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[starsrift]

I'm more typing this out because doing so helps me to think about it, but I'm also soliciting input. I'm struggling a lot with trying to incorporate non-combat mechanics into a CRPG, which only uses combat in a desultory fashion.

There's two facets to this - and the first one is to how to implement non-combat skills and such, but that's kind of workable - going back to pen and paper, the World of Darkness and then later D&D 3rd Ed and onward show how to do that in an acceptable way, if not a good way. That's not very engaging to a player, I feel, though, not like the way you can work numbers into combat; it's just a random chance roll and then if they fail, it's "Oh, your character sucks, there wasn't anything you could have done to make that better". One could try to force puzzle minigames into it, but that seems like such a non sequitur. The only games I think I've seen that feel as though they've done minigames+noncombat skills right were Elder Scrolls games.

But that leads right into the second problem, which is the more serious one - what to do when the player fails! In pen & paper games, this is the majority of the work of the dungeonmaster/storyteller/whatever-other-moniker - you fudge die rolls, create extra situations, throw more at the players until they get back on the track you want them to. But a program can't respond in such a dynamic fashion. How can you make the game get the player back on track so that they can deal with failure and work to overcome it? ESPECIALLY if they can't apply any sort of skill or reasonable decision-making to the use of non-combat skills.

I'm trying a brute force method, the problem is that it's a ton of work. Multiple paths to success, if the player fails enough paths it's game over. I feel this is inelegant, because I'm one - making a ton of content that's not seen, and two - it's hard to make all of these paths and investigations matter. On the other hand, if you could find an elegant way to deal with the non-combat skills to make it as interesting as RPG combat (problem #1), you can just assign game over as a failure state if the player doesn't do it right, and thus avoid problem #2.

[Jordgubben]

Interesting. I've been working on the same problem for JRPGs for a while now. Although CRPGs and JRPGs are a bit different, I think the problem of moving the mechanic out of combat is similar enough to treat as the same problem for both game types.

First we must accept that problem solution through violence is incredibly practical from a game designers perspective. This is because combat is repeatable and gives the player a concrete urgency. Urgency is important because failure in combat usually  equals game over, thereby forcing the player to try again and saving the developer from creating alternate story paths. Repeatability lets the player experiment and fine-tune things. This is extra important in an RPG, where most of the mechanic revolve around preparation(picking the right equipment, party members etc.). Whether it is from skill or grind, the player needs progress feedback. Facing a familiar situation overcoming it with less effort is at the core of these mechanics.

A freshwater fish will not last long in the ocean. If we are to replace the combat part in RPG combat then it must be replaced with a sufficient substitute. Finding an environment or motif than naturally provides repeatability an urgency is not that easy, but definitely doable. Stealth is one option and it has been executed well in some games. I'm currently working on using disputes as the environment (see devlog), but I can not claim I've figured out how to make it work yet.

[gimymblert]

harvest moon, animal crossing, mysims, the sims, phoenix wright, adventure games in general, style boutique, cooking mama, princess maker, tomodachi, tokimeki, paper please, dating sims, crafting, survival, professor layton.

I don't get it ... if you fail combat in typical rpg the game stop, game over, there is no coming back.

The other aspect is the role and function of the activity, you want a filler activity like in combat? combat as gating contents? That's the two most uses of combat, it's not terribly sophisticated.

Basically a non combat rpg is a "life simulation" games.

Mechanically what combat has is a clear progression metric (reduce enemy's health) and clear failure metric (HP), with resource management (potion, buff), it's fairly easy to replicate to any activity, just substitute their function by appropriate metrics.

The urbz introduced element of failure with need management, it affect how you accomplished task by having you planning ahead their cost (stamina, tidyness, etc...) as they could make you fail, one or more tasks needed to progress, created a sense of urgency.

[jgrams]

it's just a random chance roll and then if they fail, it's "Oh, your character sucks, there wasn't anything you could have done to make that better".

I don't have anything useful to say, but I'm curious about what you're trying to do, because I don't understand why this is a problem. Aren't RPGs about developing your character? So it's not just, "oh, your character sucks", it's "oh, you need to develop your character's skills more before you can do this"?

But that leads right into the second problem, which is the more serious one - what to do when the player fails! In pen & paper games, this is the majority of the work of the dungeonmaster

Again, I don't get this. If the skills are essential (as combat skills are in more traditional games), then you can't progress (at least in that direction) until you gain them. So you need things that they *can* do to practice and improve their character's skills, but other than that... It's not as immediate a failure as with combat (death), unless it's like some MUDs where you can blow yourself up attempting magic you're not ready for, or poison/maim yourself trying to set advanced traps. But some people like that kind of thing.

What am I missing? (and if you answer this, thanks for your time)

[starsrift]

What am I missing? (and if you answer this, thanks for your time)

The systems I was referencing use a die roll chance for failure/success, as opposed to a hard 'floor' lock.
D&D 3.0+ and World of Darkness use non-combat skill rolls adequately, as I said. But when trying to transpose that to a computer game, you have either of the two problems I raised - either the action of using those skills has insufficient gameplay to be 'fair', or the consequences of failure are too voluminous to cope with.

If you could make non-combat actions as brain-intensive(strategy) and 'gameplay'-intensive(tactics) as combat actions, you could assign the same failure state - game over - to both things. The real issue here is that combat is very "fuzzy", (As Jimmy was getting at) it's typically an amorphous hit point count on the enemy that the player has multiple ways to reduce. Translating that into enough kinds of non-violent actions - and more importantly, a non-violent goal - to present strategic and tactical depth is very hard.
Consequently, being able to deal with failure sufficiently as a game designer, to allow for it - while allowing the player to advance - is labor-intensive. Like I said, I'm using a brute-force method, and, well, it's a bitch.

What you seem to be suggesting is 'floor' skill tests, or locks. You have X high enough skill or you can't proceed. That's not quite the same thing as having skill tests or functions for non-combat skills, it's really just the ol' metroidvania formula in a new skin. There's nothing wrong with that, per se, it's just not what I'm after.


Edit: Okay, gonna write for a while, while more. Like I said, part to inspire my own internal thoughts, part to inspire discussion.
The reason to use skills and die rolls in a numeric fashion like you would combat statistics is to give the player reasons to make their character more "smart" or more "knowledgeable" or better at, say, searching - when they level up. You're forcing the player to invest in their character's non-combat side, which directs the thoughts of the player towards the flow of the game, as you're just bluntly emphasizing that the gameplay story is not about combat. I may HAVE combat ( and I do ) but it's far from the main focus of the game. And in a game that's not expressly about combat, you want a player who's proud of saying, "My character's an ace at research", or "my character rocks at interrogating people" or whatever the skill-sets are.
But that's somewhat putting the cart before the horse, which is the problem I came to the thread with - how to make those skills sufficiently gameplay-pleasing, or sufficiently easy-to-cope-with-failure (but yet not running into a problem of 'those skills are immaterial, just try try again'). Basically, shit's hard. :|

My actual gameplay loop in this specific case is about solving mysteries / dealing with antagonists, so it does work with the brute-force approach. Gather enough clues, piece them together to solve the mystery, and solve enough mysteries to win - and that is the actual progression in the game.
That doesn't mean I don't want the actual gameplay loop to be more compelling, which is the first problem - a die roll is super-uninteresting, even if you add a couple choices to the top of it, which I am. At least in real life, when playing pen and paper games, you have the tactile response of the die and all the gambler's fallacies in the world to guide your throw.

[Jordgubben]

it's just a random chance roll and then if they fail, it's "Oh, your character sucks, there wasn't anything you could have done to make that better".

I don't have anything useful to say, but I'm curious about what you're trying to do, because I don't understand why this is a problem. Aren't RPGs about developing your character? So it's not just, "oh, your character sucks", it's "oh, you need to develop your character's skills more before you can do this"?

Fallen london does this and with more or less everything. It's the simplest possible mechanic to unlock very entertaining writing. As a narrative tool it works great, but as a mechanic it grows stale and grindy very fast.

[gimymblert]

Think of each interaction as "stakes" (which imply consequence if need aren't met) then define axis of progression (what it takes to reach a goal, what are the step) and failure (what define the player running out of option). Once those axis are define simply find which elements move the player along them (move up or down, accelerate up or down, jump to a certain level).

Combat work because you either lift obstacle to a goal (each enemy being a step toward the goal) or they are resource to that goal (leveling up) which is mechanically the same. Either the progression happen in "space" or it happen in the abstract space of "leveling".

That's why finding the axis is keys, it allow you to formalize the way you will architecture the world. Let's say your character seek better knowledge, the first thing to find is the stake as it define the motivation, he need knowledge to: increase his status, satiate his curiosity, to be happy, to cure his frozen spouse ... this will lead to the way he fails or not: he is mocked or lose status, he feel frustrated, he is unhappy, he dies of old age alone ... this inform the type of things that affect progression: appearance and attitude allow him to access circle of knowledge, taking risk lead him to new knowledge, books increase his mood, he need fund to access relevant tools and knowledge, etc ... It literally writes itself ...

On a structural level all games are basically lock and key, the things is that combat have procedural "mapping" of their possibility space. The way we view level design is generally physical space arrangement (generally static) from which you navigate toward a chosen goal, truth is that space doesn't have to be physical, a skill tree can be describe as lock and key with each room containing a skills. If you apply abstraction to all game mechanics, even menu, you start noticing they all are about progression, the prime distinction is that only gameplay have a failure point. So basically in combat you move along the "hp" progression toward loot in a generated possibility space which is, if there isn't randomness, just a static puzzle, (predictable and manageable) randomness being there to shuffle element around that possibility space.

So ultimately what you need to handle non combat gameplay is to find the stakes and way to shuffle the progression and failure. Handling failure gracefully is also about shuffling the condition of access in the physical level design, not necessarily by shuffling the physical space but by shuffling the condition of access (hence the strategy and resource needed to access).

[DanglinBob]

A minor aside, but maybe you should try playing a pen & paper RPG where the DM doesn't fudge anything... and failure of a clutch moment will simply result in the death of the player or party? It isn't as bad as you may think ... as long as you know going into it that you're going to die. Doesn't even have to be a game of Call of C'thulu (though that is the most obvious example of an RPG where  your death is almost certain).

On the other side, I'd simply look at Fallout 2. There's a lot of times you'll be like "pick the lock" and that will be the last time you ever interact with that door. Don't put anything you need to finish the game behind such a door and you're golden :D

[jgrams]

What am I missing? (and if you answer this, thanks for your time)

...

Ah, I see what you're getting at now.  Thanks.  I didn't realize it was so difficult on the design/implementation side.  But I guess the only RPG-like thing that I've played a lot of is DiscworldMUD, and...yeah, boatloads of content and fairly grindy.

[valrus]

So regarding possibilities for what-to-do-to-cope-with-failure... what about something like this?  (Still assuming a basically die-roll system underneath, and exemplified in terms of persuasion and charm.)

Each persuasion challenge has a required charm level such that, if your charm exceeds it, you can pull it off without difficulty.  However, if your charm is insufficient, you can nonetheless attempt it once.  If you succeed (according to whatever math your rolls use), well, you succeed.  If you fail, the difference between the required charm level and your charm level is added to the challenge's required charm level, and now *that's* the level you have to wait until to get the benefit.

So it's not like you can never talk to someone again after you've put your foot in your mouth, it's just that there's now a higher barrier the next time you try.  You can screw up locks badly enough that you need to be a rather better lockpicker than you would have originally, you can screw up a summoning that makes the demon even slipperier next time, you can alert network security such that you have to be an ever better hacker to attempt it again, etc.

Anyway, it adds a bit more decision to each roll, but the consequences of failure aren't insurmountable.  It's just a consequence proportional to the "transgression", many of which will be minor.  You tried to get something a little early, failed, and now will get it a little later.  But if you really bite off more than you can chew, there can be bigger consequences (including screwing it up beyond anyone's ability to fix).

[starsrift]

Each persuasion challenge has a required charm level such that, if your charm exceeds it, you can pull it off without difficulty.  However, if your charm is insufficient, you can nonetheless attempt it once.  If you succeed (according to whatever math your rolls use), well, you succeed.  If you fail, the difference between the required charm level and your charm level is added to the challenge's required charm level, and now *that's* the level you have to wait until to get the benefit.

Yeah, TES3: Morrowind used this idea, among others including the p&p games I referenced. It's not a bad idea, but it presumes you have a world big enough to go do something else in. Not entirely sure it'll work for me, though I was planning on doing repeatable challenges on some scale.

...So ultimately what you need to handle non combat gameplay is to find the stakes and way to shuffle the progression and failure. Handling failure gracefully is also about shuffling the condition of access in the physical level design, not necessarily by shuffling the physical space but by shuffling the condition of access (hence the strategy and resource needed to access).

Gimmy, I don't know if you're a very wise man or if it's just that your English is -just- far enough off of perfect it really makes one think about what you are saying.
You are right. The ability for multiple access conditions is the reason why my brute force approach will work, but it's not elegant. But you're also right that it depends on the architecture and I think that's what I may need to work on.
I'm still thinking about this.

[starsrift]

I think I've find my solution by adding a wagering system to the die rolls. It gives the player some fleeting illusion of control and choice, and it doesn't pull the player away from the main thrust of the game like some sort of mini-game would, as well as investing the player in the statistics of the characters in their party.

Simple, elegant, minimalist, concise, all things I favor. Well, maybe a redesign will result. But time to go to the part that makes me tear my hair out and fail at - making graphics... bbiaw