Designing Kewl Powerz

Bloody Stupid Johnson · March 23, 2013, 06:46:03 PM

Quote from: Ghost Whistler;639693I wouldn't know how.

Me neither...er, just curious is there any place that would be a good way to start learning how to do that, for people with limited programming background?

I don't think even any of the larger RPG companies do that, actually, though the guy who does JAGS, Marco Chacon, was doing it for his system and posting results to the JAGS blog.

ggroy · March 23, 2013, 07:39:31 PM

Quote from: Bloody Stupid Johnson;639745Me neither...er, just curious is there any place that would be a good way to start learning how to do that, for people with limited programming background?

I don't think even any of the larger RPG companies do that, actually, though the guy who does JAGS, Marco Chacon, was doing it for his system and posting results to the JAGS blog.

Without some prior computer programming knowledge, I don't know what would be an easy start.

I've been doing most of my programming in C over the last 20+ years. It's not the easiest language to learn, but well worth the effort imho. The syntax is relatively simple, but there's all kinds of subtleties which are easy pitfalls. (Some operating system kernels are written in C such as linux and the *bsd ones).

Bloody Stupid Johnson · March 23, 2013, 07:46:32 PM

Quote from: ggroy;639757Without some prior computer programming knowledge, I don't know what would be an easy start.

I've been doing most of my programming in C over the last 20+ years. It's not the easiest language to learn, but well worth the effort imho. The syntax is relatively simple, but there's all kinds of subtleties which are easy pitfalls. (Some operating system kernels are written in C such as linux and the *bsd ones).

Ah well, fair enough. I was looking at C+ a little bit years ago; I gather that's sort of evolved from C, any better or worse?

Silverlion · March 23, 2013, 07:49:56 PM

Quote from: TristramEvans;639691I use FASERIP, so powers in my games are basically : Describe a cool power. Give it a name and a rating. Go do awesome stuff. If you want to use it in a new and special way, its a Power Stunt.

Thats basically the entirety of the power creation rules.

Much the same with Hearts & Souls.

ggroy · March 23, 2013, 07:53:28 PM

Quote from: Bloody Stupid Johnson;639760Ah well, fair enough. I was looking at C+ a little bit years ago; I gather that's sort of evolved from C, any better or worse?

C++ basically started off as C with all kinds of bells and whistles added in. Later it evolved into its own.

For just number crunching, C itself is more than adequate. I haven't used C++ that much over the last decade.

ggroy · March 23, 2013, 08:00:41 PM

Most of the C programming I do these days, is with open source tools like djgpp on windoze or the native gcc on linux.

The tools are easy to find and use. It's mastering C that takes a long time of practice. I'm far from being a master C programmer.

Bloody Stupid Johnson · March 23, 2013, 10:10:33 PM

Thanks anyway. I have a bit more free time lately so I'll try to check out some C basics.

ggroy · March 24, 2013, 10:10:47 AM

What a computer simulation won't tell you, is the unanticipated behavior of a new power/ability which the original designer never envisioned.

Ladybird · March 24, 2013, 12:12:50 PM

Quote from: ggroy;639689The first thing I would do is write a computer program to run a new power/ability in a slugfest against generic opponents. This is largely to see whether the new power/ability is doing what you wanted it to do.

While that's fine, as far as it goes, it essentially requires learning an entirely new discipline, alongside games design, and the uses of many powers can't be measured mathematically - for example, how powerful is Auspex, objectively? Is it on par with, say, Celerity? And if not, why does it cost the same, in game terms?

Theorycrafting will only get you so far, with RPG rules you really need to dig in and start abusing them, and - this bit is important! - accept that you're not going to catch everything, there are going to be broken combinations. If they happen to be thematically appropriate, that's great, but if not... well, maybe it's not worth your time to fix. Who knows.

Ghost Whistler · March 24, 2013, 12:18:42 PM

Quote from: Ladybird;639847While that's fine, as far as it goes, it essentially requires learning an entirely new discipline, alongside games design, and the uses of many powers can't be measured mathematically - for example, how powerful is Auspex, objectively? Is it on par with, say, Celerity? And if not, why does it cost the same, in game terms?

Theorycrafting will only get you so far, with RPG rules you really need to dig in and start abusing them, and - this bit is important! - accept that you're not going to catch everything, there are going to be broken combinations. If they happen to be thematically appropriate, that's great, but if not... well, maybe it's not worth your time to fix. Who knows.

Maybe some level of brokenness is acceptable. After all the cool thing about the Shadowfist ccg was not that it was broken - it's that every card was broken!

ggroy · March 24, 2013, 12:53:27 PM

Quote from: Ladybird;639847Theorycrafting will only get you so far, with RPG rules you really need to dig in and start abusing them, and - this bit is important! - accept that you're not going to catch everything, there are going to be broken combinations. If they happen to be thematically appropriate, that's great, but if not... well, maybe it's not worth your time to fix. Who knows.

Writing a computer program to exhaustively go through every possible allowed combination can be done in principle. Assuming there's no bugs in such a program, it may very well be one that runs for over a day or a week.

In practice, it would probably be easier to find the game breaking stuff by playing with other players.

Opaopajr · March 24, 2013, 01:14:23 PM

Magic the Gathering already went down that road ages ago. There's a reason the newer versions no longer attempt full deck building (including land ratios) like the older versions did. You just can't beat a human in an ever changing pool of options to find the most broken stuff. Life exploits, kind of its calling card.

Fixed pools and fixed scenarios, run a program. Fluid pools and unlimited scenarios, find gamers.