Welcome to the Hamster Wheel!

So, the other day, I was talking with somebody who was interested in working on an RPG, and was excited with the idea of a more conversation focused game, but had a small issue with it:

The other problem with conversation-based instances/encounters is that I'm unsure how they'd have signifigance to the game aside from "that was interesting." The player could gain items, but what signifigance do they have? Are they just used for the next instance?

This statement is, well, interesting, and it is fairly common among gamers. If I don't get something cool out of it, what was the point? Why did I run across the country just to get some boots that I'm never going to use?

The Role of RPGs

A friend asked me what aspects and themes I liked about RPGs, and I responded with a word vomit. It is not clear, concise or even likely representative of my opinions, but it includes some, if not most of them and it is from the perspective of a designers, a GM and a player, so it is worth including here.

Game Design: Playing on the Seesaw

In my previous post, I talked at some length about balance, particularly in single player environments. This time around, I'm going to dive into multi-player balance. As previously explored, the core of single player balance is making sure that the player continues to be able to make interesting and valid choices. This continues to be true in multi-player games, but requires additional care.

Game Design: Keeping the Spoon on the Nose

To me, as a designer, balance means a couple different things. In a single player game, it means that the player has interesting and valid choices available to them. For multi-player, it means that given equal skill, from the beginning of the game, each player has an equal chance to win. Its a bit more complicated than that however, so let's dive in.