"Change comes when you want it."

A very wise friend of mine said that to me, and it is one to think about. For many people, this should be followed up by, "Why change?" If you are happy with what you have, fine, don't rock the boat, change would be bad for you. If you are unhappy, then the question of "why change?" is already answered, and you must.

The entire EQNext experience changed me. Sometimes, when you see something new and different, you want that instead of what you have. For MMOs, the same-old static worlds and terrain of EQ2 and World of Warcraft have gotten stale, and yes, I would like to see something new and different for a change. It does not mean EQNext is going to be better, and I think that is where people get defensive and confused. EQNext has to prove itself, and it deserves a fair chance. If you are happy in your current MMO, fine, don't rock the boat, and change would be bad for you. Others may be unhappy with what you are happy with, and that is fine too, I accept that, and you know, it is life. Who knows, the old games may be more comfortable for some, and even me, I don't know, but I am excited by the future and all its possibilities.

Same thing with Pathfinder, D&D4, D&D3.5, and to some extent D&D Next. All of these celebrate the past, and it is a fun, wonderful past, mind you - I enjoy all of these games. Something on the edge of my conscious says, there is something better out there, something wonderful and fantastic with new worlds never seen before. There comes a time when I don't want to live in the past, I want to explore the possibilities of new games, so I head out and try new things. I design too, game design is my hobby, and I enjoy it to no end. However, the twentieth time through Keep on the Borderlands and the Tomb of Horrors gets the same after a while, and yes, there are the Pathfinder adventure paths, but those are still in the same D&D Normal worlds where you know what to expect.

Part of me wants to head out into the unknown, and experience worlds never seen before. It's part of the original spirit behind SBRPG1.0, to cut players and groups loose with a full set of world creation tools, and let them come up with the world. This spirit is back in EQNext, where players shape the world, players create it, and the shared "live" experience is more important than the written module. It's part of why the game calls to me, and why we are recreating SBRPG in a new and exciting form. To adventure in games where magic does not work the way you are used to, you can never expect what's down that deep hole, and the dangers lurking out there you have no idea what they are capable of - that is a truly dangerous and exciting world, and ones people love playing in.

There will come a time when the pen-and-paper world wants change, something new, something cool. It's a natural cycle and renewal and rebirth. It only comes, however, to those who want it.

Wise words indeed.

SBRPG2 and 7dRPG Plans

Now that SOE Live is over with, we are finalizing plans in regards to SBRPG2 and 7dRPG. 7dRPG will become the core-engine of SBRPG2, and the steampunk elements will be moved off into a steampunk world book. We envision 7dRPG as being the licensed part of the game, just like anyother roleplaying system license. People will be able to build world books and other fun stuff off the 7dRPG core. More on this later.

SBRPG2 will be its old 'create a world and play' self again, although using 7dRPG as the core of the game. This will be a showcase game with support for lots of cool stuff, with a more generic focus, but still supporting all the crazy and fun stuff we had in the original SBRPG way back when.

We have a number of worldbooks in the works too for specific games and worlds we would like to see, with a lot of this coming from our playtesting and other work.

Expect the events of the previous four days to have a huge impact on how both 7dRPG and SBRPG2 will look, the pen-and-paper world is shifting, and we have to stay ahead of the curve. Oh yes, nothing is staying the same, we need to push the envelope to compete with what we just saw, and yes, we plan on competing with all that. Very cool stuff, and an exciing time to be a RPG designer, either PnP or MMO.

Reaper Minis Kickstarter

Look what came in the mail today.

Yeah, take this as an official announcement of our fantasy rules. We will need a rules system to handle all of these, the ultimate BYOB miniatures fantasy roleplaying game. What better way to kick this off than with a 15-pound box of plastic figures.

Yes, we are still counting.

The Whiff Factor

This is one area we hit while playtesting the other night, the whiff factor. A lot of games start you off with a high whiff factor, with typical characters only hitting about 15-25% of the time. You can tell what this does, you typically get long fights with a ton of misses, and lucky hits decide the fight.

In D&D, with an AC system that directly ties into to-hits, this is very pronounced. D&D4 had a system where level directly ties into the to-hit system; and it was very difficult to get hits in, especially if your equipment was not up to the level you were at, or if the monsters were 4 or more levels above you.

We struck a middle ground, keeping whiffs high, but you can mitigate this and get a better to-hit through positioning. They aren't as high as beginning D&D, an average low level character has a closer to 40-55% chance to hit, which feels right. Armor does not subtract from to-hits, but there is a chance a blow that lands will cause little or no damage if the target's armor is high enough.

An important note, and one we found is a necessity. All spells and powers require a to-hit, even beneficial party spells such as buffs and heals. Players used to modern MMOs and RPGs may find this strange, since beneficial spells are assumed to auto-hit. This is controversial, but needed for two reasons.

1. This raises the importance of a character's casting skill
2. This prevents deadlocks in combat

In older MMOs like Everquest and other RPGs, you had to practice your casting skills in order to be able to cast your spell. This was critical, and training your ability to quickly cast spells saved you mana, and also ensured your character could get a spell off at a critical moment during a fight. This adds tension, and places an importance on training and making sure your spells didn't fizzle in combat. A lot can go wrong in combat when a goblin is trying to kill you, and making skill rolls to cast spells simulates a character's ability to work complex magics under pressure, without missing a word or misdirecting a spell. Misses still use mana, so it is important to train.

Monsters that have healing powers also need to roll for them, in play testing, we found a goblin healer in the back ranks could tie up the combat for a long time by spamming heals. Putting  an uncertain factor if the heal would land made the combats more fluid, and eliminated the chance for deadlocks and long combats. This is that chaos factor coming into play, and it raises the importance of high-skill healers and casters.

Of course, the chance to cast is affected by referee-set difficulty modifiers, so if you are in the field with no monsters around, a referee could always apply a simple or trivial modifier to the casting roll, since there is no pressure to cast the spell quickly and without someone trying to kill your character. In combat, things change, and caster skill becomes an important factor. Highly skilled mages and healers are important allies, and also formidable foes.

7dRPG Core: Dungeon Playtest I

You need to go through these exercises when you design a game, so last night we kicked up a 7dRPG playtest as a dungeon game. Yes, 7dRPG will be a Steampunk game at heart, but the core will be used as the SBRPG2 engine. The game needs to work on the board, so play-tests like this help solidify the rules. Once we get all the tabletop rules worked out, these will be rolled into the base rules, and 7dRPG will benefit as well.

You do find a lot of little things you forget to write down in these tests, little things you assume but don't write down, and you go through the rules making notes, adding sections, and clarifying rules to be how they were used on the board. Play-tests like these are a cleansing exercise, and they help tighten the game experience. We cleaned up a lot of little strange rules last night, and I will be making changes to the core document today.

One thing we discovered is the importance of non-generic monster designs. We have this concept of 'generic monsters' where you can ballpark a monster based on a generic toughness level. Here, we spun our monsters up as generic characters, and they suffered two problems, being too tough and being too easy. These monsters were very bland as well, with no special skills, powers, or special attacks. Having a system where you can ballpark monsters to get them into a general toughness area is important, but you need to have a power list for them, and also a list of specific designs so you can have monsters with fun attacks and defenses to play with.

We did nearly have a TPK party-wipe on the first play through, our group of three generic spiders were way too strong for our initial 3-person group. We adjusted things a little, but kept the strong monsters because we like the lower-level challenge to be high. If you start out a superhero, you never get that feeling of dramatic improvement when you start getting powers unlocked, and you become a capable fighting machine. In this session, only one character had magic, and the healer did not have any, relying on units of bandages and medical skill to keep the front line fighters alive. Cool stuff, and it gives you a really good benchmark to start from once your healing magic kicks in.

Some of the assumptions you make in your initial design will be 100% wrong when you play it on the board, and we encountered this as well for some of the minor fiddly rules. You will sit there and write one thing, play it, and the obvious answer will be right there. You can't be too attached to a special rule, and you always need to be willing to throw rules overboard if they just slow down or confuse play.

Oh yes, those are D&D Dungeon Command tiles with Pathfinder minis on them, along with some of our painted metal ones. Those dice are just incredible too, George's set of clears he just loves because they sparkle under the light. We throw together bits of random games to make ours, we do follow a BYOB styles of mash-up when it comes to tabletop gaming, and believe the tabletop game you play should support whatever random figures and bits you have at your house.

If you have a party of 4 metal figures, a pack of skeletons, and a container of plastic spiders and ants, you should be able to play games with those pieces, make things up, and enjoy yourself without needing hundreds of dollars of 'official' figures and playing pieces. You should be able to mod those pieces to higher-level or specialized units, should your characters get experience and level-up. It's part of the reason our games have such a strong design and creation element to them, we are 100% believers in supporting your creativity and the playing pieces you have.