The Challenge: At its base, a role playing game is an interactive story. A group of people get together to collectively create an entertaining tale. There are rules, of course, and it is a game, which means there has to be some element of challenge. However, the intrinsic definition remains the same.
That said, if the players simply wanted to watch a story unfold before them, they would read a book or watch a movie. Role playing games are fun because the players have a degree of control over how the story flows and what it entails. The players control the protagonists, in many ways the most important elements of a good story. Their actions will shape the way the story develops, even though the majority of the story lies in the referee’s hands.
Ergo, all players should have a chance to impact the story. This ability is lost if the game designer has failed to overcome the third challenge of RPG design: the challenge of character value.
Even if it plays a rogue in a combat oriented game or a warrior in a politically oriented game, a player should be able the affect the story. The challenge that comes to game designers, then, is that the game must make sure that whatever sort of character a player chooses, that player will be able to use its character and have fun. However, the designer has to do so without faltering in the first challenge, making sure different types of characters are, in fact, different.
Character value is based on the character being unique, and having powers that are useful, but don’t overshadow other characters. The most common way of doing this is using a benefit-restriction style of design. For each benefit a character has, it suffers a corresponding restriction (even if that restriction is “you don’t have other benefits.”)
Creating a role playing game following a benefit-restriction style is practically a requirement, depending on how much you distill the concept. The point of having different types of characters and abilities is that certain characters are best in certain situations. They are strong in one area only at the expense of being weak in another. However, the designer still has to decide how strong the character can be in its given field, and how much it must give up to obtain that level of power.
The Risk: Carelessness here can potentially do more to harm a role playing game than in any other challenge. A designer must examine the powers it awards, the restrictions therein, and the abilities a player must give up as a result, to determine balance. There are no equations for this process, and sometimes playtesting is the only way to truly decide if a certain power is balanced.
But balanced the characters must be. If one type of character is much stronger than any other type in a majority of situations, there is no real point in playing other types. Players who do so will feel almost punished for wanting to use the less-optimal characters. This flaw is most common in combat-oriented characters, who gain their superior combat stats at the expense of utility powers. These characters need backup–healers, troubleshooters, diplomats, and so on–but these other character types suffer a severe limitation in battle.
And combat, as a rule of thumb, is the most common sort of challenge in role playing games. Simulated battles are exciting, straightforward ways to use the game rules, and promote keen thinking and logic. However, if only certain types of characters excel in combat, but other characters are necessary to succeeding in other areas, players of the less combatively powerful characters find themselves suffering in most encounters. Meanwhile, on those occasions where they do have the chance to shine, it is generally only one character in his or her best area. Other players–combat and non-combat alike–have to sit on the sidelines while one character handles the entire encounter.
Beyond the combat/non-combat gap, there is also the risk of combat characters whose abilities come at a cost. Most role playing games have some pretty common templates of characters, the most traditional archetypes being the tank, the blaster, the healer, and the sneak. The tank is the best fighter, able to deal respectable damage time after time and take the hits. The blaster can deal greater damage than the tank and attack multiple foes easily, but has limits to how often it can use its powers, and also has low survivability, poor defenses, and pathetic basic skills. The healer’s power is all-important in a combat-heavy game, but comes at the expense of real fighting talent. The sneak can usually surprise foes and even deal heavy damage (often more than a blaster, but to single opponents) when fighting on its terms, but loses out big time in a stand up fight.
These archetypes seem balanced enough, but really create a powerful divide between character types. The tank feels overshadowed by the blaster’s ability to devastate entire enemy groups and the sneak’s power to deal tremendous harm in the right conditions. The blaster envies the tank’s ability to keep fighting at full strength battle after battle and the healer’s survivability. The healer yearns for the power to actually have effect in battle when its allies are not injured. The sneak would give much to be able to have something to fall back on if it can’t surprise its foes.
The balance is there, and each player is more than happy for its choice when fighting in the right circumstance, but when the fight is not on their terms, they lose interest. This also pits the referee in the position where the best (or even only) way to make a battle difficult is to specifically prey on each character’s weak points, which can lead to a string of clich
Tags: Character Value, Games Builder, Games Fun