Design Ideology and Rule Edits to RiftWalker
Over the last nine months we have been playing testing my tabletop roleplaying game. It has seen many design changes, after it has been play tested by players of different experience levels. There are many things that made sense on paper that simply did not make the game more fun, or meet my design goals in practice. These are some of the ideas I have stepped away from in RiftWalker.
The game used to feature long tactical different weapon lists. One could pick various traits to custom build their own weapons. This was made to balance mages and warriors, giving warriors more tactical choices. It was a homebrew feature I did in my D&D 5e game that was wildly successful. It also came from the overly simulationist idea that I wanted different weapons from different worlds and timelines to interact with each other in specific ways. However, RW Powers ended up being equal to all characters. The weapon design ended up being clunky and overly complex for the sort of easy and fast experience I wanted.
The game had a long lists of powers for players to pick from. This is an easy design trap to fall into as a writer, as it is easy to get excited over all the things one could do in a game. When one of my design goals was to allow players to custom build characters, I have moved towards a different model. In the 0.2 play test, I have introduced frameworks for players to pick to make whatever powers they want. This partly came from the weapons list, but allows for any sort of flavour a player could want. It also helps with balance as the framework of allowing certain conditions and damage amounts (for example), is easier to play test, than many individual powers.
Reputation used to be a big codified aspect of the game. I’ve decided currently to make it more free-form and narrative focus.
There used to be lots of arbitrary points for things like fate etc instead of tied to character build design. This was good originally to get ideas out fast and play test different levels. Some of my players like to get their fate back between adventures and some like to “earn” them back. I’m not sure where to go on this front, but we will see!
I used to think I needed to massively build each world before play. Another easy trap to fall into. I should be doing it IN play. Another small one was designing worlds for the wrong play experience. An example being designing towns through shops. This only lead to long shopping sequences. Boring!
I’ve been able to refine my ideas and edge in scope creep really well. As normal, things started very open ended. What I and the players liked ended up being in the game. Not big non-understanding ability lists, but considered experiences.
We used to have a separate role, archetype and thing you’re good at bonus. This was scrapped for being unnecessary and hard to get your head around. It’s now a simple background and role.
The trackers (montage sequences or skill challenges equivalent in other games) used to have each character make a check to add a dice to the final check, in which you would need multiple successes to pass - this was too hard. I now have each person make a check and reduce the difficulty by 1 each time. This is still being tweaked as I sort of think it’s too easy, but so far the play testers like it.
Monsters used to use a big pool of dice, and attack players. This was pointless in the end as having to balance HP and attack bonuses made rolling 20 dice to attack redundant. I decided to make the game player facing as it was more engaging. Monsters now show difficulty through reducing checks of players.
More dice have been introduced. The initial game had too few successes. Bumping each pool up by 2 really helped with the “fun factor”.
I can’t wait to see what ends up happening in the future with the game. We are about to move into the official 0.2 play test. More to come.
