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Obsidian on RPG Design

[Aug 21, 2011, 7:24 pm ET] - Share - Viewing Comments

Obsidian's Five Hard Lessons Of RPG Design on Gamasutra recaps points made on the topic of RPG design from a talk given by J.E. Sawyer of Obsidian Entertainment. He offers a detailed breakdown of the following five principles:

Mechanical chaos is frustrating, what you can perceive is the most important thing, strategic failures are the biggest disappointing failures for players, the idea of player vs. character is a false dichotomy, and good gameplay is better than whatever your ideas or whatever the player's expectations are.

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Re: Obsidian on RPG Design

Aug 22, 2011, 02:27

Warskull

Re-specs are a good thing. The mythical "everything is good and viable" RPG doesn't exist. Often times it is just stabbing around in the dark as you learn the mechanics. A skill that in theory should be good could be complete trash and a skill that looks bad could be completely game-breaking. You just ad a cost to re-specs in a single player RPG to discourage re-specing for every fight. However, it would allow players to respec when they realize what they picked cripples them.

Subject

Comment [quote="Warskull"Aug 22, 2011, 02:27]Re-specs are a good thing. The mythical "everything is good and viable" RPG doesn't exist. Often times it is just stabbing around in the dark as you learn the mechanics. A skill that in theory should be good could be complete trash and a skill that looks bad could be completely game-breaking. You just ad a cost to re-specs in a single player RPG to discourage re-specing for every fight. However, it would allow players to respec when they realize what they picked cripples them. [/quote]

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