Hey again! This week's Q&A is a pretty lengthy one, but useful nonetheless. The request has
been to fill out "The Power 19" questions of TTRPG design. Silly title, I know, but whatevs.
There's some good questions in here, even if they're a little bit repetitive sometimes.
Since there's a lot of them, let's dig right in, shall we?
So first off, #1. Instead of, yanno, #20, since there is no 20, and 1 seems like a good place to start.
1.) What is your game about?
In short, Saorsa's about redemption, self discovery and freedom.
In a slightly longer form, the exploration of characters to learn who they are as individuals
in ways they may not know about themselves, and what happens when they're imprisoned,
stripped of their freedom until they redeem themselves in the eyes of their captors. As
an aside, Saorsa also strives to teach players new to role playing how to step into their
character's shoes, how to handle dialogue, and other tasks many players may not be familiar with.
2.) What do the characters do? The characters have committed a "sin" against
themselves by going against what they supposedly valued most. What's expected of them is to
understand why they committed this sin, and to learn who they truly are because, had they
known, they would not have done so in the first place. The entire planet of Saorsa is
designed to provide trials and challenges to test the characters in a variety of ways
for them to better make their way through this process, whether by succeeding or failing
along the way. This can range from political intreigue to combat to standard adventuring,
to overthrowing the very warden in charge of the planet.
3.) What do the players (including the GM if there is one) do?
The players build and step into the shoes
of a character for each of them to control personally. This process creates a large number
of innate plot hooks to explore, with GMs providing potential ways for characters to
learn more about themselves along their travels, both as individuals and as a group. Additional
to such, are any number of other major quests and conflicts to be explored along the way.
I'd go into more nuance, but we'd be here all day. Mostly it comes down to the GM presenting
the players with choices, and the players making choices based upon what's presented,
and more specifically, making choices which make sense within the context of what their
character would do in that situation. This also includes having a growing understanding
of who their character is based upon the situations which occur that shape and mold the character
in ways that don't apply to the player themselves.
4.) How does your setting (or lack thereof) reinforce what your game is about?
Saorsa, as a planet, is a penal colony-slash-rehabilitation facility. The world itself shifts and changes
with an entire army of Druids dedicated to creating new creatures to fight, changing
the landscape, and otherwise presenting a wide range of personalized challenges. The
setting is designed specifically to be very broad and open so that GMs can do pretty much
anything they want with it, from importing new factions, new races or species, or storylines
or characters from other games if they so choose. Everything revolves around the idea
that characters are dragged from the farthest reaches of the galaxy and are deemed guilty
even without trial, caged on the world and told to prove themselves. From angelic case
workers to a downright psychotic warden, and the promise of returning home, as well as
greater power, everything in the setting is dedicated either towards guiding the characters
through this path of self discovery, or to allow for whatever the GM can imagine to take place.
5.) How does the Character Creation of your game reinforce what your game is about?
The first step is to create a baseline of what's "normal" for the species, then for
the character to determine what their personal values are, whether those mesh with normalicy,
or go against the grain and why. From there, characters gain a great deal of customization
and options focused around creating a character with an actual personality, personal preferences,
and reasons for why they do what they do. This process also leads to a great number
of plot hooks for players to explore, ensuring that the characters themselves are the center
stage of any game.
6.) What types of behaviors/styles of play does your game reward (and punish if necessary)?
All and none. The key behind Saorsa, is that there's no "right" answer. No matter what
a character's sin may be, there's no "correct" outcome. A character may decide that they'd
made a mistake and redouble their efforts to emphasize their initial values, or, just
as easily, they may decide that their "sin" was their true self showing through. Player
characters can be evil, good, murder everything in sight, or use stealth and social pressure
to avoid combat entirely. All that matters is that the character solves issues they're
faced with in some way, shape or form, and that the method of such bring them closer
to an understanding of themselves. The specific methods used are largely irrelevant, as is
the end goal of what the character winds up being. It's pretty much purely a story about
their journey, not the destination. This means if a character wants to say "screw the system"
and punch the warden in the face because that's what they've decided the "true" them desires,
then they're free to do so. Or at least try. Success may take a bit more effort.
7.) How are behaviors and styles of play rewarded or punished in your game?
Characters who solve problems, regardless
of the methods employed, are rewarded with things like experience, or steps or strides
upon the Path to Redemption. This mechanic grants rewards from stat bonuses, skill tier
unlocks, and level increases as characters develop a greater understanding of themselves.
Characters are only truly punished if they completely go against the idea of even trying.
For example - a character who sits down, refuses to budge, and lets themselves starve to death
will find themselves rudely awakened, weaker than even when they started, and the challenges
they'd been presented to overcome will have just become that much more complex. So long
as the characters either have a purpose they work towards, or at least are moving in some
direction, even if they're not really sure what they're looking for or trying to achieve
yet, they'll be rewarded to some degree, though they gain far more when they make progress
towards the game's goals.
8.) How are the responsibilities of narration and credibility divided in your game?
Saorsa focuses heavily upon the concept of player choice, and narration comes down to
describing the choices made. Very little in the game is resolved purely via automation
without the players being able to interject and do something of value. The GM is expected
to provide situations and choices for players to interact with on a two-way street of storytelling,
rather than a static, single-direction narration taking place.
9.) What does your game do to command the players' attention, engagement, and participation? (i.e. What does the game do to make them care?)
There's a lot of things on a lot of levels, but some of the big ones are things like player's
choices mattering, their personal backstories and plot hooks being a large part of every
campaign so that they're personally invested in their character, and whichever method a
player chooses to solve problems is designed to give lots to do beyond just rolling for
stealth or rolling to attack - the lack of automated events, with less reliance on dice
and more emphasis put towards player choice, keeps the personal level engaged constantly.
For a broader context, players and their characters become engaged with the world itself by attaching
them to it via a home base of operations, giving them such things as a town to call
their own and increase the prosperity of, which directly benefits them as well. Other
major aspects include having characters joining factions to give them more personalized tasks and
rewards which relate directly to the character's goals, and for most upward mobility in terms
of strength involving completing tasks of personal value, rather than arbitrary events.
Well, we're halfway through!
10.) What are the resolution mechanics of your game like?
While there's a 1d20+modifier setup for handling
contested events, with a sliding scale of what actually becomes the outcome, the vast
majority of resolution mechanics comes down to player choice instead of die rolling. It's
primarily using the right tool for the right job, or solving problems in interesting ways
that works well, more than just having higher raw stats most of the time. Stats and other
mechanics come into play mostly when a poor choice is made, or when an equal or near-equal
opposition is made against the player character's actions.
11.) How do the resolution mechanics reinforce
what your game is about? Again, choice is paramount in Saorsa. Characters
don't just toss themselves at an enemy and hope they roll well - it's their choices in
life which determines the outcome first and foremost. This doesn't just go for combat,
but for other situations as well, such as a well-defined stealth system, and a system
for handling complex social interactions, wherein both are resolved based off of the
choices the player makes based on what options they have available, rather than just rolling
and being done with it.
12.) Do characters in your game advance? If so, how?
In many ways. There's both a tiered point-buy setup and a more traditional level-based setup
as well. Characters gain specializations in particular tasks by leveling up a specific
class, but also gain a wide range of choices via skills, talents and spells. Note that
every character has access to all skills and all magic, should they choose to invest in
such, and even martial classes are encouraged to learn some spellcraft, and magical classes
encouraged to invest in some martial prowess as well. Special talents also allow for additional
customization of characters based upon their chosen species. This allows players to customize
their character to play the way they personally prefer, with a wide range of perfectly viable
options to choose from at any given time, so they're not railroaded into a particular
path just because it works better.
13.) How does the character advancement (or lack thereof) reinforce what your game is about?
Advancement is bolstered with greater options
becoming available as characters learn who they are, from increased level capacity, enhanced
skill options, to characters who are more in tune with who they are being synchronized
with their spiritual essence, allowing for greater enchantments to be used at a time.
Player choice is ever-present, with more emphasis upon building a character that makes sense
from the character's perspective. The more the player and the character understand who
the character is, the stronger they become.
14.) What sort of product or effect do you want your game to produce in or for the players?
I'm a lil iffy on how this one's worded, but let's take a stab at this.
Basically, I want players to become emotionally attached to their character, to feel like
their personal presence in the world has a meaningful impact upon the outcome of what
happens, and for their choices to matter.
15.) What areas of your game receive extra attention and color? Why?
The player species, more than anything else. They're vastly more detailed in biology, culture
and so on than in any other TTRPG I've seen to date, due in large part to this being a
major part about what sets the baseline for the character's expectations of them, as well
as their innate tendencies for mindset, so that it's much easier for a player to really
get into the head of their character beyond just being a human with pointy ears. Even
the humans are given extra attention to draw attention towards comprehending how humans
in certain regions and timeframes tended to behave and why.
Stealth and social situations are also given a lot of extra attention as these are rarely
covered in most combat-focused games, and typically handwaved away in narrative heavy
games as something for players to role play out without the game interfering in such.
These are core components of the game and are given attention to such in detail due
to this. Magic and combat are also heavily invested
in for extra attention so that players have lots of choices of how to go about fighting,
and to ensure that distinctive play styles can be catered to for individuals so that
their character's fighting style matches their personality. That and there's way too many
narrative-based games with little to almost no real combat rules - combat in Saorsa is
both epic and tactical in nature.
16.) Which part of your game are you most excited about or interested in? Why?
Ooh toughie... I'd say the species, actually, for the greatest excitement. I can't wait
to see these rather alien mindsets come into play, and see players go from having little
to no role playing capacity learn to really grasp even creatures that are distinctly non-human in mindset.
17.) Where does your game take the players that other games can't, don't or won't?
First off, really delving into non-human mindsets.
Second, the player's choice being more important than the roll of the dice.
Third, a strong amalgamation of both combat and narrative.
Fourth, character plot hooks and GM coaching in such a way that the player characters are always an intrinsic part of the story rather than incidental.
Fifth, really making players question both who their characters really are, but also who the player is.
18.) What are your publishing goals for your game?
Well, I'm going to be releasing Saorsa free of charge for the basic game. I'd like to
reach as wide of an audience as possible and give players a top-notch quality game to play,
even if they're in third world countries or students who can't afford a game and so on.
I want to bring role playing to a much broader audience than has been done before.
In terms of finances, I'd like to get enough in donations and eventual sales of expansion
content that I can dedicate myself full time to working on new stuff for Saorsa and live
somewhat comfortably with this being my primary job.
I'd also really like to make enough to begin producing a video game based upon Saorsa as
the base design, and to get comfortable enough that I can write a few Saorsa novels as well.
Yeah, it's kinda spread out, but I'm a world designer first and foremost - I've built an
intellectual property that I think a lot of people are going to really enjoy, and I'd
like to see more than just me personally making enough money off it to retire if I felt like it,
but rather I'd like to make a major impact on the industry as a whole and push the whole
industry forward a few steps beyond where we're currently at.
And last, but not least,
19.) Who is your target audience? A few are being catered to in different ways,
but in particular I'm focusing very heavily on people who have roll-played before in other
TTRPGs, but have never really played a role due to focusing more on combat than role playing
in the past. This meshes well with players who are new to TTRPGs in general and aren't
really sure where to begin role playing. Another demographic I'm aiming for, are those who
enjoy narrative based games but haven't seen much value in combat, viewing it more as a
chore - I've targeted this group to show them that even tactical combat can be narrative
based with lots of choice rather than just tons of numbers. The final major demographic
I'm setting my sights on, the fourth such demographic, is players of video game RPGs,
especially those who play games like The Elder Scrolls, Mass Effect, or MMORPGs in general.
There's a lot of people out there who I think would really appreciate TTRPGs if they got
started in on them, but who haven't really had a game that really interests them yet,
and I've tried to build Saorsa in such a way that each of these groups can get something
great out of it. Normally there's a huge balancing act between
catering to multiple groups, but these groups have been specifically chosen in that there's
a ton of overlap between the various demographics, with any two or three groups at a time sharing
a lot of the same desires and interests, so it should work pretty well.
Watch me be eating those words two years from now. =P
Anyway, that's it for this week, and the full 19 questions have been answered!
So with that, I'm out. I'll see you next time!
You see a moose.
It's standing in your way of reading the text.
You ask the moose to move.
"I ain't moving. I'm the moose."
The moose bites your sister. You have lost.
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