All posts tagged with "game mechanics"

What is a Warrior to do?

December 1, 2010 by David Baumgart

Combat RPGs don’t traditionally offer much active choice to a warrior character: Do you attack? Do you not attack?

Maybe you get to quaff (but never “drink”) a potion every so often. A player’s agency comes more from the set-up to combat through having a much more equipment-driven character than, say, a wizard. It is compelling to collect and use equipment, but  a warrior really ought to have something to do in combat aside from clicking “attack”.

But this is a known problem, and it has been dealt before, and cleverly.

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Posted in Dungeons of Dredmor, Game Design | Tagged , , ,
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The Nefarious Devices of Dredmor’s Dungeon

November 9, 2010 by David Baumgart

Or: Mortality & Happenstance via Mechanical Means

Traps are a bit of a conundrum because it’s not generally good game design to aggravate the player by having them randomly die. Aye, The Grand Tradition of dungeon crawlers demands traps in some form, but they pose the problem of being hidden surprise! damage-dealers. If a player is walking along and gets offed by a Dwarven land mine, hilarious though it may be to randomly explode, their agency has been taken away and this is frustrating to a player.

What is one to do with traps? Read on!

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The Essential Attributes of a Dubious Hero

November 5, 2010 by David Baumgart

In which David rambles about why Caddishness is a character attribute in Dungeons of Dredmor

I was listening to some podcast on RPG design a while back, I forget the name of it (killer opening, eh?), and there was a line of thought brought up that went something like: “What is your RPG about?” “Hope.” “Why isn’t that a stat in the game?”

And this struck me: A game is about the mechanics of the game, regardless of what overt theme is overlaid in stilted cut-scenes. The optimal gameplay path is the message.

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Posted in Dungeons of Dredmor, Game Design | Tagged , , , ,
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