Useful hints for Gaming

[andrewducker]

I'm currently reading a fantastic article on AI design that has some great tips that apply to pretty much any kind of gaming experience. Here's my favourite so far:

The most useful data we got from our playtests was a list of things to avoid
At the top of that list is Subtlety
If it isn't totally obvious, it's too subtle
Even if you make something as obvious as you can possibly make it, half the people will miss it the first three times they see it
In Halo the Grunts run away when an Elite is killed
Initially nobody noticed so we had to keep adding clues to make it more obvious
By the time we shipped we had made it so not only does _every single_ Grunt run away _every single_ time an Elite is killed
but they all have an outrageously exaggerated panic run where they wave their hands above their heads
they scream in terror
and half the time one of them will say "Leader Dead, Run Away!"
I would still estimate that less than a third of our users made the connection

I wish people had told me that 10 years ago. I never would have bothered with half the intricate plots that were completely wasted until I hammered home what was going on.

GM (Jumping up and down): Evil McNasty then stabs the player's friend in the back while twirling his moustache.
Smarter than the average player: Hmm, I'm sensing that Evil isn't as nice as he seems. From now on I'll keep a closer eye on .... Ooh! Gold!

Comments

[rollick.livejournal.com]

This made me guffaw mightily. I've never played Halo, so I couldn't say how obvious it is, but the reportage on it strikes me as hysterical.

As to your Evil McNasty example, that made me guffaw too, but maybe we need to trade some players. Mine are (justifiably, but still extremely) paranoid:

GM: Goody McWhitehat says "Here, friends. I will gift you with magical weapons and a map around all the traps. And allow me to stand in front of you, as you are being shot at, and I would not want you harmed."

Players as a group: "What's THIS guy's game? We watch him closely and ignore whoever's shooting at us, because if we look away from this guy, he will doubtless attempt to kill us all."

That said, I think there are different standards for video games and RPGs. I don't see anything inherently wrong with mystery RPGs -- if the players know they're getting involved in one, and do so voluntarily.

My favorite thing in RPG is that moment when the penny drops, when you finally put two and two together and get five. I'm biased toward mystery games because I'm running one, and because I like them myself; I designed my game to be full of penny-drops moments. And yeah, sometimes you have to make it obvious, but if everyone's paying attention, and everybody has been TRYING to solve the mystery, then that satisfaction's still there. You just need players that LIKE baroque, detail-heavy plots and want to unravel them.

Though spicing things up with gratuitous head-bashing from time to time helps too.

[andrewducker]

Oh, there's nothing wrong with mystery RPGs. And I've happily thrown mysteries and confusion into games. I just try to make sure that the outcome isn't entirely dependent on the players spotting the mystery. So if they fail to spot the huge clues, it just makes things harder for them later on, rather than having them stuck completely.

[rollick.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I tend to run things so if the players miss a clue, it comes around again with the situation escalated, so it's harder to miss, both because it's bigger and because it should remind them of the previous clue. That's worked reasonably well – at least, I haven't had to kill them all off yet.