What do you love/hate in RPGs?

What I mean by this are features.  Gameplay or game mechanics.  Not narrative events or characters specific to certain RPGs.

So, as a starter for ten I'd suggest co op is a great feature for an RPG. 

For me I always harken back to the best times of my pen & paper roleplaying games.  And that was almost always about co op.  Even when the party was divisive and split down the middle and one half waged war with the other.  (Which reminds me of a story I might share in a later post) - it was always about players discussing their next moves and then embarking on a quest together.  So co op is something we aim for here.

Another great feature was Shadow of Mordor's Nemesis system.  This provided some truly memorable moments for me, playing that game:

          "Oi!  Man filth!  I killed you before...."

And then the intense satisfaction of besting an opponent which has killed you repeatedly. Nothing quite like it.  And they say genius steals, so we've wholesale borrowed this system, massaged it to suit our purposes, and Underland will present its equivalent - which we call the Bane system.  Except, obviously, we do things a little differently.  And virtually any creature can become a Bane of the protagonist in our game.  Because we want to capture those moments that engage a player.  When an enemy slips through your fingers, learns from your mistakes, and ambushes you later.  Taunts you.  Steals from you.  And then you eventually out smart that sonofa, and crush its skull beneath your boots.

For years, as a games designer, I used to think that game play was the pinnacle of game design.  It's what you allowed your player to do that was important.  How you extended and evolved a genre by applying a new feature.  But it is not that.

Don't  get me wrong.  All that is important.  But it's emotional engagement that is the pinnacle of game design.  If you can get your player to love, hate, be furious in (temporary) defeat, bring tears to their eyes and fist pump the air when they ultimately succeed. These are the moments that define a game.  These are the moments that stay with you as a player.

Gameplay and game mechanics support them.  But it is emotional engagement which captures the heart and mind and rewards the player.  It is for these reasons gamers invest time and money.  And this is what we strive for with Underland.  We want you to tell stories around the water-cooler and down the pub, and salivate for the next time you log on.

So what features in other RPGs have you loved and/or hated?

What's made a game for you, and what's broken a game for you.

I could fill pages with this stuff.  But I want to hear from you.

Please.

There, I said please!  :-)

The Background to Underland

The concept for Underland started out as a pirate game.  The reason for this was simple.  A friend of mine wanted to make a game and had purchased an 8-bit pirate-themed graphic pack.

I wanted to make a procedurally generated RPG, so I took the pirate theme and hinged the backstory on that.

For this reason the original working title for this project was: Dread Pirate Booty.

The idea of being 'forever cursed' to hunt for buried treasure is because, aside from sail the seven seas, buried treasure is pretty much the standard pirate trope.  X marks the spot and all that.

So I did a bit of research. 

It turns out that the Dread Pirate Roberts referenced in (the excellent) The Princess Bride, was based on a real pirate - Bartholomew Roberts.  We gave Bart the nickname Booty, because, as the Beastie Boys said: what's another name for pirate treasure? Mmm, I think it's booty!

And obviously booty also means ass, and we all like a bit of ass.  Wait!  What?  Where did that come from?

Anyway, moving on swiftly.

So, the game is intended to be PC / console, with a companion mobile app - we'll come to all this later when I basically copy the Game Design Document onto this blog in chunks.

It's also ultimately going to be co op with perhaps a small amount of PVP in it.  In some situations additional players will be able to play monsters pitted against the main players - which should be fun! And in other cases we may afford players to come across other players if they happen to be journeying around the same real world location.  But we'll go into this later, too.

A pirate backstory informs the design of the game a little.  People expect pirates to possess certain equipment.

So this is what we did:

As a pirate you have the following:

1. A pirate hat
2. An eye-patch
3. A hook (for your off hand)
4. A cutlass
5. A peg-leg
6. A parrot
7. A treasure chest

Each of these can be crafted, enchanted and upgraded in particular ways.  They form the essence of your character, but most can only be used whilst Booty (the protagonist) is in humanoid form.  You can't have eel with a peg-leg!

All of these bestow certain abilities on the protagonist, and there are different versions of each, making the full set of pirate gear extremely versatile in combination.

For example, one type of eye-patch projects light like a lantern, a different version highlights items of interest in the environment, traps and switches and the like.

The last two items are somewhat different.

We decided we wanted to inject the parrot with some personality, so we decided to make it your girlfriend.  Wait!  Cursed to be bound to the shape of a parrot.  Of course her name is Polly.

Pretty Polly has her own upgrade path, and can be pretty (if you excuse the pun) useful in most situations.  Upgrades for Pol consist of the ability to collect small valuable items, draw attention to certain environmental content (levers et al), and even attack certain foes. However, she is also insanely jealous of any other attractive females, and will act with extreme hostility when she comes across them - sometimes drawing Booty into danger. She has a particular hatred for mermaids!

The treasure chest is where Booty stores everything he finds.  It is an arcane item in its own right, and can materialise out of thin air whenever Booty needs it.  Items he collects are automatically stored in the chest.

Okay, so that's the backstory in brief, as I said, more detail on that later.  Going forward we are likely to create alternative starting personas to provide players with a choice of base character.