GameDesigne12
2017-12-03, 01:37 PM
My team is constructing a game focused on "the party" of characters rather than individuals. One player is a party of around 5 characters. The idea is that the player focuses on themselves as a "party", but through storytelling and character building, the individual characters within their party begin to manifest personality. A kindof start with "You have 5 goons." and end up "My party is made up of 5 unique individual heroes. Let me tell you their stories!"
We've got some ideas, but are still trying to figure out a game system which uses polyhedron dice like the D20 system (1D4, 1D6, 1D8, 1d12, etc.) I thought invoking the wisdom of designers & experienced roleplayers here would be a fantastic resource to glean from. Especially considering how awful sites like StackExchange have become (it's gotten to the point where you aren't allowed to ask any questions of any kind, and the power user's bias/corruption has gotten out of control, so there is no correcting them when they're wrong. It has rendered the site near useless).
What this it NOT: Large scale battles. I'm not talking one player being hundreds of units or even scores. I'm talking a full but small party. Think of one player being "The Hobbit" cast or "Lord of the Rings" in some chapter or another. Four halflings on a journey, or a Merchant & his mercenaries.
Most RPG's focus on the individual, with all rules tailored to individual combat. This is fine to handle many situations in my team's game, but many events don't work well for individuals when we need a group roll (such as combat, running scenes & what happens to each character, etc.) I've researched Miniatures, but their rules also focus on the individual (scores to hundreds of soldiers are counted as a single unit, who live or die as a unit).
I know miniature skirmish games are exactly this: One player is a team of characters. However those too focus on individual conflict resolution for combat.
And Combat is where I find most of our problems. If the task is to lift a boulder, that's easy- cumulative strength. If the task is to defeat a boss Dragon, that is easy- you NEED all party to roll all their dice because the boss is so powerful. It's when you have skirmishes, like 5v5's, where everyone is of relatively the same power class, where I have issues. Individual rolls bog down combat too much. Cumulative rolls (everyone combines all dice in one big roll for both teams) doesn't take into consideration the tiny skirmishes that happen. For example, flukes like "While the two parties clash, Character2 is singled out by two much stronger monsters." Do the other party members have a chance to act? Are they too busy so it's a small 1-round of combat for Character2?
Search results yield lots of suggestions for fighting enemies as "Swarms", which isn't a bad idea - until you consider my unique circumstance: 1 player would also need to be treated as a Swarm too. It might work, but doesn't feel right.
Handling as individuals would get bogged down when sometimes we just need a quick group resolution roll or just want to focus on the important, exciting bits.
Most would say that simply rolling using normal rules for multiple characters would suffice. One character is the focus, they roll, and the rest assist them by adding to the roll based on their own success. This seems very unintuitive for what I am trying to accomplish. (An unskilled player shouldn't be able to help with a complex skill roll. However, al characters can fall victim to being wounded - even if they're a non-combat character.
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**SOME EXTRA DETAILS**
Our RPG system is actually the reverse of this idea of rolling for individuals: The PARTY is the primary focus, not the individual, but the story-telling/character-building revolves around the characters in the party. It feels cheap & inefficient game design to abuse systems designed to only occasionally have multiple characters attempt the same action.
The greatest difficulty is that each party can vary widely. 5 combat-centric characters for one player, a healthy mix of classes for another. I have to keep all of this in mind.
The characters are also simplified, but still individualistic. Each has their own wound counter (but only a few hits and they die). Each have their own statistics & skills, abilities & items. So the party isn't one entity - it is individual characters who contribute to an overall entity. You just play as this collective party of individuals.
The final caveat I will say is that I'm okay with having quick, abstract conflict resolution. A battle between 10 characters (5v5) could just focus on a single success/failure roll followed by dealing with the fallout by only focusing on Storytelling which seems exceptional. "During te battle, Character1 is cornered by 2 orcs! Resolve for Character1." "Character3 finds an open opportunity to send 4 goblins to their grave. Roll to see how well he did." I am also open to just going with purely individual rolls for everyone - even if it sometimes gets bogged down - if you think that would still be best.
However it's much easier for us to design using some references. What we may or may like, what we think would work, or systems which make more mathematical sense.
Any tips, notes, resources, or references are greatly appreciated. I for the life of me can't find any rulesets of combat systems which are not completely focusing on Individual's actions or war gaming where one group is still just one very simplified unit who all live or all die as one.
Are there even any game systems designed around the idea of 1 player being multiple characters?
We've got some ideas, but are still trying to figure out a game system which uses polyhedron dice like the D20 system (1D4, 1D6, 1D8, 1d12, etc.) I thought invoking the wisdom of designers & experienced roleplayers here would be a fantastic resource to glean from. Especially considering how awful sites like StackExchange have become (it's gotten to the point where you aren't allowed to ask any questions of any kind, and the power user's bias/corruption has gotten out of control, so there is no correcting them when they're wrong. It has rendered the site near useless).
What this it NOT: Large scale battles. I'm not talking one player being hundreds of units or even scores. I'm talking a full but small party. Think of one player being "The Hobbit" cast or "Lord of the Rings" in some chapter or another. Four halflings on a journey, or a Merchant & his mercenaries.
Most RPG's focus on the individual, with all rules tailored to individual combat. This is fine to handle many situations in my team's game, but many events don't work well for individuals when we need a group roll (such as combat, running scenes & what happens to each character, etc.) I've researched Miniatures, but their rules also focus on the individual (scores to hundreds of soldiers are counted as a single unit, who live or die as a unit).
I know miniature skirmish games are exactly this: One player is a team of characters. However those too focus on individual conflict resolution for combat.
And Combat is where I find most of our problems. If the task is to lift a boulder, that's easy- cumulative strength. If the task is to defeat a boss Dragon, that is easy- you NEED all party to roll all their dice because the boss is so powerful. It's when you have skirmishes, like 5v5's, where everyone is of relatively the same power class, where I have issues. Individual rolls bog down combat too much. Cumulative rolls (everyone combines all dice in one big roll for both teams) doesn't take into consideration the tiny skirmishes that happen. For example, flukes like "While the two parties clash, Character2 is singled out by two much stronger monsters." Do the other party members have a chance to act? Are they too busy so it's a small 1-round of combat for Character2?
Search results yield lots of suggestions for fighting enemies as "Swarms", which isn't a bad idea - until you consider my unique circumstance: 1 player would also need to be treated as a Swarm too. It might work, but doesn't feel right.
Handling as individuals would get bogged down when sometimes we just need a quick group resolution roll or just want to focus on the important, exciting bits.
Most would say that simply rolling using normal rules for multiple characters would suffice. One character is the focus, they roll, and the rest assist them by adding to the roll based on their own success. This seems very unintuitive for what I am trying to accomplish. (An unskilled player shouldn't be able to help with a complex skill roll. However, al characters can fall victim to being wounded - even if they're a non-combat character.
--------------
**SOME EXTRA DETAILS**
Our RPG system is actually the reverse of this idea of rolling for individuals: The PARTY is the primary focus, not the individual, but the story-telling/character-building revolves around the characters in the party. It feels cheap & inefficient game design to abuse systems designed to only occasionally have multiple characters attempt the same action.
The greatest difficulty is that each party can vary widely. 5 combat-centric characters for one player, a healthy mix of classes for another. I have to keep all of this in mind.
The characters are also simplified, but still individualistic. Each has their own wound counter (but only a few hits and they die). Each have their own statistics & skills, abilities & items. So the party isn't one entity - it is individual characters who contribute to an overall entity. You just play as this collective party of individuals.
The final caveat I will say is that I'm okay with having quick, abstract conflict resolution. A battle between 10 characters (5v5) could just focus on a single success/failure roll followed by dealing with the fallout by only focusing on Storytelling which seems exceptional. "During te battle, Character1 is cornered by 2 orcs! Resolve for Character1." "Character3 finds an open opportunity to send 4 goblins to their grave. Roll to see how well he did." I am also open to just going with purely individual rolls for everyone - even if it sometimes gets bogged down - if you think that would still be best.
However it's much easier for us to design using some references. What we may or may like, what we think would work, or systems which make more mathematical sense.
Any tips, notes, resources, or references are greatly appreciated. I for the life of me can't find any rulesets of combat systems which are not completely focusing on Individual's actions or war gaming where one group is still just one very simplified unit who all live or all die as one.
Are there even any game systems designed around the idea of 1 player being multiple characters?