Character - Skills

Here's the next step in terms of character development:

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Overview

Skills are the bridge between the character's Primary_Stats and the gameworld - the way in which they interact and apply themselves to it. Skills start with a basic "root", from which stems a number of related disciplines, which vary from simple modifiers up to completely new actions. For instance, starting with the Firearms root, the character can develop their Accuracy, which awards them a better chance to hit targets. Or, they could tag Aimed Shots, which gives them the ability to specify shots at part of their target, such as the head, legs or arms of a human.

Skills are not derived from primary stats, but rather complement them. For example, a character with high Strength is not automatically afforded greater levels of Brawling Skills. A high Strength increases the odds of inflicting critical wounds if the attack hits successfully. A higher skill within the Brawling tree such as Accuracy will increase the likelihood of actually connecting, thereby making more frequent and predictable use of Strength.

Lastly, Skills are developed in two ways: Training and the recovery of Memories. More on these later.

Combat Arts

The Combat Arts are the brutal dance steps of destruction that will reinforce a character's belief that violence is the answer, by helping them attain victory in a fight. Brawn is the essential synergy to this knowledge.

<blockquote>Brawling

Brawling encompasses the practical skill of hand-to-hand combat, both with and without weapons. Strength is the determining factor in both the force of each blow, and the degree to which a character can wield cumbersome weaponry. Speed determines how fast a character acts within a certain time frame, and Fortitude is the main factor in the character's Stamina, which governs how long a character can prolong physical activities, especially hand-to-hand combat.

Firearms

The Firearms skill measures the character's ability to shoot ranged weaponry effectively. Strength determines the force of each attack through allowing better use of heavier weapons, and also reduces the accuracy penalties of recoil. Increased Speed permits faster actions, and Perception is a significant determining factor in base accuracy.</blockquote>

Applied Sciences

The Applied Sciences involve putting a character's Brains to good, practical use, by allowing them to use their superior knowledge toward healing the sick, exploiting or protecting physical weaknesses, or devising inventions for a variety of gameplay uses.

<blockquote>Medicine

Medicine is a skill encompassing the anatomical and physiological knowledge of living creatures, and is employed in both a healing context and an investigative context. A higher intellect represents a better memory and understanding of procedures, and therefore the degree of success. Ingenuity determines how quickly a character can perform medical procedures, and Proficiency is the major factor in calculating the side effects of a successful action.

To better explain the functional difference between Intellect and Proficiency - it is assumed the the player (and even the dumbest character) can understand fundamental physiology. If something is bleeding, it needs to be patched up. If there's a bullet lodged in somebody, it has to come out. Intellect is the know-how that bridges the gap between knowing that bullet has to come out and actually getting it out. There is also a certain foresight to the Intellectual medic - he is prepared to deal with mistakes.

Proficiency on the other hand, is the skill of the medic's hands. A well-versed surgeon who knows all procedures by the book, still may cause undue collateral damage through clumsy incisions and such. To that end, a character with high Intellect and low Proficiency will be able to successful excise a bullet, but may take several attempts, with each failure potentially complicating the procedure and the recovery. A character with low Intellect and high Proficiency will take the most direct route toward the bullet, probably succeeding at their first attempt, but being ignorant to potential dangers, ie "blindly" cutting around the bullet without knowing what else might be in the proximity.

So to summarise, a medic with only Intellect will know there's an artery near where the bullet is lodged but has a chance they might nick it accidentally with unsteady hands. A medic with only Proficiency wont be aware of the artery until they cut it - but will also be able to skilfully recover their mistake.

Engineering

Engineering is the skill associated with manipulating items and their component parts to create new items with improved characteristics and/or versatility. A skilled engineer can also improvise technological solutions to overcome various obstacles. Intellect determines the end result, with higher Intellect better preserving the innate characteristics of the components. Ingenuity determines the rate at which a character gleans understanding through the study of objects, and Speed governs the rate at which the character can create, alter or improvise with items.</blockquote>

Street Smarts

Street Smarts are the skills no school will teach, but are nevertheless exceedingly useful, particular those unconcerned with moral restraint. A character with high Finesse can use their Street Smarts to go undetected, find ways to circumvent security measures and generally manipulate the environment to suit their needs.

<blockquote>Stealth

Stealth is the ability to go unseen throughout the gameworld and perform other actions in a clandestine manner. Perception governs their ability to read situations effectively - how well concealed they are, how alert any potential witnesses are, etc. Proficiency determines the degree of success of any concealed actions, from moving to interacting with objects. Ingenuity is the speed with which the character reacts to changing circumstances, and functions as a "safety net" when their skills otherwise fail them - the split second to duck back into cover of shadows as someone/thing is about to spot the character.

Artifice

Artifice encompasses a broad range of actions, including but not limited to - lockpicking, disguise, trap rigging, sabotage, and distraction. Perception is again the main determinant in providing effective situational data. Proficiency controls the success of chosen actions, and Luck can be used to "bend the rules" in the character's favour. In short, if a character wishes hard enough that a patrolling critter will inexplicably alter its routine and open up an opportunity for them, it may just happen.</blockquote>

Social Graces

Flashy repartee may not win fights, but it will win friends and influence people. Those well versed in Social Graces can utilise their Charm to garner popular support for their ideas and ideologies.

<blockquote>Coercion

Coercion is the skill of getting people to favour your point of view without actually explaining why they ought to. Charisma provides suggestive conversational options to get people on side. Countenance determines how favourably an NPC responds to the character's attempts at coercion, and Strength provides intimidative conversational options.

In effect, there are two ends of a spectrum at work here (suggestion/intimidation), and NPCs are not guaranteed to respond to extremes, even if the speaker is highly skilled. Also, it should be noted that a low Countenance won't make coercion impossible, as options that require a higher Charisma carry inherent bonuses to success. A low Charisma simply means the speaker must choose their words more carefully.

Persuasion

Persuasion is a slightly different means of achieving a similar end to Coercion, but focuses more on an argumentative style of debate. Charisma in this case provides reasonable sounding conversational options - though not necessarily logical ones. Countenance works in an identical fashion to Coercion, and Intellect provides solid and logical arguments.

Again, much like Coercion, Persuasion has two ends of a spectrum (pseudo-intellectualism/intellectualism), and NPCs respond in kind.</blockquote>

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So that's skills in a nutshell. Basically, there are distinct gameplay modes associated with combat, medicine, engineering, stealth/artifice and speech, and many of the skills associated are actions that can be performed within each gameplay mode. It may not necessarily be realistic, but a character can't toss an object to make a noise and sneak past a distracted observer unless they have the "Distraction" skill in the Artifice skill tree, and so forth.

However, Dialogue is a bit vague at the moment. I'm pretty sure I can deliver on a variety of options catering to various forms of conversation, but I'm a little unsure of how much I should be establishing skill trees and making dialogue much more gamist. For instance, would people be appalled to have a skill that allows them to say "Wait, that didn't come out right, what I meant to say is..." and function as a do-over with a penalty proportional to their lack of social skills? I personally prefer dialogue to remain fairly natural, but I'd also love to have a sprawling tree of dialogue skills that make one smooth talker vastly different from another.

So, thoughts?

Section8 said:

Firearms

The Firearms skill measures the character's ability to shoot ranged weaponry effectively. Strength determines the force of each attack through allowing better use of heavier weapons, and also reduces the accuracy penalties of recoil.

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Minor nitpick, but this description is slightly misleading. I know you qualify the "Strength determines the force of each attack" with "through allowing better use of heavier weapons", however it doesn't really determine the force of EACH attack. How about stength reduces the accuracy penalties of recoil, and allows for the use of heavier, more damaging weapons.

I like the variety of skills and they sound like you can do some pretty fun things with them. I think you'll have a tricky time with brawler in terms of balancing it with firearms. Firearms are obviously superior in traditional combat, and should be.

You could, however, introduce special situations that put firearms at a disadvantage: enemies that explode, close quarters fights where there's a chance to hit friendly NPCs, and even non-lethal combat to get an upstart disruly npc back in line. Also, putting ammo in short supply can balance it out some, but you need to be careful with that also, so a pure gunslinger won't be useless after every other fight.

I find it difficult to critque the list of skills, since the creator usually knows what would be appropriate for the setting, but it looks good. I wouldn't worry too much about balancing the skills, as long as all reasonable character builds are feasible and fun.

Section8 said:

However, Dialogue is a bit vague at the moment. I'm pretty sure I can deliver on a variety of options catering to various forms of conversation, but I'm a little unsure of how much I should be establishing skill trees and making dialogue much more gamist. For instance, would people be appalled to have a skill that allows them to say "Wait, that didn't come out right, what I meant to say is..." and function as a do-over with a penalty proportional to their lack of social skills? I personally prefer dialogue to remain fairly natural, but I'd also love to have a sprawling tree of dialogue skills that make one smooth talker vastly different from another.

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Being able to back out of dialogue options is actually a good idea, in my opinion. If you try to implement it in a fairly realistic way, it could workl. It obviously shouldn't always work, and it also shouldn't just completely erase what you previously said from the NPCs mind. Iif you use it too frequently on the same person, they would probably have a fairly negative reaction. This would require a lot of work to implement well, but it might be worth trying.

Shouldn't be too hard. Just to toss an idea around:

Have a hidden (or not) level of trust for each npc. Attach certain modifiers to certain dialogue choices and certain actions. Let's say you use a scale of 100. "Do-overs" could have a -5 penalty with little to no skill then gradually lower to -1 if you've got really strong dialogue skills.

Certain actions you perform and how you handle certain situations could increase or decrease trust. Then you could apply trust level to how willing someone is to help you out, and how closely they'll stick to your orders. For example, someone with barely enough trust to do what you ask comes along on a mission. Shit starts to go downhill and you ask him to cover you. Instead they bug out, or charge the enemy or something unexpected.

What's the point of making skills (and stats) so symmetrical?

I agree that there's no sense in achieving symmetry if it means throwing out useful skills/stats, or including superfluous ones, until they can all be shoehorned into place. However, if things can be made to work in a consistent, symmetrical framework without any significant compromise, I'd say that's a plus.
It's both quicker for the player to grasp, and simpler to balance - if balance is the aim (since it's that much clearer where you'd be aiming). Certainly it's not worth sacrificing much to achieve these things, but if you can get them for free it's a plus.

I guess it could be argued that non-symmetrical systems are more interesting than symmetrical ones, in a sense because there are more quirks and eccentricities to grasp. However, where possible I think it's preferable for the player to be drawn in by the quirks and eccentricities of the skills/stats themselves, rather than by mechanical artefacts of the system.
If the skills and stats don't stand on their own as interesting and varied, you have a problem. If they do, as far as possible the mechanics should get out of the way.

Also it seems reasonable to have the structure of stats/skills reflect the structure of gameplay modes. That's not to say that crossovers shouldn't be considered, but a one/two-tree-per-mode seems a reasonable starting point.


I'm not sure what I think about the specifics yet - I'll have to think about it. I just wanted to point out that asymmetry for its own sake is even worse than symmetry for its own sake (if we're talking about mechanics of no direct game-world significance).

Maybe ma brayn just lacks reading comprehension but I got some issues with your concept (although some of them might be spawned by the lack of background information).

During character creation, the player weights the importance of each stat (effectively on a scale of 1 to 10). Equal weighting across the board will result in 10 equal stats, regardless of how high the precedence is - 10 marked "most important" will be exactly the same as 10 marked "least important".

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I'm afraid you've lost me there. I thought you wanted to prioritise the primary stats and not every stat separately. But from the looks of the quote above you let the player set his priorities for every single 'sub-stat' (like Speed) which leaves me in wonderment. If that is true what hinders me to give every stat a higher priority? Even if you actually do prioritise the primary stats (although I'm not exactly a fan of such segregation) this 'all x equals 10' thing doesn't make much sense to me because in that case, if I choose a priority of 8 for every primary stat that would mean that I would only have 5 vs.5 sub-stats that are equal to each other and not all 10. Or do you just mean that the player has no real opportunity to screw up character creation? A little explanation would be nice.

I see bigger problems with the skills though. You often (way too often if you ask me) differ between two factors while using sub-stats: efficiency and speed. But now I have to ask, why should I prefer speed over efficiency? What would be my reason to risk wasting precious resources and maybe even time (spent with failures) only to 'get the job done' faster? I'll try to elaborate.


*Combat Arts: The easiest factor to balance as far as I can see. One sub-stat handles damage output, the opposing one the rate of attack and another separated sub-stat the accurarcy. I think you'll do well for all possible skills as long as you keep chance of success out of the main primary stat for a skill (it's speculation of course but I think a player will always prefer a higher chance of success above any positive side-effects a sub-stat will provide).

- Brawling: Sounds ok although I can't yet fathom how you'll get stamina in as a factor.

- Firearms: This may sound rude but you should really scrap the recoil thing. You already got enough distinction between Strength and Speed. Strength means bigger guns means more damage to the expense of a lower firing rate. Speed means small guns means less damage but dealt in very short frequencies. Clear and simple. Recoil in this regards could trivialize the advantage of speed so you might want to reconsider the thought.


*Applied Science

- Medicine: Now I'll have to figure out what you mean with 'degree of success'. If you mean by that the chance of success I would again write: don't. Even if you mean the amount of health restored I would still write the same. I would claim that a reasonable player will go the efficient way no matter the situation (even if that means trial & error reloads). You might instead try to create more distinction between the two sides of the spectrum. While the fast field medic can quickly patch you up a real doctor, although slow, works more throughout on the wounds. In practice that would mean while field medic and doctor heal the same amount of health they can still be distinguished by their functionality. The medic is good for in combat healing while the doctor does not only restore health but also removes negative effects like poison or crippling wounds which makes him preferably in the long run (if the wounded have survived the battle). In that way it is comparable to First Aid and Doctor in Fallout, I guess.

- Engineering: Why is Speed of matter when it comes to building stuff? Or does it also include repairing things? How exactly is it important to 'glean understanding'? Where is the benefit of preferring Intellect above Ingenuity and vice versa? From my point of view to favour one of these stats over another doesn't seem to bring any real benefits as they complement each other even more than in case of any other skill you've shown.


*Street Smarts: Owh! Here comes the part where I can hear the planes crushing down, I believe. Seriously, why should I give a damn if I know the chance of success or not (at least when I can save/reload at any given time)? I mean when a flesh eating monstrosity will spot me I'll notice soon enough. Same if I fail to pick a lock. As it stands on paper I would prefer Proficiency, as a thief character, any given day. The only thing that could stop me would be the sacrifice of weapon accuracy. But maybe this is the aim?


*Social Graces: This is really a hard one. From what I can gather it might be best if you ignore the symmetry and orientate more on the actual situation. If you want to threat someone just check on the character's Strength/Countenance stats and so forth. Chances of success can be shown by colouring the dialogue lines accordingly (the usual way: green most likely success, yellow risky, etc.) instead of having any social skills listed on a character sheet although this will hurt transparency. It would also make things more complicated for you to implement of course. But this would only be my personal preference anyways.

would people be appalled to have a skill that allows them to say "Wait, that didn't come out right, what I meant to say is..."

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Well, a character trait would certainly be nice. But then again I can't know how you'll handle skill trees. Are the branches exclusive (meaning that if I choose the aim trait I can't chose the one that raises my accuracy anymore)? Or is it more comparable to the known scheme of a skill tree where you buy traits? Again, a little more clarification would be nice.

Sorry for just ranting away like that.

Sorry for just ranting away like that.

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Not at all, this is one of the reasons I wanted these forums - so people could rant about my design ideas and I can refine them into something truly top notch. So cheers for the effort.

I'm afraid you've lost me there. I thought you wanted to prioritise the primary stats and not every stat separately. But from the looks of the quote above you let the player set his priorities for every single 'sub-stat' (like Speed) which leaves me in wonderment.

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Well, in theory each of the ten stats ought to be as worthwhile as one another, so if you decide you want a fast character, but not a strong one, then you prioritise Speed higher than Strength, and that comes with certain advantages and disadvantages.

The five pairings just help to rationalise the ten stats into a simpler framework, but I think it would simplify thing too much if you were only prioritising by the five pairings.

If that is true what hinders me to give every stat a higher priority? Even if you actually do prioritise the primary stats (although I'm not exactly a fan of such segregation) this 'all x equals 10' thing doesn't make much sense to me because in that case, if I choose a priority of 8 for every primary stat that would mean that I would only have 5 vs.5 sub-stats that are equal to each other and not all 10.

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You can do that, but you're always drawing from a fixed pool of available stat points, so if you set everything at their highest priority, they're all equally weighted. So for instance, say there are 100 points in the pool. You prioritise everything equally, and you have 10s across the board, regardless of how high that equal priority is. Only when you start pushing certain priorities ahead or behind do you get varied results.

If you set everything at 5 and one at 6, it would get slightly more points out of the pool. The one with the priority of 6 would have an actual value of just under twelve, everything else is pushed to a value just under ten. If you set everything at 2, and one at 10, then you'd end up with the high stat at around 36, and the rest at around 6. That's not to say the final formula will work in that way, since that's pretty extreme, but it gives you an idea.

Or do you just mean that the player has no real opportunity to screw up character creation? A little explanation would be nice.

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That will all depend. Ideally, I'd hope that the vast majority of character builds can do something entertaining with their time, but being a realist, I'll almost certainly have to take measures to prevent extremes such as the 36 vs 6 example above.

I see bigger problems with the skills though. You often (way too often if you ask me) differ between two factors while using sub-stats: efficiency and speed. But now I have to ask, why should I prefer speed over efficiency? What would be my reason to risk wasting precious resources and maybe even time (spent with failures) only to 'get the job done' faster? I'll try to elaborate.

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That's a fair criticism, I'll do what I can to elaborate. Time is crucial in Synaesthesia, and that's why speed vs efficiency is a common theme. I'm drawing a lot from strategy games for this aspect. Think Civilisation, where you can spend a huge chunk of revenue rather inefficiently to hurry production of a unit/wonder when speed is critical. Or Jagged Alliance, where you could run a single night op each day at low cost and low risk, or you could try to steamroll your way across the country as fast as possible to secure important resources. Even in games like Starcraft (singleplayer) you could meticulously take apart an enemy's defense by selectively using units to "trump" weaknesses, or constantly withdrawing to repair units that have been damaged.

The basic premise here is that efficiency is always desirable, but not always feasible. I'll endeavour to explain with relation to individual skills.

Combat Arts: The easiest factor to balance as far as I can see.

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Combat is pretty straightforward, and it's intended to be my "anchor", something that's entirely familiar to RPGers, and won't take too much to understand.

Brawling: Sounds ok although I can't yet fathom how you'll get stamina in as a factor.

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In theory, Stamina works in a similar fashion to stamina in the Total War series. It's a steady downward spiral with increasing penalties, so "fitness" becomes a great advantage, allowing you to take more profound actions and remain at peak efficiency for longer during combat.

Firearms: This may sound rude but you should really scrap the recoil thing. You already got enough distinction between Strength and Speed. Strength means bigger guns means more damage to the expense of a lower firing rate. Speed means small guns means less damage but dealt in very short frequencies. Clear and simple. Recoil in this regards could trivialize the advantage of speed so you might want to reconsider the thought.

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I'll see how it goes in practise, but that's a fair suggestion, not rude at all.

Medicine: Now I'll have to figure out what you mean with 'degree of success'. [snip]

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Hopefully this is something that will become a bit clearer when I start talking about the various gameplay modes (sooner rather than later). Health is something I want to model with a great deal of complexity, far beyond hitpoint systems which kinda bug me.

The main idea behind "degree of success" is not so much about how effective the healing is, but how restrictive the recovery is. It's difficult to explain without the bigger picture, so I'll try to revisit this once I've given a better run down of player health and medical gameplay.

Engineering: Why is Speed of matter when it comes to building stuff? Or does it also include repairing things?

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Why have more than 10 engineers/scientists working on a project in X-Com? Time is critical to all endeavours, though obviously you can compensate for a lack of speed if your work is more focused/skillful. Repairing is part of the same deal, basically, and something you need to balance against building things.

How exactly is it important to 'glean understanding'? Where is the benefit of preferring Intellect above Ingenuity and vice versa?

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Understanding what you're working with is important. Basically, a lot of the gameplay associated with Engineering is "mushroom picking" - finding just the right bit of junk for your needs. Rather than having component X with properties A, B, C, D and having stat cutoffs to hide D to players without godly Ingenuity, C to characters with slightly less and so forth, it all just takes time to gain a full understanding of those properties. And if it takes you two hours to analyse four different rifle barrels to work out which is best for your purpose, while it takes another guy half an hour, then he can spend that extra 90 minutes doing something more productive.

On the other hand, Intellect relates to how effectively you preserve those properties in a finished product. A highly intellectual engineer may not care as much about the quality of his components, because he gets the best out of whatever he's using. Obviously, being intellectual and ingenious is ideal.

From my point of view to favour one of these stats over another doesn't seem to bring any real benefits as they complement each other even more than in case of any other skill you've shown.

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That's true, but I'd hope players would still find reason to favour one over the other within the context of their other stats. I like to think there is room for a scavenger type that is combat focused, but also has some skill in assessing junk, a repairman that rarely needs to assess anything because he's reworking existing parts more often than not, and so on. The difficult part is making sure the game effectively caters for players that blur the lines between the archetypes.

Street Smarts: Owh! Here comes the part where I can hear the planes crushing down, I believe. Seriously, why should I give a damn if I know the chance of success or not (at least when I can save/reload at any given time)? I mean when a flesh eating monstrosity will spot me I'll notice soon enough.

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There's more to it than that, but I have to admit that I still have some concerns about it. The idea is that perception feeds a lot of information, much more than percent chances here and there. To start simple, being able to assess the lock on a well-lit door from a distance provides a decent sort of advantage if you don't have to walk over into the light to check it out. To get more complex, being able to assess the field of vision, patrol path, hear someone on the other side of a door and so forth makes the player's life easier.

But that's where my problem comes in. The whole fun of games like Thief is figuring all of that out and working within the situation. Right now, the idea is to set the difficult curve fairly high, so perception is essential - with the mitigating factors being that a character who has spend their points elsewhere has more respite if they fail to be sneaky - like the "safety net" concept, or being able to use combat skill to take down an enemy quickly and hope they don't alert any allies. It's a bit sketchy, but I think it will work well enough.

Same if I fail to pick a lock. As it stands on paper I would prefer Proficiency, as a thief character, any given day. The only thing that could stop me would be the sacrifice of weapon accuracy. But maybe this is the aim?

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That's part of it, but ideally a "pure" thief would want both Proficiency and Perception. A part time thief/gunslinger would naturally have high perception, and would be pretty good at sneaking around and reading a situation, but wouldn't be able to make as much of it as a highly proficient thief.

Social Graces: This is really a hard one. From what I can gather it might be best if you ignore the symmetry and orientate more on the actual situation. If you want to threat someone just check on the character's Strength/Countenance stats and so forth. Chances of success can be shown by colouring the dialogue lines accordingly (the usual way: green most likely success, yellow risky, etc.) instead of having any social skills listed on a character sheet although this will hurt transparency. It would also make things more complicated for you to implement of course. But this would only be my personal preference anyways

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Yeah, this is going to be the real design challenge for me, working with this and my grand plans for dialogue systems. That will get much discussion at some point, but I'm aiming for something much more complex than simple checks on dialogue lines. To me, intimidation isn't just about being able to deliver a good threat - it's about building up a presence in the way you carry yourself and the way you talk, and not always in the context of intentional intimidation.

So to that end, I want intimidation/suggestion/etc to be part of general conversation. I just think so much of it comes with familiarity, rather than a single situation. And because the game deals with such a small set of well acquainted NPCs, it's possible to work toward this.

Well, a character trait would certainly be nice. But then again I can't know how you'll handle skill trees. Are the branches exclusive (meaning that if I choose the aim trait I can't chose the one that raises my accuracy anymore)? Or is it more comparable to the known scheme of a skill tree where you buy traits? Again, a little more clarification would be nice.

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This is something I really should have made a lot clearer in the initial post. I'll work something up to properly explain skill trees. It's pretty important to this whole concept.

In any case, cheers for the discussion, I hope I've made a few points clearer, and you've given me some food for thought on how I can refine and improve the ideas I've got. Cheers.

Now, on to the other posts:

Minor nitpick, but this description is slightly misleading. I know you qualify the "Strength determines the force of each attack" with "through allowing better use of heavier weapons", however it doesn't really determine the force of EACH attack. How about stength reduces the accuracy penalties of recoil, and allows for the use of heavier, more damaging weapons.

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Yeah, it's a slightly abstract way of putting it, and I think I can word it a bit better. It shows the line of thought I was on when considering the contributing stats though.

I like the variety of skills and they sound like you can do some pretty fun things with them. I think you'll have a tricky time with brawler in terms of balancing it with firearms. Firearms are obviously superior in traditional combat, and should be.

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The big factor here is that fighting against "firearms" as such is likely to happen only due to infighting. I will do my best to "balance" them in that situation, but for the most part each one should have different advantages in general play. Basically, the traditional tactical stuff, like firearms being a winner as long as the enemy can't close the range and still be healthy enough to tear chunks off you.

You could, however, introduce special situations that put firearms at a disadvantage: enemies that explode, close quarters fights where there's a chance to hit friendly NPCs, and even non-lethal combat to get an upstart disruly npc back in line. Also, putting ammo in short supply can balance it out some, but you need to be careful with that also, so a pure gunslinger won't be useless after every other fight.

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And yes, that's all pretty much along my lines of thinking. Non-lethal combat has plenty of advantages, ammo is a resource that must be managed carefully, and there will be all sorts of weird and wacky enemies doing things that are tactically interesting moreso than tactically intelligent.

Have a hidden (or not) level of trust for each npc. Attach certain modifiers to certain dialogue choices and certain actions. Let's say you use a scale of 100. "Do-overs" could have a -5 penalty with little to no skill then gradually lower to -1 if you've got really strong dialogue skills.

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Behind the scenes complexity is going to play a big part in NPC interaction, and it's definitely the biggest design challenge. What I want to do is have nearly everything anyone ever says tied into various modifier for better and worse. It's going to be a lot of work

What's the point of making skills (and stats) so symmetrical?

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That's basically how things worked out. I've made an effort to ensure it's not merely gratuitous, and by keeping things neatly compartmentalised it should make life as a designer a bit easier to keep my head in the right place, and should keep things simple to understand for the end user.

The skill trees themselves, which are the meat of the skill system are going to be anything but - so I wanted this framework to fit them around so it doesn't wind up being a sprawling, sporadically interelated multi-headed dick of a system.

More on skill trees soon.

Section8 said:

Behind the scenes complexity is going to play a big part in NPC interaction, and it's definitely the biggest design challenge. What I want to do is have nearly everything anyone ever says tied into various modifier for better and worse.

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What's the thinking on ongoing re-interpretation of past conversation/interaction?
For example, let's say Dave lies to Nancy, and is believed. Over time Nancy learns through observation that Dave lies a lot. Does Nancy then go back, re-evaluate Dave's initial statement, and change her attitudes according to any new conclusions?

I think that's the ideal situation, or at least it's ideal that NPCs have this capability (perhaps such re-evaluation should often be limited to quiet moments of introspection, rather than amidst moment-to-moment "action").

It would complicate matters though, since the game could then afford to forget very little. Simply applying modifiers and forgetting the reasons would be simpler - but it doesn't make a whole lot of sense for those modifiers to continue to apply once the assumptions behind them have been exposed as flawed. (or at least the system's irrational, which only makes sense if it's modelling NPC irrationality)

Similarly, is the intention to have PC/NPC actions tied in to such modifiers? Again, would NPCs need to remember the specific actions/circumstances that led to their trusting/liking/hating/fearing... other NPCs, or would they only remember their attitudes?


On a related note, would past panels of action ever change according to new PC circumstances/knowledge/understanding? Is this a possibility?
For example, say the PC thought he caught a glimpse of an NPC in [strange-circumstance], but dismissed it as impossible for [various reasons]. Perhaps the NPC wouldn't appear in the action panel. At some later point the PC might realize that [various reasons] didn't apply, and have new reasons to think that it was Dave that he saw. Could Dave then appear in a past action panel to signify the PC's altered memory of the situation? [or if we're getting all synaesthetic, could PC perceptions/associations trigger "memories" as alterations of past panels?]

Along those lines, would past action panels need to stay graphically fixed anyway? E.g. if a panel were stored as [collection of significant aspects of a situation about which the PC is aware], rather than [specific graphical representation of those aspects], past panels could be representative of what the PC remembers, rather than of graphical accidents. Of course this would reduce storage requirements, but it'd also provide a really clean way to alter panels retrospectively according to changes in PC understanding: past panels would always be assembled as a function of [collection of significant aspects...], so there'd be no trouble in tweaking the inputs subtly in order to alter the way the panel is "remembered". (of course it'd probably be a good idea to give the player a heads-up when/if past panels changed significantly - otherwise you incentivize compulsive just-in-case panel checking)

Clearly this sort of thing would be a significant change, and it's not necessarily a suggestion. I'm just trying to avoid basing any ideas on groundless assumptions.

It's going to be a lot of work

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Indeed

@Section 8

Glad that I could help (though encouragement may not be the best course of action) and thanks for taking your time to explain your concept to the dim witted. When I initially read your comment that primary stats would be the 'broad brush strokes that are used to initially sketch out a character archetype, and are traded off against one another in character creation] with a weighting system' I more though of an either choose one sub-stat or the other kind of system. Good to know that you're not aiming for such thing. I normally don't like to choose between extremes. This certainly takes some wind from my arguments (although I must admit that Street Wise still doesn't convince me).

I'll almost certainly have to take measures to prevent extremes such as the 36 vs 6 example above.

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Heh, just some random thought thrown at you but how about working with mental blockades instead of technical ones? It can be a good fun factor for some players if they're able to beat the game with a character who wasn't even supposed to exist. It would only be important to signalize every player that they're leaving the 'safe' boundaries of your system. You already mentioned that you wanted to alter visuals and acoustics during combat so why not character creation?

Say if you want to create a character the scenery shifts to a small room of a victorian manor. You can see a portrait of the player-character hanging on the wall showing him from head to foot. There is a small table standing in the corner with a gramophone on top. The crackling sound of a lonesome violin is leaving the speaker. Next to the portrait stands a heavy grandfather clock ticking soundly. Now, depending on how the priorities are set, the setting starts to shift. If you increase the strength the person on the picture starts to become more bulky. Increased speed means that the clock is going to tick faster. Intellect will improve the variety of instruments played. More violins join in, then a piano and so forth. Ingenuity will remove the crackling noises. I think you get the picture. Now you can add some 'corruptions' to this image in case that the player is pushing his MinMaxing to an unhealthy level. An overly strong character will turn into a Hulk caricature. His fine clothes starts to be torn apart by sheer body mass. The clock could break due to exhaustion. Some instruments join the concert which simply don't fit in like an electric keyboard or a banjo. This could be a nice touch.

Anyways back to the topic at hand.
Some bits of your explanation still sound dangerously vague but then again I've really been enough of an arse for the time being. Let me fill the gap by spewing some random questions that you probably are going-to-answer-sooner-or-later anyways.

Time is crucial in Synaesthesia

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I guess what I was hoping for were some concrete in-game examples. Sure there are ways to make Speed an advantage (especially in games with strategic/tactical content) but there are several ways to achieve this. Since you aim for survival horror I speculate that you are going to work with the 'pressure of urgency'. But what kind of urgency are we talking about here? X-Com style (the longer you wait the harder the opposition)? Do you aim for timed events like, say, The Last Express (something I'm toying around with hence my interest)? Or are the protagonists hunted by the ultimate evil (also known under synonyms like 'Deathcountdown', 'Huge-arse monster you simply can't kill' or, the worst of all, 'random encounters')?


I'm also curious about your dialogue system. You seem to really want to work with a lot of build up in social interactions. How dynamic do you plan those build ups to be (like galsiah mentioned in a way: can a not prescript action increase those dialogue values of yours) and how exactly do the social skills come into play (modifier of bonus perhaps or chance of success)?

What's the thinking on ongoing re-interpretation of past conversation/interaction?

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It's yet another can of worms, but one that I think could be worthwhile, as long as the history is pretty sensible. For instance: Event: Nancy dislikes Angela (influenced by Dave)

...would be a great thing to be able to turn on its ear, but I'd want to do it without digging too deep. I'd aim for a reversal of the negative modifier and potentially a trigger to make an apology conversation become available: "I'm sorry about the way I've acted toward you, Angela. Dave told me all these things about you... and I believed him!"

Simply applying modifiers and forgetting the reasons would be simpler - but it doesn't make a whole lot of sense for those modifiers to continue to apply once the assumptions behind them have been exposed as flawed. (or at least the system's irrational, which only makes sense if it's modelling NPC irrationality)

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Yep, but as I say, there has to be a decent measure of significance. The way I envision it is to pool short-term modifiers together, and only record them as significant once they've triggered an event or a discrete step along a sliding scale. For instance:

Dave tells Nancy rumours about Angela (lies, though she doesn't know it) and each one has a modifier. For now they're (historically) ignored until the modifiers add up enough to kick Nancy's disposition toward Angela into the "dislike" category.

Now, it may not be so clear cut. Dave's lies may only account for half of Nancy's negative disposition, with Angela's own behaviour accounting for the rest, in which case you'd only remove Dave's contributing modifier when Nancy's distrust reaches a certain threshold.

Similarly, is the intention to have PC/NPC actions tied in to such modifiers? Again, would NPCs need to remember the specific actions/circumstances that led to their trusting/liking/hating/fearing... other NPCs, or would they only remember their attitudes?

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I know you're not a fan of favouring discrete steps over continuity, but I think it's the most sensible way to approach this. In the short term, fear/distrust/etc should accumlate, but only become historical when the change becomes significant enough to trigger a major dynamic shift.

In an abstract sense, I picture something like a pressure chamber. In the short term, a line of conversation or an action gets dropped into the vessel matching its emotional response. At any time you can dip into the "anger chamber" (or whatever) and fish out a completely accurate historical record of that conversation/action.

For argument's sake, let's say there are five lines of dialogue spoken by Dave to Nancy dropped into the "Nancy's Dislike of Angela" chamber. With the addition of a sixth line, the pressure valve blows and dumps the contents into a dialogue/introspection event, having reached the threshold where Nancy's Dislike of Angela progresses from ambivalent to unfriendly. The long-term history then becomes a record of each valve blowout, citing general reasons/modifiers, but not exact events - "Nancy becomes unfriendly toward Angela (convinced by Dave)"

Actually, the history ought to keep a record of the event manifested by the blowout - in this case, a conversation where Nancy speaks frankly about her feelings toward Angela - to another NPC or herself through introspection - which in itself should account for the reasons for the disposition shift.

Make sense? It almost does to me.

On a related note, would past panels of action ever change according to new PC circumstances/knowledge/understanding? Is this a possibility?
For example, say the PC thought he caught a glimpse of an NPC in [strange-circumstance], but dismissed it as impossible for [various reasons]. Perhaps the NPC wouldn't appear in the action panel. At some later point the PC might realize that [various reasons] didn't apply, and have new reasons to think that it was Dave that he saw. Could Dave then appear in a past action panel to signify the PC's altered memory of the situation? [or if we're getting all synaesthetic, could PC perceptions/associations trigger "memories" as alterations of past panels?]

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This I'm not so sure of. It would be nice, but not essential to be able to recreate frames as recollections with some dynamic changes. I'd never want to alter the "original print" so to speak, but there's no reason why a specific introspection/recollection of the event couldn't occur with required changes. That way, there's potential to accompany a conversation along the lines of "So tell me exactly what you saw in the hallway last night..." with dynamic imagery.

Heh, just some random thought thrown at you but how about working with mental blockades instead of technical ones? It can be a good fun factor for some players if they're able to beat the game with a character who wasn't even supposed to exist. It would only be important to signalize every player that they're leaving the 'safe' boundaries of your system.

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That's a possibility, though unless there's at least some degree of support for completely skewed characters, it's something I'd keep out of the game interface and have it as a toggle in an .ini file somewhere.

You already mentioned that you wanted to alter visuals and acoustics during combat so why not character creation? [snip]

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Very cool ideas, but definitely an icing on the cake kind of feature. I will say that I'm pretty keen to base some physical attributes on primary stats though, so "hulking out" is a distinct possibility.

I guess what I was hoping for were some concrete in-game examples. Sure there are ways to make Speed an advantage (especially in games with strategic/tactical content) but there are several ways to achieve this. Since you aim for survival horror I speculate that you are going to work with the 'pressure of urgency'. But what kind of urgency are we talking about here? X-Com style (the longer you wait the harder the opposition)? Do you aim for timed events like, say, The Last Express (something I'm toying around with hence my interest)? Or are the protagonists hunted by the ultimate evil (also known under synonyms like 'Deathcountdown', 'Huge-arse monster you simply can't kill' or, the worst of all, 'random encounters')?

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There are a few factors here. First and foremost, the gameworld is actively hostile, there will indeed be a progression of difficulty in combat encounters along with an increased frequency. It's a slippery slope, but I'm hoping I can make a "heroic demise against overwhelming odds" compelling enough as a plotline.

Secondly, something I haven't discussed in depth, are character needs. Characters need to eat, sleep, feel safe - and have the resources to achieve those goals. Example:

The community starts the game with a freezer/pantry stocked with enough food to last a couple of weeks. There are critters in the world that also want/need sustenance, so food supplies are threatened. The power that supplies that freezer comes from town, where various dynamic events can trigger an outage. There's a backup generator, but it doesn't have a whole lot of fuel. There's nothing replenishing the food supplies at first, but there are ways to locate consumable supplies or replenishing resources. Don't expect either to be easy pickings though. Is monster flesh edible?

It's going to require a certain balance to get right, but do you have combatants scouring the world outside for food, leaving gaps in your defense? Do you have engineers working on alternate sources or power? Hydroponics? Building sentry guns to set up in the powerplant? Synthesizing alternative fuels? Establishing a fuel pipeline to keep the generator running indefinitely? Medics examining dead critters to find the edible bits?

Or when things go completely pear shaped, do you start eating stuff the might be poisonous? Try to steal more than your ration? Try to sneakily kill your peers so the food supply lasts longer? Eat your dead peers? Offer yourself up as a sacrificial meal to your peers?

These are the sort of things I'm trying to achieve here. Because the gameworld is relatively small, the focus shifts toward using that as a stage for a broader variety of interaction. The comparisons to Civ and X-Com are made because I want that strategy layer in Synaesthesia. But. There's also the fact that you're not the supreme overlord of that strategy. You're part of a collective that will generally cooperate, but that may be the result of a democratic process, an illustrious leader that may or may not be you, and so forth. In short, I want that strategy to be very much a part of NPC interaction.

Lastly (kinda rambling on this point) timed events a la the Last Express would happen occasionally, as part of scripted plot arcs. To give an example in that respect: there's a clock tower in town. A scripted event can take over, start it counting backward, and seed the notion that it's counting down to something. The characters now have to decide whether they want to ignore that as superstitious nonsense, or take time out from other activities to investigate and prepare for what might happen. Within that script, there would be potential involvement from various archetypes - the way to the clockwork is defended by critters, traps, locked doors; the clockwork itself must be examined, understood and possibly reworked by an engineer. That sort of thing.

And of course, because I'm a cunt, the characters will end up fucked in some way regardless of what they choose to do. Ignore the countdown and the tower sprouts legs and goes on a rampage; becomes a huge tesla coil that uses the whole town's power supply and toasts anything that comes near; lifts off into orbit and bursts into a giant black cloud of ash that blocks out the sun for a week; etc.

Solve the mystery and stop the countdown, and during the time you spent pursuing that end, an entire army of zombies amasses in the graveyard you weren't patrolling/monitoring/etc. Oops.

It's lofty, but that's the basic premise of the game - the small but dynamic world constantly conspires against you in ways you'd never imagined, so there's always reason to be quick about whatever you're doing.

Whew.

I'm also curious about your dialogue system. You seem to really want to work with a lot of build up in social interactions. How dynamic do you plan those build ups to be (like galsiah mentioned in a way: can a not prescript action increase those dialogue values of yours) and how exactly do the social skills come into play (modifier of bonus perhaps or chance of success)?

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I'll try to give the dialogue system a thorough exposition sometime some to answer the dynamism part. As for the skills, it will be a combination of modifiers and explicit dialogue actions. So in other words, you'll be able to improve your chances of lying convincingly by taking on abstracted skills like "Able to look into someone's eyes while lying", "No longer fidget while lying", etc; complement them with direct skills like highlighting favourable responses in the dialogue interface, using the preferred vocabulary of the character you're talking to; and also make some additional extra conversation types available - such as the "do over" concept in the first post, or enabling conscious body language changes.

A better explanation of skill trees and an in depth on dialogue are high on my list of my priorities, so stay tuned.

Section8 said:

I know you're not a fan of favouring discrete steps over continuity, but I think it's the most sensible way to approach this... pressure chamber...

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I have no problem with that. My main misgiving with discrete models is that they frequently bear little relation to the situation they're modelling - and can lead to strange artefacts [[e.g for discrete X,Y "X = Y/3 round down", leads to every third Y increase becoming artificially more significant]]. However, where you've got some pressure threshold or similar, then discrete events are a perfectly natural consequence of crossing that threshold. There's nothing artificial about this.

I think it'd make sense to have a continuous, or at least multivalued, scale for contributions to "pressure increase" though. Some transgressions would naturally be more significant than others, and it makes sense to leave room to model that. Unless there's some specific feedback for discrete values on the scale, I don't see a reason not to allow a statement/action/situation to contribute 1.4 towards the become-angry threshold of 5. It's no more complex really - just a little more versatile.

...Make sense? It almost does to me.

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Seems pretty reasonable.

Speaking of conversation storage/memory, would you ever want to have different NPCs perceive/remember conversations differently? Would anyone ever e.g. mishear, be too afraid to take in everything that's said, not be listening, confuse Dave with Darren, forget who was speaking...? Would you want an objective record of what happened, or separate records of what Dave perceived/remembered and what Nancy perceived/remembered?

Also, would dialogues generally/frequently involve more than two characters? How would mechanics governing attitudes/reactions of speakers/listeners differ in five-way conversation? Would statements in that context be considered as targetless announcements, or as being addressed to a specific character with others listening? If to a specific character, how would listeners react differently when they are spoken to / a bystander?

...That way, there's potential to accompany a conversation along the lines of "So tell me exactly what you saw in the hallway last night..." with dynamic imagery.

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Or indeed to lie about it, with dynamic imagery. More of a potentially interesting extra than a must-have though.

Try to steal more than your ration? Try to sneakily kill your peers so the food supply lasts longer?

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How good would you expect/desire character deduction to be? E.g. should characters be able to work out who might be stealing food by a process of elimination; should "I saw Dave going East holding an axe this morning." and "We found Nancy's butchered corpse in the East wing this afternoon." produce a "Perhaps Dave killed Nancy"? If Dave told Nancy and Angela some secret, then Dave and Nancy ate Angela, and later the secret became known, should Dave suspect that Nancy's to blame?...

And of course, because I'm a cunt, the characters will end up fucked in some way regardless of what they choose to do.

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Good to know. There'd need to be some balance between eventual fuckeddom, and real short/medium-term success though. If eventual success isn't going to be possible, there needs to be significant satisfaction in short/medium-term success/survival. Doing well ought not to result in immediate moving of the goalposts, or you'd get a "what's the point in trying?" attitude.

I think it'd make sense to have a continuous, or at least multivalued, scale for contributions to "pressure increase" though.

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Oh, naturally. I'd originally written that into the example, comparing "Nancy's Dislike of Angela" against "Nancy's Distrust of Dave", where the "dave chamber" is filled with a much higher quantity of less potent agents. I think there also ought to be a decay over time, so tiny smidgens of suspicion/dislike/whatever don't suddenly culminate in an explosive reaction one day.

Speaking of conversation storage/memory, would you ever want to have different NPCs perceive/remember conversations differently? Would anyone ever e.g. mishear, be too afraid to take in everything that's said, not be listening, confuse Dave with Darren, forget who was speaking...? Would you want an objective record of what happened, or separate records of what Dave perceived/remembered and what Nancy perceived/remembered?

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Ideally, yes. But I'll keep that to the wishlist for now.

Also, would dialogues generally/frequently involve more than two characters? How would mechanics governing attitudes/reactions of speakers/listeners differ in five-way conversation? Would statements in that context be considered as targetless announcements, or as being addressed to a specific character with others listening? If to a specific character, how would listeners react differently when they are spoken to / a bystander?

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There will be a reasonable amount of multi-character dialogue. The "target" of conversation would vary between addressing an individual or the entire group. It may seem a little artificial, but only the target(s) can react to the specific context of the conversation (achieved through dialogue trees) while anyone within the conversation (potentially anyone within earshot) will react to the tone/vocabulary.

How good would you expect/desire character deduction to be? E.g. should characters be able to work out who might be stealing food by a process of elimination; should "I saw Dave going East holding an axe this morning." and "We found Nancy's butchered corpse in the East wing this afternoon." produce a "Perhaps Dave killed Nancy"? If Dave told Nancy and Angela some secret, then Dave and Nancy ate Angela, and later the secret became known, should Dave suspect that Nancy's to blame?...

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BigWeather's Better Village thread has really got me thinking about this one. My first thought is to keep deduction to a minimum, with alibis being the main factor in allaying suspicion, but I'll think some more on it. A "less than cooperative" society would benefit a great deal from a detailed system of accusations, paranoia and suchlike.

Good to know. There'd need to be some balance between eventual fuckeddom, and real short/medium-term success though. If eventual success isn't going to be possible, there needs to be significant satisfaction in short/medium-term success/survival. Doing well ought not to result in immediate moving of the goalposts, or you'd get a "what's the point in trying?" attitude.

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Yeah, it'll be a tricky balance and I don't want all games to ultimately end in defeat, but I do want the moments where the player actually manages to put one over the gameworld to be oh so sweet.

Mhm, it is good to know that I'm not the only one who's thinking about the advantages of a smaller game world.

Very cool ideas, but definitely an icing on the cake kind of feature. I will say that I'm pretty keen to base some physical attributes on primary stats though, so "hulking out" is a distinct possibility.

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Just to clarify: I was not writing about the appearance of the player-character during play but solely during character creation. In that way you could alarm the player if he's about to create an abomination. Anything else would be pretty much eye candy at best.

Lots of stuff about time, strategy & gameworld.

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Sounds like it could be really worthwhile to invest into speed. There might be balancing issues here and there (as you state yourself) but I would rather wait until you get the opportunity to start a (or several) new thread(s) about the different gameplay elements you've mentioned (since this thread is really starting to become derailed in an alarming speed). Thanks for the overview nonetheless.

Dialogue

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Just one more question about social skills (honest!). Are you planning to let them also influence/increase the intensity of 'pressure' the PC can release on the mood of his dialog partner?
[Add] In case that you're looking for a way to integrate a trading system and you're on a search for inspiration you can scroll down this little monstrosity here until you reached the section about PC-NPC Interaction. There are no skill checks involved though.[/Add]

A better explanation of skill trees and an in depth on dialogue are high on my list of my priorities, so stay tuned.

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Looking forward to it (just try not to lose focus ).

Just one more question about social skills (honest!). Are you planning to let them also influence/increase the intensity of 'pressure' the PC can release on the mood of his dialog partner?

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The general idea is that dialogue skills give degrees of control over most, if not all of the underlying social variables, so yes, to some degree they'll be able to control it. At this stage I can't really go into more detail than that because I just haven't delved down to that level of design yet.

[Add] In case that you're looking for a way to integrate a trading system and you're on a search for inspiration you can scroll down this little monstrosity here until you reached the section about PC-NPC Interaction. There are no skill checks involved though.[/Add]

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I'll have a deeper read, from a quick glance the overall concept sounds pretty familiar. Have you progressed with the idea since that post was made? I don't play a whole lot of IF games, but that sounds right up my alley.

Have you progressed with the idea since that post was made?

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You mean the project as a whole? It is getting somewhere albeit only on a technical level. The Inform 7 language makes it fairly easy to create prototypes. Skills & Attributes are in as well as a first Alpha of the combat simulator. It took me longer than expected to get somewhere when I was creating the '2D-Engine' for the game but it works now though with some glitches and unfinished minor functions. The rest is mind play as for now and exists solely on paper (, literally. So you might image that it isn't worth a damn). That reminds me that I got to make an update in the near future.

As for the trading system: what I didn't consider when I was writing those lines was the possibility to completely abort a production before completion. That is how it would be possible in that case to compensate the loss of favour that could occur while the NPC is producing an item. That calls for some drastic decisions.
First, a NPC can only take care of one object at a time. No production chains. Any other way would have the word 'exploit/horribly awry' written all over it.
The current favour value will be stored when an item is given into production. If the production should be aborted a proportional part of the original favour should be added back to the updated current favour with the max set to the original favour (I mean seriously man! Next time, make up your mind *before* you start to waste my time).