Balancing Act (2018)

One of the distinctive features of The Next Project is the lack of a magic subsystem, and I wanted to touch on that a bit, today.

When we look at editions of D&D that use the "3.x" style of spellcasting, what becomes immediately apparent is that the classes are split into "haves" and "have nots." Ultimately, spellcasting classes are interacting with an extra layer of design -- they gain additional resource management, but also have much greater breadth of abilities.

So what do spells typically end up doing, in practicality? In short, you use them for both combat and non-combat, and generally what you're doing with them is spending limited resources to exceed baseline expectations. You can make an area attack to deal more damage than a single weapon swing, to more targets, or you can use it to overcome an obstacle -- whether that be in social encounters or in exploration. You can cast Knock to open a locked door, or cast Charm Person to get past the guard, or sway the regent, or whathaveyou. Generally when you're targeting a creature, there is a save involved, but a lot of times spells "just work" -- you're spending a limited resource, so the game doesn't make you roll.

Now, that being said, you still (as a spellcaster) have the option to not use these resources; you can swing your weapon all day, and you can try and use skill checks to get past non-combat encounters. This was sort of a problem I ran into with the Backgrounds in 5th Edition; they're a great starting point for giving characters declarative power, but everyone gets them. Spellcasters are still operating in a completely different design space than non-casters, while at the same time overlapping everything that the non-casters can do.

What I wanted to do with this game, is to even that all out: classes have their unique features for combat, and non-combat is handled using skills. That's it. We don't need magic as another layer of design that just duplicates things that are already covered; instead, it's used as a method of applying theme or flavour, to how a particular class handles combat or uses skills. We also don't want to be trying to balance off combat and non-combat utility against one another -- a classic "apples and oranges" analogy -- which is why the combat and non-combat aspects of characters are siloed off from one another, and why resource management is kept very minimal, in the game's overall designs.

This also avoids the pitfalls of having the spellcasting classes be the most versatile, powerful, and influential -- a feat which I think was one of 4th Editions greatest successes. As I've said before, the focus on teamwork meant that classes had to be designed to contribute meaningfully, and on about an even par with one another. What this allows the player to do, is to pick the class that most closely approximates the character that they have in mind, learn the ins and outs of that class, and just play -- secure in the knowledge that they haven't made a false choice, will under-perform, and feel like dead weight, bringing the rest of the party down. Balancing classes is important for enabling players to enjoy the game, by helping them to fully realize their character concepts.

Now, the problem with flattening the power curve, is that it is possible for classes to either look (on paper) or feel (in actual play) very similar to one another. This is where I think the design of TNP has the potential to execute better than some of its predecessors, because of class dice. In order for parity to be maintained, a party of 5 characters -- all operating off of different dice -- necessitates each class having unique and different mechanics. Admittedly, this requires a lot of number-crunching by the designer (me) in order to ensure each class can contribute equally. But overall, I think it's a meaningful goal to have, and one that helps guide much of the design process.


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This sort of touches on one of the snags that have hit the class designs a bit. Trying to emulate D&D-style fantasy classes can mean dealing with some classes that have too much design space, and others that have too little. In most cases with this project, I've had an easier time of reigning in bloated classes, than in expanding classes that are a bit too narrow in focus. The one that always comes to mind in this regard is the Acrobat, and I'm hoping I can find a satisfactory solution for this class, as well as others.

In the near future, I'm hoping I can crank out a minor revision of the current playtest rules, but I also want to finish up a few more classes -- and make some of the needed changes to the new class format and leveling systems.


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Next post should be on September 9th, so check back then!

Money, Power, Respect (2018)

A little while ago, I did a very mechanical comparison between TNP and D&D's 4th and 5th Editions. Today I want to talk about things in a little bit less-specific manner, and touch on some of the building blocks of characters.

If we look at your typical D&D edition, there are a few ways you can customize a character:

1. Ability Scores and Skills: though generally your class goes a long way to proscribing which skills and ability scores you can potentially be good at, there is generally a little bit of wiggle room within that framework.
2. Feats: little perks that can (in theory) be useful for any character, and are lumped into one big pool to draw from.
3. Spells/Powers: things that give you specific actions, either within combat or outside of it.
4. Magic Items: actually pretty similar to spells and powers, but are not constrained by class (making them similar to feats.)
5. Multi-classing/Dual-classing/Hybrid: combining two or more classes together, to get perks from both.

As we can see from these descriptions, a few of these building blocks overlap one another, somewhat. We can break these things down into essentially two broad descriptors: things which come from your class, and things that don't. Ultimately, what I wanted to do with TNP was to eliminate the customization that comes from outside of your class.

I can remember looking at 4th Edition D&D, just seeing Cleave as a power that Fighters could take (rather than a feat, as it had been in 3.5) and I really liked that simple change. I also liked how so much of the game that (as a player) you could really figure out by simply having an understanding of your class, and the powers you got from it.

When Essentials came around for 4th Edition, it sort of "missed the target, but hit the tree," for me. Where I felt 4th Edition needed simplification and streamlining, was in the areas of both feats and magic items (things from outside of your class) rather than with powers (things from within your class.) The fact that the former design spaces (which were meant to be the most universal) were the ones that became the most bloated, served to make the game more and more inaccessible as its lifespan went on.

Magic Items tended to be the big offender in this regard, in my view. They essentially duplicated the design space that I felt should have been owned entirely by classes. It also served as a crutch for weak or poorly-designed classes; I can remember playing as a Scout, and basically needing to incorporate specific magic items into my build (for basic survivability, in combat) because the class itself failed to provide those tools.

You also end up with less uniqueness to classes, once customization starts to homogenize things too much. The standard "Charge kit" for 4th Edition could be basically built onto the chassis of any class, creating an effective (if boring) playstyle around feats and items, rather than being built through your class and its powers.

Really, this all just boils down to my personal preference, and my experience. My introduction to RPGs was with Diablo 2, and I was immediately captivated by the whole "skill tree" setup for classes. Once magic items which granted cross-class skills were introduced (and the game's true focus on merely farming items became apparent) I was no longer interested. I much preferred the idea that your character was a function of your class, and how you chose to build your character within that class.

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So how does money figure into all this?

Well, in short, it'll tie into something I mentioned in my previous post; the need for skills to be bigger and more fleshed-out, within the designs.

Money (particularly in the last few editions of D&D, as well as 13th Age) has sort of waned in importance -- the games simply don't give you enough to do with it, or don't properly account for the amount of gold you tend to end up with. (I've even heard it suggested that in 13th Age, money could be used as a "temporary background" as a way of simplifying the whole process of using money.)

The way I look at it, is that money is just yet another thing that comes from outside of your class, which is used to define what your character can do -- so get rid of it.

Weapons? Armor? Those are all functions of the core mechanics now.

Why not take it a step further?

We aren't gonna be buying magic items, clearly. So what does that leave (in the typical D&D play-experience) to spend money on? Equipment and services.

Potions? We have Reserves to cover our healing, and keep the mechanical structure unified.

Lockpicks? Battering Ram? We have skills that cover this design space; just make a check, and narrate it however you want. Whether or not 'Jimm, the Fighter' brought the right tool for the job when he goes to break down a door, is just an exercise in needless bookkeeping. It also makes the inanimate object more crucial to success than the character, which flies in the face of what we want to achieve.

Want to rent a room? Buy a wagon? Get a few horses?

Make it into a roll, using your social skills. If you rolled bad? Then it looks like you're a little short on coin today -- so tell us a story of where all your money ended up, last night.

If the DM wants to make it a little harder on you, then not being able to sleep with a roof over your head (or a wagon full of supplies) might end up costing you a Reserve.
Not being able to get horses to cover ground faster might mean the doomsday clock moves a bit closer to midnight.

In every case, the money isn't the important thing -- it's what happens in the fiction.

All this, coupled with the existing guidelines for skills, should help us figure out how money can be handled in the abstract. "You couldn't possibly have enough money to bribe the king," the DM says, adding, "don't even bother rolling."

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Next post is due August 28th, so check back then!

Crunch Time (2018)

As was kind of expected, playtesting showed that the game isn't fully ready to be released "into the wild."

Since the game's non-combat aspect leans entirely onto the skills, it will be important going forward to have this facet of the game a lot more thoroughly defined. The mechanics of each skill, the basic assumptions of what happens outside of combat, as well as who commands the flow of the action (and when) will need to be codified. I think it will also be important to define when and how to fall back on Attributes, Skillsets, and Power Sources, i.e. when there may not be a specific skill that covers a certain type of action.

The "monster workshop" guidelines will need more testing; there were some flaws with the theorycraft behind solo monsters, and I can only assume that the same will be true of the other new monster types. Likewise, the rules for summoned creatures need to be expanded upon -- specifically, when they should or should not be treated as "allies." Mechanically, the Ranger's animal companion needs to be reworked, since it can potentially soak a lot of damage, with no real penalty or drawback if it's killed; it can simply be 'recast' on your next turn.

Another thing that was shown to be troublesome was various passive and defensive buffs. Boosts to defense rolls can be disproportionately powerful, since a character can potentially make several of them in a round. Whereas bonuses to attacks are generally limited to Basic Attacks, which (among most classes) happen only once, on their turn. The need to balance off these different types of benefits was reflected in the updated Cleric class, which I wrote during the course of playtesting. Always-on buffs will need to have their effectiveness scaled, to match their projected frequency, or simply have that frequency adjusted to match their potency.

A few of the more basic concepts of the game need to be defined -- "Death and Dying" (so to speak) being one of them. I mentioned previously that Reserves are meant to function as out-of-combat HP top-ups, but the mechanical ability to use them needs to be cleared up a bit. Can you spend Reserves at the end of combat, if you are "dropped"? Does initiative immediately end when all enemies are defeated, or should you finish out the round (potentially letting support characters get more healing in)? These kinds of things need to be explained in the text. "Expertise" (I feel) also needs to be straightforwardly called out as simply a piece of mechanics jargon, or it needs to be renamed (because it continues to cause mental logjams with new readers/players.)

Last (for now) is the fact that I need to finish writing the remaining classes, which also means needing to crunch their damage numbers, and make sure everything balances. The class features all need to be reformatted, and the slate/category upgrades need to be instituted across all classes. The "Performance" progression needs to be ironed out and finalized; some classes being able to gain it as an option at 1st level, but with no actual benefit until 2nd level is something that needs to be fixed. "Subclass only" and "Archetype only" classes will need to have unique and interesting upgrades available to them.

Once the classes are set, they will all need to be tested, re-tested, and re-balanced; if the playtesting has shown anything, it's that things are never as close to completion as they seem, and that the devil is in the details. For the game to reach a finished state, there will need to be a lot of bug-squashing; I'm hoping I can find faster ways to identify problematic, vague, or breakable mechanics, going forward.


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Keeping with the blog schedule, the next post should be up on August 18th, so check back then.