, the wooden stick which opens the thing you're in is but a brief pixel-hunt away .

You know, I don't dislike "logic" puzzles (if you want to call nonsensical fetching and retrieving, such as the bulk of Bradley's puzzle output) as they will always serve as a good reprieve from the other stuff the player has been doing, but my true disdain is for incompetently executed adventure game-style "pixel hunt" shenanigans.

It's not a pixel-hunting puzzle, the stick is more than visible. It's not even a puzzle at all I would say, the only reason it's there is so that the party wouldn't leave the starting area completely unarmed. LoG2 level design is just as smart as LoG1, it's just less immediately evident because the maps are less self-contained, you need to consider the bigger picture. Not to mention that its enemy/encounter design is miles ahead of the first game.

 

[V_K]

there is no such thing as "outdated"

Oh, but there very much is. Bloodletting as a method of treatment is very much outdated, and so are public executions as a form of entertainment. Just to cite a couple of examples.

That's essentially the same as saying turn based combat, RPG mechanics and no handholding are outdated.

Don't assume what kind of entertainment I like, m8.

Well, I would check up with a psychiatrist if that's the case.