Complaining comes easily for me, but I’d rather be positive and creative than negative. Here’s a strategy I try to employ when I see some art I just don’t agree with.
First, I must be very careful about how I use words like “good”, “bad”, “right”, or “wrong” to describe art. Someone decorating his house in colors I don’t like isn’t wrong. If he likes it, then it’s working as intended. If the artist’s intent is clear, I can point out elements that support or detract from that goal, or I can make a judgement on whether that goal is good or not. For example, if a director says his movie is about the horror of random violence, but the movie has cool, fun car chases with lots of collateral damage that doesn’t upset the protagonists, he’s failed to make random violence horrifying, and it’s appropriate to use the word “failure”. On the other hand, if a movie is set in World War One and doesn’t address the themes that I think are important about World War One, that’s not a failure of the movie. That’s a mismatch of expectations. I might make the argument, “It’s irresponsible to represent WWI in this way,” but I can’t say, “The writer forgot this obvious thing.”
I don’t have much to say about art that doesn’t do anything for me. What really sticks in my mind and bugs me is art that does a lot of things that move me, except for That One Thing. I’m more likely to pick a tomato slice off a delicious hamburger than I am to try to eat a salad made entirely of ingredients I dislike.
I’ll think something like, “That scene was so emotional, but she should have said this instead.” How presumptuous to think that I know the character better than the person who plays her every week! What I see as a mistake is a mismatch between the version of the character the actor knows & expresses through her acting, and the version of the character I’ve constructed in my mind. My version of the character has gone through three lossy conversions:
The actor doesn’t have the opportunity to express all she knows about the character in the scenes in the show.
I don’t notice or remember everything the character did
The mental model I build based on those actions is strongly colored by my own beliefs and experiences.
Not only do I lack the knowledge required to tell the actress how to play her character, but I don’t have the relationship to start that conversation. She’s doesn’t even know I exist. So thinking about how to “fix” that “missed opportunity” in whatever art I’m mostly enjoyed is wasted effort.
Instead of complaining about someone else’s art and trying to fix it for him, I draw inspiration from the parts I like, and make a new thing that includes other things I like. What’s my version of Character X? What would this setting look like through my philosophical lens? Understanding what I don’t like about a thing and how I would build it differently forces me to examine and explain my beliefs, which is great for life, not just art.
I throw out ideas that I’ve generated in this way pretty often. If I’m applying my strategy correctly, they won’t sound like sub-tweets.
PROCJAM is back. Last year I participated by creating Spaceship Wrecker. You can play it on itch and read about it on my blog. I’m excited to create something new for the Summer jam this coming week.
What will I generate this time? A more important question: how do I generate things? What’s my approach to a generator? I think of a procedural generator like an AI. I don’t make artifacts. I make an artifact generator, and teach it how to make artifacts. The generator is an agent that should make good decisions, that is, decisions that lead to desired results. A bad artifact is a failure of the algorithm. The agent/generator also has to obey a list of constraints, rules of the space it operates in. This makes the generation similar to a simulation as well.
This way of thinking is evident in the generators I’ve made so far.
Level 1 Pathfinder characters made by the rules in the Core Rulebook, which fight according to those rules.
Bodypaint generator that imitates observed bodypaint patterns from the Fremont Solstice Parade
Spaceships with interdependent parts that break and take other parts offline.
Cities with supply chains, zoning, different species, etc.
Many generators leave the value judgement of their artifacts to human observers. There are Twitter bots that generate artifacts constantly, and when one turns out to be funny or beautiful, its human followers will retweet or chuckle, thereby declaring that artifact good. Building an algorithm to determine if something is “good” or “funny” is really hard, so omitting it makes development of these generators much easier. But for some applications, quality control is necessary. For example, 90% of a video games levels had unreachable exits, it would be basically unplayable.
Eureka! I could make a game that’s explicitly about being a human and judging the quality of a procedurally generated artifact. The player is the leader of a group of thieves. The player gets scouting reports about procedurally generated banks and museums and must decide if a heist is within his team’s capabilities. After deciding, the player sees a simulation of the heist run by AI agents, and can see if his decision was correct.
This is similar to another idea (which I got from a Twitter bot) about playing as a D&D supplement writer. The player creates a dungeon, then simple AI agents play it a bunch of times and rate it. Was it fun? Did the agents win? Was it too long or too short? The player and the game swap responsibilities for creating & judging artifacts, but other than that it’s the same.
So that’s my constraint-heavy style of procedural generation. I now have even more ideas for PROCJAM than I did when I started writing this post. The next nine days are going to be very interesting.
Since I didn’t have time to explain and set up Dungeon World, I invented a tiny dice-pool system and ran that instead! Can I write down the rules in 200 words? Not in time for the official 200 Word RPG Challenge, but that’s fine.
———– BEGIN 200 WORD RPG ———–
Aimee RPG
CHARACTER CREATION
Write name, class, species, three personality traits, three physical traits, three items. Everything except name is a Tag that helps you accomplish tasks. Double-edged or multi-purpose Tags are more fun.
HOW TO PLAY
GM describes situations. Narrate your character’s actions. Play to your Tags. When the GM asks, make a check.
CHECK
Add one coin for each of your Tags that helps with that task. Add one coin for each useful Tag on environment or NPCs. Other players may assist with their Tags, but add only one coin each. Does this Tag apply? Present your case. GM decides. Flip all coins and count Heads.
HOW TO GM
Present challenges relevant to players’ Tags.
Add one or two Tags to important NPCs and locations.
Ask for checks when players try risky things.
Heads >= Challenge, success! Extra Heads improve results.
Heads = Challenge-1, offer success at a cost.
CHALLENGE
I could do that
impressive for normal folks
appropriately heroic
hard even for heroes
Songs will be sung!
———– END 200 WORD RPG ———–
My word processor counts 175 words. We had a lot of fun, but the players deserve most of the credit for that. At least that indicates that the system was not getting in our way. Sometimes adding up Tags took longer than I liked.
Pablo human paladin
imposing, powerful, double-jointed
compassionate, fearless, quick study
crested helmet, shield, book of legends
Bonnie American gangster
wiry, iron stomach, tall
disarming, cruel, calm
trenchcoat, Tommy gun, jug of moonshine
Pablo cyborg smuggler
metal bones, sinks in water, high stamina
raconteur, puts folks at ease, determined
hidden compartment, silenced pistol, quick-change clothes
Xithben Icthyoid combat pilot
four arms, water breathing, deaf
social anxiety, good spatial awareness, thrill-seeker
environment suit, trans-atmospheric interceptor, magnetic boots
When we last left our heroes, they had to fight a statue that just wouldn’t stay still like a good statue should. Now, on the last day of the fair, they try to attend and enjoy it like normal people.
Lucia the Paladin and Gleador the Druid (who is concealing his shape-shifting powers) wander the marketplace at the fair. They see Lisa, one of the deputies injured in last night’s battle against the metal statue. They are surprised that she’s back on the job, or even on her feet. She was healed at the temple. Lucia’s not the only spellcaster in town. She does pull her armor and tabard aside to reveal a gnarly scar. Lisa hopes for an uneventful day and bottling ceremony to end the fair. Oh yeah, Hobert bottles his stolen wine at the end of the fair every year.
Lucia and Gleador head to town hall to check in with Pepe, the sheriff. They go to the evidence room and check on the statue. Since it grabs metal, they no longer have padlocks and chains on it. The cell is bound shut with coils of stout rope. Each limb of the statue is bound with ropes to heavy pallets of bricks. Pepe takes at least a minute unwinding the rope that keeps the cell shut. Lucia warns Pepe about the switch that turns the statue on and off. He gets close to look at the switch and notices some writing stamped on the arm. It’s Dwarven. Lucia recognizes the runes, but doesn’t read the language. There are some numbers and a word in all caps, which is probably a proper name. our heroes want to find out more about the strange coins. Pepe pushes them out of the room, retrieves a coin from his secure storage, and gives them one coin. He writes a receipt for it. He trusts them because they’ve fought for the town several town, but he also files the proper paperwork.
Our heroes wonder where to go next. Who can translate the Dwarven runes? Who would know about the strange coin? Samantha might know some things. They also need to clear Ferdinand’s name. They head to the Brace of Pigs. There’s a commotion outside. Workers are going around the side with big saws, axes, and so on. Hobert is directing them and holding a steak over a black eye. He complains that the Black Beast has injured him and destroyed his inn. They look go around the side of the inn and see the wooden boards on the second floor bent out, turning into branches, and forming a tunnel that goes into the ground. “Is that Samantha’s room?” They go inside and upstairs. It was Samantha’s room. The back wall curves out and forms a funnel. The bed has been pushed to the back wall, and the covers are sucked partially down the funnel.Some workmen are in the room, preparing to chop up the unnatural wood structures.
Lucia and Gleador figure that this is Samantha’s escape plan, and tracking them down means going down the tunnel themselves. They ask the workers not to chop up the tunnel before they can head down. The workers in the room call down to the workers on the ground outside. Lucia lights and torch and slides down. It’s mostly dark in the tunnel, but spaces between branches cause lines and cracks of birght light to flash past Lucia as she slides down, past the workers on the ground, until the branches taper off and she’s in a dirt tunnel several feet underground. Gleador slides down and joins her. They instruct the workers on the ground not to chop up the tunnel until they return. They walk along underground for a while until the tunnel curves up and they emerge in the grain fields outside of town. The Brace of Pigs is still visible far behind them. There are tracks leading from the tunnel to the east, so they follow them. Another set of tracks crosses the first set, and they follow that to another set. After a few minutes, they realize that there are many sets of tracks looping around each other, intentionally confusing pursuers. Another trick from Samantha, no doubt. The tunnel headed in the general direction of the swamp where Ferdinand and Samantha live, so Lucia and Gleador head there.
A regional map showing the towns of Fairmeadow, Sugar’s Crossing, and Templeton.
Clearly, Samantha is using magic to avoid pursuit, and the swamp is her home turf, so Lucia and Gleador don’t just barge in, lest they trigger some awful trap. They pause at the border of the swamp and call out, identifying themselves and asking politely for an audience. The call startles a small flock of birds, who fly around in a swarm, except for one bird that breaks away from the flock and flies in a straight line deeper into the swamp. They wait for a few minutes, then call out again. They wait again, and when they are wondering if they should call out again or just go home, Samantha arrives. There’s a moss-covered log nearby, and the moss is tossed aside like a blanket. Samantha is lying there where the log should be. When she stands up, she reveals a hole in the ground, leading who knows where.
Lucia: “She’s terrifying!”
Gleador: “Samantha,what do you want right now?”
A very thoughtful question. Samantha wants revenge on Hobert, but she needs to keep herself and Ferdinand safe. Her potion and alchemy business might suffer if she’s defamed in town, but her customers are already the type to sneak out of town and visit a witch in the swamp, so they aren’t the type to scare easily. She’ll probably be fine. Samantha has ramped up security in the swamp. Anyone who comes in and tries to steal herbs will spring a nasty magical trap. Lucia mentions that Hobert could turn Samantha’s escape tunnel into an attraction and charge extra. Samantha wonders, “Is there anything capitalism can’t ruin?” Gleador says he has a way to clear Ferdinand’s name and get comeuppance for Hobert. Samantha’s interested. Gleador asks if she can make a drink that’s better than Hobert’s wine. She can make a potion called Polypurpose Panacea, which cures hangovers, gives the drinker a nice buzz, etc. but it’s very expensive to produce. That won’t work.
Samantha recalls Gleador transforming when the two fought several days ago. “Are you the Black Beast? This is partially your fault!” Gleador counters, “You’re not the only one with secrets! What about Dandelion’s sudden voice problems?” Samantha heard about that. Sounds like a Frogmouth potion, which wears off with no lasting effects after a week. She maintains plausible deniability, never confirming or denying that she was involved. Gleador says that they’ll work on clearing Ferdinand’s name, and that Samantha and Ferdinand should stay close to town and rush in when the time is right. Samantha scoops up a foot-long millipede from the swamp, talks to it a little, then offers it to Lucia. Saying a password to this bug will alert Samantha. Lucia accepts, and the millipede crawls up her arm and hides under her cloak.
Lucia and Gleador walk back to town. The swamp is several hours’ walk away from Fairmeadow. When they get back to the Brace of Pigs, they see the workers did not wait for them and are demolishing the escape tunnel. They go inside to talk to Hobert, and drop several threats on him.
You better clear Samantha’s and Ferdinand’s names!
We know your famous tradition is based on being a thief & a liar.
If you try to steal more herbs for next year’s wine, you won’t make it back..
You have one year to straighten out or your tradition is toast.
You could have made the escape tunnel an attraction and gotten more money.
Hobert whimpers as the two armed adventurers get in his face and threaten him. He promises to be good and will they please leave? Before they go, they quiz him about the strange coin. Nearby city-states issue their own coins, but they coordinate to make their currencies inter-operable. Gold coins should be round, but this one is rectangular, and it’s too big.
Lucia and Gleador leave the inn. Gleador wants to find and mark a falcon, so he can see through its eyes and watch the fair. There aren’t many falcons around, so he settles for a crow instead of waiting. He bribes it with a gold piece, because crows like shiny things. Lucia and Gleador enjoy the fair until the end of the day. They plan to leave town after the festival, so they buy some supplies for the road ahead. Gleador checks in with the crow and sees a crowd gathering at the Brace of Pigs for the wine bottling ceremony. He and Lucia go there in the flesh. Hobert is giving a speech about the wine and the fair and how it’s great, but he transitions into complaining about threats to the tradition and the town. He’s stirring up the crowd into a mob!
GM: “The double doors in front are your best bet for creating a chokepoint. Most of the furniture here is no good as cover, but the balcony looks defensible.”
Artist: “I look around the room.”
GM: “It’s a good example of late Demarckian style. The tile on the floor is a bit worn, but still pretty. The spiral carving on the chairs contribute to the overall sense of timeless continuity you get from the tapestries of natural landscapes. The second table from the right does not match the rest.”
Community Organizer: “I look around the room”
GM: “If you turn the chairs to face east instead of south, and take down the center tapestry, the afternoon sun from the windows will dramatically light a lectern placed just there. You could fit 120 people in here if they’re all seated, but if you want people to mingle comfortably afterward, better limit it to 80.”
Psychic: “I look around the room.”
GM: “The soldier is still followed by the two souls he took as y’all made your way in here. Nargonthall, ancient fish-prince of Vollshwire, struggles before you, grasped by myriad hands of greed and doubt that stretch invisibly from the cursed chairs scattered around the large room. He extends a warning, cartilaginous finger towards something with a hostile glow under the second table from the right.”
Different people look for different things, even when they all look at the same things. Reflect that in your RPGs by giving specialists specialized insight into common things.
When we last left our heroes, they defeated a statue that came alive during the auction and started smashing up the place.
At sunset, Lucia the Paladin and Gleador the Druid go to town hall. The sheriff, Pepe, has deputized able-bodied individuals to patrol the town this evening, to defend against the Black Beast, which attacked a woman last night and (confusingly) fought a living statue earlier today. The Black Beast is actually Gleador, who can transform into various animals, but he’s keeping that a secret. The deputies will patrol major roads and the perimeter in pairs, with a whistle to alert the others in case of trouble. Lucia and Gleador choose the southern road.
Since Pepe also enforced a curfew, the streets are mostly empty already. Lucia and Gleador walk up and down the southern road for a while before spotting someone. His name is Willie, and he was kicked out of Macker’s Tavern when it closed because of the curfew. He’s drunk, and he’s sure his buddies have gone to the Brace of Pigs to continue drinking without him. Lucia and Gleador agree to escort him there.
When they arrive they find Hobert, owner of the Brace of Pigs, talking to two deputies. He claims that Ferdinand (from Session 1) is the Black Beast, since he can transform into a black bull. The bar is closed, so Willie has to go home. Gleador tries to convince the two deputies to take him home, but they won’t leave their posts, so he goes off alone. Lucia and Gleador do convince the deputies to let them go in and check on Ferdinand. They know Ferdinand, so it won’t be as scary as some strangers barging in and accusing him of being the Black Beast. Keeping the situation calm is in everyone’s best interests.
Hobert points our heroes to Samantha and Ferdinand’s room. (Remember, Hobert was pressured into acting nice and giving them a room lest they reveal him as a thief back in Session 1) They knock on the door and Samantha hurries them in. Lucia and Gleador explain the accusation against Ferdinand. Samantha is suspicious, eyes darting about looking for answers and a way out. Being accepted at all in town is very new, and apparently fleeting. She’s ready to flee back to the swamp right now. Ferdinand is a bit slow. “I guess I’m kind of a beast, sometimes.” Gleador encourages Ferdinand to join the watch to prove his trust-worthiness. Samantha doesn’t like that idea. Lucia convinces her not to bolt immediately, to wait overnight and let them talk to Pepe and figure something out. Samantha agrees, but will make preparations in case things go badly.
Lucia and Gleador plan to stay by the Brace of Pigs until their shift is over at midnight. They convince the other two deputies to trade places and go to the southern road. Eventually, they hear a whistle from the north, near town hall. Probably the end of shift. But it’s only 11:15PM! There’s trouble!
The town hall of Fairmeadow.
They run to town hall and are the first of the patrolling deputies on the scene. The statue is moving again! It’s walking out of town hall with three deputies hanging off of it. One is sitting on its shoulders, futilely bashing it around the head. Two others have a rope around it but are being dragged along by its tremendous strength. Lucia yells, “Turn it off!” but the deputies don’t know about the switch. Gleador vaults up the stairs and past the melee to get some metal equipment from the armory to distract the statue. (The armory does contain metal breastplates, maces, and swords, but the three deputies are wearing that equipment right now, and the statue is not attempting to collect it.) Other deputies are rushing in along the main roads, but they are a ways off.
Lucia runs to assist the two deputies struggling with the rope and manages to tangle the statue enough to get to the switch. It’s on the right setting, not the center setting like before. She turns it left, to the center setting. The statue stops walking south, grabs the deputy on its shoulders, and tries to jam her and her metal armor into the hopper on its back. She doesn’t fit! Her shoulders are bashed repeatedly on the edges of the hopper. Gleador returns from the armory, leaving a trail of armor and weapons back to the holding cell. Lucia tries to turn the switch again, but the statue drops the deputy and grabs her. Gleador takes a breastplate in one hand and a shield in the other and crashes them together like cymbals on the statue’s head. The statue releases Lucia and grabs for Gleador’s metal goodies. Lucia scoops up the equipment Gleador dropped behind him and throws it past the statue, down the stairs. The statue snatches a mace out of the air and deposits it in its hopper. It turns and starts collecting the other metal objects. One of the other deputies has tied one end of the rope to the railing on the stairs. Lucia grabs the other end of the rope and pulls it taut as the statue passes, tripping it. It falls onto the third deputy! Ignoring the injured deputy’s cries, Lucia goes straight for the switch, turning the statue off. Gleador tries to pry the heavy statue off the deputy, but can’t get the right leverage with his shillelagh. Lucia throws her shoulder into the statue and rolls it off the poor deputy, but she’s over-exerted herself.
The other deputies and Pepe arrive soon after. Pepe and three other deputies take the two wounded deputies to a healer. They carry them on stretchers: a sheet of canvas stretched between two long wooden poles. Pepe, a Halfling, holds the poles over his shoulders, while the human deputy on the other end has his arms down by his sides.
Lucia and Gleador clean up, replacing the equipment in the armory and dragging the statue back into the cell. The metal cell door was bashed open, but the pieces weren’t collected. Gleador has a cool idea for how to chain up the statue, but he can’t make it work. They empty the statue’s hopper and find a number of strange gold coins in addition to the metal objects they saw the statue grab.\
Strange gold coins
Pepe returns. They show him the 14 large rectangular coins. He doesn’t recognize them, but has a secure place to keep them: more secure than the evidence room, right next to the cell, which is not that secure, based on tonight’s events! He’s upset. The Fairmeadow Fair is so important to the town, and it’s his job to keep everyone safe and the town running smoothly. But there have been all these attacks. The townsfolk are scared. Now his deputies are injured. He wasn’t able to keep them safe. Lucia and Gleador decide this is not a good time to mention Ferdinand, so they leave Pepe and go home to the Glazers’ house.
They both have enough experience to reach level 4! Lucia boosts her healing ability and Gleador is able to mark an animal and see through its eyes. Lucia tries to heal Gleador from his injuries earlier in the day but only transfers the injuries to herself. Before they go to sleep, Gleador suggests letting Ferdinand drive the Black Beast away in a public staged fight. Lucia thinks it’s too risky.
GM notes: I didn’t make it clear that the third position on the statue’s switch made the statue do something other than collect metal. it was hard to tell what the statue was trying to do, since people were all over it trying to prevent it from doing things the whole time our heroes could see it. I almost forgot about the coins in all the excitement. We were about to end the session, and I had to go back and say, “Actually, when you were cleaning up at town hall, you definitely noticed these very obvious and important things!”
In another group’s game (It’s Critical Role. You should totally watch it.), the party was assigned to kill a monster in the sewers. It was a giant spider, and its lair contained many cocooned victims. The party saved the living victim, searched the dead victims for valuable items, then left with the spider’s carcass. Their contract was to kill the creature, so their job was done.
But another group in another game could do something else with the same situation. Each of those cocooned victims was a person with a story and a family, and the party could provide endings for those stories and closure for those families.
Immediately a host of challenges emerge. Will the party carry the bodies away, or invite people into the sewers to collect them? Who is going to let a group of mercenaries store a dozen bodies for an indeterminate period? Is it somehow illegal to possess dead bodies? How can a body be identified without state-issued ID or a mobile phone? Why were these people in the sewer instead on the street above like sensible folk? Will Speak With Dead trivialize this whole affair? How will someone react when a group of heavily-armed strangers shows up with the corpse of a loved one? Will the party attend the funeral?
Some of the victims may be connected to the underworld, using the sewers to move without attracting the law’s attention. The party may find itself with unexpected entanglements, valuable connections, or new targets, depending on their opinion of organized crime.
Maybe the spider was able to snatch some people because they were forced to live in the sewers by circumstances. The party could find the surviving members of that subterranean community and either improve their makeshift homes, or fight to bring them back above ground. Living in the sewer seems pretty bad, but maybe they like it down here.
An identifying possession (an engraved pocket watch, or a military jacket with unit insignia) was stolen, pawned, or gambled away, and the corpse found with it is not the original owner. How will the friends and family of the living owner react to convincing evidence of his death?
If a victim is a wanderer (like most player characters are) the next-of-kin may live far away. Will the party send a message by courier and hope for a response, or make the journey with their grim cargo?
Laying victims to rest encourages a thoughtful, respectful examination of NPCs who are usually easy to disregard. As part of the investigation, the party will learn a lot about the setting and meet many characters, and probably generate more goals and quests.
Do I think the players of Critical Role should have taken this approach instead of what they did? No, their actions made sense for their characters and the campaign they are in. This idea doesn’t fit Critical Role. It doesn’t even fit Dungeons and Dragons, since relationships and investigation are so important, and D&D doesn’t have much to say about those things. But I’m sure there exist a GM, a party, and a game system for which this would be amazing!
Most people know what “experience” means in the context of games, but defining a commonly-used term forces me to think about it concretely and precisely when I usually take it for granted, so I’m going to do it!
What is experience?
Lots of games have characters that grow over the course of the game, becoming more powerful and learning new abilities. This ability to grow is usually represented by a currency called “experience.” I’m going to abbreviate “experience” as EXP, to indicate that it is a term with special meaning distinct from the usual meaning of the word. EXP is gained by performing certain activities. In some games, EXP is spent to purchase upgrades. In others, reaching certain milestones of total EXP unlocks upgrades.
Why is EXP important?
Gaining EXP is a strong incentive. Players tend to perform activities that reward EXP over activities that don’t. By changing which activities award EXP, and how much, game designers can influence their players’ behavior to suit the designers’ goals.
Common ways to gain EXP
Most of these examples are from video game shooters with “RPG elements”, RPG video games, and table top video games.
Individual EXP for killing enemies: In games where most situations are combat challenges, this method is obvious. The goal is to kill enemies, so reward the player who kills an enemy. This works well for single player games, but in multiplayer games, giving all the EXP to the player who lands the killing blow does not account for teamwork. If player A deals 90 damage to an enemy and Player B deals only the last 10 damage that kills it, player B will get the EXP and player A will feel cheated.
Individual EXP for assists: This is the obvious fix to the previous method. Everyone who participates in killing an enemy gets some EXP. There are various ways to do this.
Full EXP for the killing blow and half EXP for anyone else who damaged the enemy.
Award EXP proportional to damage done.
Using a helpful ability on a player engaged with an enemy awards assist EXP when that enemy is killed.
Award assist EXP for using non-damaging abilities on an enemy, like knocking it down, pushing it out of position, and so on.
Making an attempt at fairness reveals how difficult it is to precisely define fairness.
EXP for completing objectives: This is mainly used in video game that have other things to do besides killing enemies. Usually, most of the systems are about killing enemies, with some longer-term objectives on top, like “Control an area”, “Escort an object”, or “Capture a flag”. Accomplishing these objectives is another source of EXP, alongside killing enemies. Some objectives (e.g. hold an area) award EXP equally to everyone involved. Others (e.g. capture the flag) award EXP to the player who accomplishes it, and maybe also to players who assisted that player.
Group EXP for overcoming obstacles: This is common is video games and tabletop games where players form teams or parties. Any accomplishment by the party awards equal EXP to all party members. Framing the achievement that grants EXP as “overcoming an obstacle” instead of “defeating an enemy” expands the types of situations that grant EXP: solving a mystery, navigating a hazardous area, convincing an NPC. It also handles solving a problem in multiple ways. Players can get past a checkpoint by sneaking, fast-talking, or fighting, and get the same reward. If combat is dangerous or expensive, players are encouraged to try non-violent solutions.
Group milestone leveling: This is used in tabletop games that emphasize story, Instead gaining EXP for every obstacle along the way, every player gaining a large amount of EXP for reaching a significant narrative milestone, like defeating a boss, or wrapping up a story arc. This lets the GM choose how powerful the party will be at any point in the story, and less accounting is required of both players and GM.
EXP per skill: This is a paradigm shift that rewards players for their actions instead of for the effects those actions have. Instead of one pool of EXP, characters have multiple pools, linked to skills or groups of skills. For example, a character may have a “shooting” skill, and could gain “shooting EXP” for attempting to shoot, or for shooting and succeeding, or for succeeding on difficult shots. “Shooting EXP” can only be used to improve shooting-related parts of the character. This method keeps track of a lot more than other methods, so it’s usually limited to video games, where the computer can do all the math.
Ideas for gaining EXP
In team games, it’s good for players to work together and help each other. How do we know when a player has been helpful to another? Humans intuitively use a lot of context to decide what certain actions mean, and that’s hard for computers to emulate. A computer would like to say “Healing a teammate is good”, but healing a tank that’s at 3/4 health while a squishy teammate dies is a mistake. Most simple rules for what is helpful and what is not can be gamed: players who are motivated to gain the most EXP can find actions that make no sense diagetically, like standing in a fire to let a teammate get unlimited EXP for healing.
One way to answer “does this action help?” is to ask “If this action did not happen, would things be worse?” That’s easier for turn-based games or games with fewer verbs. Predicting the future gets more expensive the more complicated each situation gets, and how far ahead one has to look. Here’s a simple example. In Pathfinder, a Bard gives the Fighter +3 to attack, and the Fighter’s next attack beats the enemies AC by 1. Without the Bard’s Inspiration, the Fighter would have missed, so the Bard definitely helps! Grant EXP! But what if the Monk trips that same enemy, knocking it prone and reducing its AC by 4. Does the Fighter hit because of the Bard or because of the Monk? Even in this turn-based example with chunky numbers, it’s hard to assign causes to results.
Another concern in team games is fairness. EXP is a positive feedback loop. Characters that perform better get more EXP and more power, and then perform even better. Small differences in effectiveness are magnified over time, and it’s hard to have a team of characters with vastly different amounts of power. Limiting that difference in power can keep players from feeling frustrated. One solution is to award EXP to the group, not to individuals, but that may lead to the “free rider problem.” Another solution is a limit to the difference in EXP between party members. A very effective character would stop earning EXP until other characters caught up. The powers granted by EXP could also reduce this problem by weakening the positive feedback loop. If characters grow mostly horizontally (more utility options, diversification) instead of vertically (bugger numbers), that characters that are far behind can still contribute (in a few areas) just as well as a character that is far ahead.
My first draft of the bodypaint generator was a bit hacky, so I went back and cleaned it up a bit.
I created “drawers” (things that draw, not parts of a dresser) that would draw different things: stars, letters, squares, etc. I could add more than one “drawer” to a placer and fill the canvas with, say, half circles and half heart emojis. But because I mis-used Javascript’s inheritance, I couldn’t create multiple copies of the same “drawer.” So half hearts and half smiley faces wouldn’t work, nor would half red stars with few points & half green stars with many points. As the image below proves, I’ve removed that constraint. Now I can instantiate as many “drawers” as I like, of any type, and give them all different parameters.
The placing feature was mixed in with the top-level generator object. I split it out to its own class, so I could make sub-classes and switch out or combine placers on one canvas just like I could use any combination of “drawers” with one placer. To demonstrate the new placer’s extensibility, I implemented a grid placer in addition to the random placer I made earlier.
Finally I made some quality-of-life improvements to make testing easier for myself.
A “regenerate” button so I can re-run the generator without re-loading the page.
A “save to PNG” button so I don’t have to Print-Screen, paste into an image editor, and crop each time I want to add an image to my blog. (If you look carefully at previous entries about this program, the images are off by a few pixels.)
When we last left our heroes, Lucia had just rid herself of a self-inflicted flea infestation with some flammable anti-flea oil. She’s not on fire or covered in fleas, but she is covered in oil. She goes to the bath-house while Gleador goes back to the Glazers’ house to rest and level up. The bath-house is attached to Macker’s Tavern, the other inn in town. The bath-house is decorated in green & blue tile. Lucia washes up, then lingers for a relaxing bubble bath and massage.
Gleador goes back to his room and meditates, connecting with nature and its wisdom. He has a vision of the pony that rode away on the cart. It’s talking! It says, “Gleador. Gleador! Time to wake up.” It’s actually Lucia, who has returned from the bath-house and is rousing him.
They head back to the fair. Along the way they overhear someone say that Dandelion went on-stage to perform and croaked! They’re not sure if that means he died, or if he made frog noises. As they approach the market they hear a disturbance at the auction!
The auction stage at the Fairmeadow Fair
A metal statue, which was lined up on the platform along the other rare and valuable items, has come alive and is wrecking the place! It’s grabbing some of the auction items and throwing others aside. Our heroes see Pepe’s pole moving through the crowd towards the commotion, but there’s no time to wait for him! The statue throws a large wooden carving into the crowd! Gleador turns into a gorilla and catches the statue, placing it gently down next to shocked onlookers. They were too busy looking at the statue to notice him transform, right? Lucia commands the statue to stop, but it ignores her. She can intimidate people with her Paladin authority, but this is no person.
When Pepe arrives, he sees a gorilla, which is both a beast and black. Surely it must be the Black Beast! Will he engage it, or the living statue? Gleador rushes to grab the statue & show Pepe that he’s a friendly gorilla. He pulls it down and notices that the robot has only collected metal objects in its backpack. Lucia rushes up to tie the statue down, but it throws her through a table of valuable items. The statue gets back up and Pepe rushes Gleador. Gleador leaps up onto the platform, getting between Lucia and the statue and putting the statue between himself and Pepe. Undeterred, Pepe pole-vaults up onto the platform to threaten Gleador. Lucia convinces Pepe to focus on the statue.
The hidden switch on the living statue.
Gleador notices a three-position switch on the statue’s back and tries to turn it, but the statue spins 180 at the waist, grabs hum, and throws him into Pepe, toppling and injuring both of them. Lucia lunges with her sword, but it scrapes harmlessly off the solid metal statue. The statue tries to pull the sword from her grip and collect it like the other metal objects. Lucia also notices the switch. Gleador rushes the statue again, but it throws him into Lucia. She loses her grip on her sword as they both stumble back. That tug-of-war gave Gleador an idea. He takes Lucia’s shield and entices the statue into grabbing it. With its arms occupied wrestling for the shield, Lucia has an opportunity to turn the statue’s switch. Left or right? Left! The statue freezes and topples to the ground.
With the statue incapacitated, Pepe the sherriff turns his attention on the Black Beast. Gleador flees out of town into the surrounding fields. Although his halfling legs can’t run as fast as his quarry, Pepe can easily follow the trail of a gorilla crashing through fields of grain. Gleador runs until he has enough of a lead to break line of sight, then switches to a rabbit and makes a right-angle turn, aiming to come back into town from a different angle. He dashes across one of the main roads into town and a passing hunter looses an arrow after him. Gleador is a lot tougher than a normal rabbit and just keeps going, much to the hunter’s surprise.
While Gleador and Pepe are gone, deputies arrive and attempt to tie up the statue. All its joints are locked, so they can’t bring its wrists together to bind it in the usual way. They do their best and drag it towards town hall, which is also the headquarters of the town watch. People at the auction are upset by the destruction of most of the valuables, but Lucia ignores them and exhorts the deputies to place the statue in a cell, not in the evidence room. Maybe it will come to life again. Better to treat it like a person.
Gleador re-emerges as an Elf and reunites with Lucia. They go to the bard stage to check on Dandelion and find that when he started his performance, the tried to sing but could only croak like a frog. He’s not dead, but he’s humiliated and unable to perform. The back up bard is and Elf named Bill Shook. He uses Elven metaphors and references that don’t translate into Common well, so Gleador thinks he’s hilarious, but Lucia and most of the spectators are unimpressed.
There’s plenty of talk about the living statue that ruined the auction, and the gorilla that suddenly appeared and seemed to fight it. Was it a person who turned into a gorilla? To protect Gleador’s secret, Lucia starts a rumor about a an invisible, benevolent gorilla, who appears when people are in danger. Her fantastic story gains her more listeners than poor Bill Shook.
