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Design Blog

This page contains entries written by members of the Game Team and other people involved in the design and running of OSLRP events. Often originally taken from Facebook and other places, they are written to give more of an understanding of why the game works the way it does, and the intent behind some game elements.

Balance

written by Conan Daly in February 2019, between Events 2 & 3

Competitive games have to be balanced, right? Otherwise it wouldn’t be fair, and if that’s the case then what’s the point? Humans (and some animals) have an innate sense of fairness, and the perception of unfairness often causes people to object or become angry. So when designers design games, they usually try to balance things out so that the game is perceived as “fair”.

However, live roleplay isn’t a game that you can win (mostly). It can be competitive or cooperative, and usually a mixture of the two, but rarely with a defined endpoint. Although a Character may have a specific set of in-world goals, the goals of the Player tend to be defined by loose statements such as “play my character well”, “have a good immersive experience”, “enjoy the challenge of combat or engaging with plot” or “learn more about the game world”.

So without defined “win” states, the question arises - do we need to be “fair”, and does this mean we need to be balanced? Would attempts to make it 100% balanced dilute the other goals of the system - like a rich theme and interesting, diverse setting. When designing OSLRP, we made some specific design decisions relating to balance that might, from the outside, seem unfair.

The way we designed the game, we wanted to grant advantages to characters that align strongly with our briefs for how the game world works, as an encouragement to “play to type”. We also wanted to give advantages to players who go the extra mile to create something cool and interesting - by working with them to add it to the system or giving them some rule advantages for creating something so impressive. Balancing these advantages out conventionally would override this philosophy, so we just……didn’t.

A Balance By Any Other Name

When designing OSLRP, we expanded the definitions of what balance meant beyond pure game mechanics. We included two other balancing methods - Balancing by Culture, and Balancing by Physrep. When we consider any new game element it is in the context of these elements as well as by the raw mechanics.

The Factions (and their dominant species) are an example of Balancing by Culture. Each of the 4 Factions in Orion Sphere are designed to have strong thematic differences. The Ascendancy, Dominion, Commonality and Free Union are all radically different, and each one has a clearly defined culture, reinforced by our NPC Faction Representatives as well as by a few mechanical or plot-based structures. Within each Faction, you also have the Vassal Species, which are partly influenced by the Culture Balance philosophy, but more on that later.

The Free Union is the cultural baseline for our game. The Sovereign Worlds are culturally diverse, and Free Union players have a lot of freedom to create a background and character concept that suits them within the very broad confines of the Faction. The trade-off is that they don’t really have any special advantages.

The Ascendancy, on the other hand, is militaristic, stern and brutal, and demands that its citizens behave in certain ways. These demands create a “culture burden” - Ascendancy characters are expected to obey orders from those in the hierarchy, attend loyalty parades, profess their loyalty to the Ascendancy and occasionally get dressed down if they step out of line. They have a specific costume brief and a distinctive style, but by conforming to the Faction ideals, Ascendancy Terrans get access to Discipline training and slightly higher Group Income. Ascendancy characters can also interact with the powerful Noble Houses and become pawns in their schemes in return for certain advantages.

Similarly, the Elysians of the Commonality have advantages in their psionic powers and associated technology, although again they are expected to align to a cultural and costume brief. The Elysian’s advantages are balanced by their cultural expectations - while there is cultural scope to use all of their psionic powers (there is a “peace and harmony” strand as well as a “mentally dominate people” strand), it is still quite restrictive in some ways. Commonality members are expected to show up to group meditation sessions, discuss issues and resolve problems by debate.

Digressing briefly on Psionics - Elysians will always have the most powerful psionics in the game, and although other vassal races can have psionic powers, none will ever have the power and utility that Elysians have - this is a deliberate choice to reinforce the position of the Elysians as the masters of psionic power. Within each species’ psionic power, each Path isn’t balanced against the others - as a whole they give direction towards the main play styles we envisioned for the species that has them.

Finally, the Tulaki Dominion are centred around their religion. The Faction has been designed so that almost all of their interactions should be seen through the lens of the Path of Tulak. The Path informs the Dominion culture and they can gain advantages from it, such as Devotional Skills and the possible intervention of the Immortal Spirits. As well as their Cultural Balance, the Tulaki castes have a significant element of Balance by Physrep - the larger castes have a greater physrep requirement, but greater associated advantages.

Each Faction has a culture distinct from the others - this creates differing views, conflict and to a certain extent creates “separations” between Factions. The intention is to make each Faction feel “alien” in outlook to all the others - they are all working on a different set of cultural assumptions, place value on different things and seek different outcomes from each other, which hopefully makes the game more interesting.

Creative Outlets

Sci-fi settings are often populated by a diverse array of alien species, which is something we wanted to include in OSLRP. If we can eventually get to a scene reminiscent of the Cantina in Star Wars Episode IV then one of our major goals will have been ticked off. To help accomplish this, but not dilute the Faction identities, we introduced the concept of Vassal Species - aliens who were under the authority of one of the 4 Factions - and we allow players to submit their own Vassal Species to potentially add to the game.

The actual game advantages a Vassal Species has (which is usually the lowest priority for the person submitting) reflects the background, physrep trappings and character of the vassal species - but it's basically something we come up with that feels characterful. Similarly, Tulaki Megasaurians get stats based on their physrep. We wanted a cool variety of physreps, with the vague brief of “massive lizard person” - we already have giant rocky tortoise shells, huge carapaces, extra height and broadening padding. This stuff can veer into the territory of Awesome, but Impractical, so we have created rules to balance some of the restrictiveness of hulking around with a massive amount of restrictive plating (much like other systems make bulkier plate armour better than thin leather).

The overall “rule” (it's not a rule) is that if you want to make the system look great and go to a load of effort to do so, then we want to reward you for it.

Everything Under The Stars

Some other large LRP systems try to strive for balance the more creative aspects of their games by imposing a fairly rigid equitable system, with strong oversight and severe (sometimes hidden) restrictions on what is or isn’t possible. Depending on how they are implemented, these creative aspects can create a sense of arbitrary success or failure (if the criteria are hidden and subject to chance as they are rebalanced behind the scenes) or of overloading the game organisers as they try to balance the infinite imagination of player submissions with the structure of the game and the rules.

In OSLRP, the primary creative outlet for player ideas is the Inventions system - Scientist characters can propose a New Thing to appear in the game. There’s a couple of reasons this mechanism exists. Firstly, creating new science things is very much on-theme for sci-fi games, and it would feel like the game world would be a lot shallower without it. Secondly, our capacity for creating new ideas is limited by our imagination and free thinking time, and outsourcing some of that to creative players saves us a lot of effort. Thirdly, and most importantly, it lets players tell us what they want to see more of in the game, and lets us build challenges and stories for characters to roleplay around. Once we’ve received a submission we rate it on two metrics - how powerful it is within the existing rules, and how much it “fits” with the setting and circumstances of creation. Then we set requirements for how many Research Points, game items and samples are required to invent it.

The main drawback of the creative system is that we don’t know how a given Invention is going to affect the game balance once it hits the field. We can make an invention challenging to develop and expensive to build based on how powerful we predict it might be, or how much we want to see it added to the setting, but once it exists it is impossible to know exactly how much it will affect the game. Now, there may be ways to claw back an unbalanced device (vastly upping its maintenance cost or re-jigging it when it comes back in for maintenance), but for at least a time it will be out “in the wild” with little oversight of how it is used, by whom, and for what purpose. For the moment, we’ve gone with a “wait and see” policy on this. How things yet to be invented will affect the game, we cannot yet know or predict - we want to leave this system theoretically as open as possible.

Find the Third Path

This point relates somewhat to the “we don’t plan Sundays” design blog from a few weeks ago. At event 1, some players came up with a plan that we had not thought of as a conclusion to the game. They had put in the roleplay, were willing to commit IC favours and resources towards their goal, and were willing to take risks to implement it. The solution fit within the world, leveraged existing game elements, and would still take hard work, skill and good timing to implement, so we made sure that the opportunity to follow through was made part of the final encounters for the weekend.

Alternative solutions and workarounds to problems are a core part of the sci-fi media that inspires OSLRP. While making adjustments to “the deflector dish” or similar can be a tired trope in media for observers, for the in-universe characters who are Doing The Thing they are “Eureka!” moments. Since our players are playing those characters, coming up with a workable idea and successfully implementing it feels amazing. Players are infinitely more imaginative and resourceful than we can be, and if they are willing to put in the work to make their plans a reality, then we aim to allow for the opportunity to succeed. We’re not going to make it easy, and it won’t always work, but there will always be room to try. If you have the tools, and are use them in ways that are consistent, then we’ll give you a chance, and if it fails then there will be a reason - it will never be “because Magic says it doesn’t work”.

Interventions

Although Orion Sphere is a competitive PvP game, we don’t want to enforce arbitrary balance between the Factions. There is no “status quo” to which the game state reverts after each large-scale plot arc - everything that happens will affect the balance of power between the Factions, and while they are so massive that inertia is strong, the idea is that the actions and decisions of the player characters should have long-term impacts on the setting. There are a few “game resources” of which a proportion are split evenly between the Factions, but by and large most assets are ready to be seized by groups that have the initiative and wherewithal to do so. Assigning a set number of powerful items, off-camera armies or designated ritual slots to all Factions equally makes characters take those things for granted, and the rich story that they are supposed to add to the setting becomes meaningless, and the mechanisms that enforce the equality seem arbitrary and capricious. We want to avoid that.

If we do intervene to rebalance the game state, it will not be by assigning additional resources to the weaker Factions. Instead, we will create opportunities via plot for that Faction’s groups and players to claim or capture a resource - this should encourage players to value what they have fought for, and be invested in the story behind it.

The Lure of Distant Worlds

We built OSLRP to let people explore and create an interesting universe. We left a huge amount of room to expand and add more things to the game, both IC and OOC. We want your weird and wonderful ideas to become part of the game, but sometimes the rules might end up a bit warped or even broken by them …… and that’s ok.

Build cool kit. Invent new technology. Hatch the Acid Birds. Talk your way out of deadly feuds. Kick over bins and start fights. Save the Alien Queen.

Make stories. We’ll help.

Player Agency and Event Climaxes

written by Mike Rees in January 2019, between Events 2 & 3

Let’s talk about… GAME DESIGN, ‘FINAL BATTLES’ AND SUNDAYS.

Live roleplay events have been happening in the UK for some time! There have been good ones, bad ones, AMAZING ones and truly terrible ones. There have been games run which have been absolute labours of love and events which have been hastily put together from the ‘larp trope identikit box’. There are things which have been proven to work many times before which you may find elements of in lots of games. Be that the NPC who meets you at the start of the game and asks “You may wonder why I’ve called you all here” or “DEFEND THE RITE” style fights, “collect X Macguffins to stop the world ending” and FINAL BATTLES.

I’ve been involved in running events before where we have, while planning, used the sentences “and that will build up to the final battle”, “how do we make the final battle interesting?”, “they can’t find that object until the final battle”. All valid things to say, but working on the assumption that a fest style larp weekend event will have to have a big fight at the end to resolve all issues. It’s a given in event structure that the event has to build up to an obvious set piece denouement or that the weekend is somehow unsatisfactory. And yes, that’s not *strictly* always a fight at events. It’s sometimes a rite or ritual, some grand summoning or a machine being fixed. It could be laying to rest the ancient bones of a villain or hero, a presentation of awards or crowning of a king. Now, I’m not saying that these are necessarily BAD THINGS or that these are things we don’t want to happen at Orion Sphere. If we are telling stories together we want a beginning, middle and end.

HOWEVER…

What about player agency? What about the actions of players over the weekend? Yes, we design and plan a story – but how can we decide in advance what is going to happen when we don’t know what the players will do? What kind of game the players want to play?

Which is why we made the decision with Orion Sphere to NOT WRITE SUNDAYS. Which is wonderful and terrifying. We set up a sandbox, we populate a world with creatures, often ‘a problem’, we make things to poke and prod and we consider how we structure information being released about ‘the problem’. We create interesting NPC’s which are designed to push and pull the players in certain directions and have definite agendas of their own. Our recurring NPC’s and the shadowy command structures of factions and megacorps also have goals and aims and preferred outcomes which they may try to get the player characters to buy into. But we will not decide what happens at the end of the weekend.

This runs a risk from a plot writing perspective. What happens… if nothing happens? What happens if people just don’t care about what is happening on the planet that they are visiting? What happens if the problem is solved on Saturday afternoon?

The answer to that is… whatever happens… is the right thing. Because the agency is with the players. We won’t change the goalposts or the internal logic of the universe to force people into an ending that we wrote months ago. Even if we spent some time making a cool prop in case they chose to summon the king of the Octopus People. We can use that prop some other time. This approach also rarely leads to a nice, clean event ending. If there are enough threads to a plotline for it to feel real, then without an engineered “solve-everything” solution there will inevitably be some loose ends. Player choices need to have consequences that ripple out into the wider setting, and if people are still interested in following up on those loose ends they should have the opportunity to do so.

At the last event we had a race called the Kulkani. The Kulkani, due to their racial background, were more aggressive when outside under the open sky. They were headstrong and stubborn and believed that the planet that the players were on and all of the technology it contained was theirs by birthright. They were an intrinsically warlike species who would die for their beliefs. They were not a stupid species, they were capable of negotiation under certain circumstances but were designed and briefed to be a hair trigger away from violence at any point. Foolishly, we assumed this design would lead to combat, aggression, bullets and knives in the night and should the players try to take control of the planet – inevitable conflict.

Obviously, it didn’t.

It turned into something, in our opinion, far more interesting. There was assorted political manoeuvring to get this race on side, from the get-go people were not aggressive towards them at all and in the end - THEY GAVE THEM THE PLANET. There was a little more to it than that… but I wouldn’t want to give away some of the sneaky, underhanded shenanigans. But let’s just say… we didn’t expect that. And we designed the game and the agendas and the motivation and encounters… and player agency led to something we didn’t expect.

Cool.

But when we receive feedback from the event we have variations on the comment “I didn’t have anything to do during the final set piece” or “I would have enjoyed more combat”. That is the downside to doing it this way. We were aware that combat focused characters had nothing to shoot at. We were aware that there was no ‘opposition’ to this ending. But… that’s the ending that happened based on everything players did all weekend. And we decided not to undermine that player action and let the ending that happened… happen.

If people wanted the aliens to be more aggressive - they could have been aggressive with them. A sudden but inevitable betrayal would have led to combat – and there were a few tense moments – but no one did. We’re not saying anyone should or shouldn’t do anything… that’s the point. There were lots of potential endings. This was the one we got.

And that leads to the final point: The ‘MAIN PLOT’ doesn’t need to matter. We’d like it to. We’d like you to be engaged with whatever is happening in whatever part of the galaxy you’re in. There will often be a standalone plot at every event based on the locale – this is really friendly to new players or people who can’t make every event. But your character doesn’t NEED to engage with it to have a good time.

Roleplaying with your faction/ rivals, interacting with the megacorps, completing other bounties and missions, finding ways of interacting with the wider universe, raising your status with entities, trading, flying spaceships and… whatever game you choose to make in the sandbox that we have built for you. If the ‘problem’ isn’t resolved, we promise the universe won’t end. When that happens – it’ll be down to player action…

design_blog.1549474165.txt.gz · Last modified: 2019/08/13 16:53 (external edit)