Rolling dice for stats? Please no, I would like to ask you to reconsider that for a moment: We are looking at a longer game, I expect, not just a one hour dungeoncrawl. Now, the chances are good my rolled stats will be average, not good or exceptional. And what is the likely consequence? Rerolling until you have at least good, maybe even excellent stats. But, if players aim for a certain minimum target number anyways, you can do away with the dice rolling right away. Not to mention that I considered statrolling always an extremely unfair device, and bad game design; but admittedly this is somewhat mitigated by playing on a computer. Summary: Please reconsider using fixed stats or a point pool to buy stats from.
I like dice rolling for stats. Most tabletop games have survived on it for generations now. When playing a game, I tend to roll for a good primary stat, and then accept whatever else I'm given - I think that "randomness" is reflective of real-life. Everyone has strengths and weaknesses. To that end, I do have a tweak in place that gives the best score from the pool of random scores to the primary attribute of the selected class, and the other stats in the pool are randomly assigned. It makes sense that you would be good at the thing you do - i.e. if you weren't super strong, you wouldn't have become a Fighter. There will always be people who will sit there hitting the re-roll button until they hit all 18's, but they're really just cheating themselves by making the game less challenging and making their characters less realistic
^Well said Steve... I spend hours and hours creating my characters in my RPGs, but it's never because of stat rolls.
Same for me, E-P. I write pages of backstory, but stay away from dicefests as much as I can the best groups I played with were pretty much diceless, and the worst were always the opposite. Coincidence? I think not. Yeah, unfortunately tabletops still use this (looking at you, D&D). Personal preference then, I'd say. I always found games like White Wolf's old Vampire where everyone has the same amount of fixed points to spend much better designed. You still get a wide variety of characters without the randomness of dice. Your last sentence, Steve, makes me think that you design the game and balance with an "average" roll result in mind, not a bad or good one. If you have a certain target point, you could just give that amount of points to freely distribute for each character. Maybe you could include it as second option for those of us who prefer not to roll? Ah well, was hoping to get you to rethink this, but it's your baby after all. Will give it a shot anyways, if the overall game appeals to me; which it most likely will, you already earned bonus points for making it turn-bases and not realtime; very much appreciated, that.
You DID get me to rethink it. Every comment makes me think... I'm not sure that it will change or stay as it is. With Coldfire Keep, I did a lot of adjustments to the way stats worked once play testing on the game was in full swing. It's not really until that point that I can clearly see the things that I've done wrong Time will tell how this goes. For now, it's 4d6, throw out the lowest (repeat 5 times). Assign the highest overall to primary stat, randomly distribute the rest.
For the record, here's the current iteration of the Party Builder which spawned this discussion: EDIT: A screenshot that's already out of date as the Wisdom attribute no longer exists.
That is much appreciated, even if as gamers we come up with what seem like great ideas but are just awful really . Decided to try out coldfire keep, I like old school, see if this draws me in. If it does, consider that I'll be a follower for sure!
Sorry for the late reply, somehow missed this and your other reply ("You DID get me to rethink it...") . Just wanted to say that I really appreciate you answering, not to mention taking what I wrote into consideration. That said, did you draw the portraits in the screenshot yourself? I like the visual style, took me a bit to recall what it reminds me of: "Riese: Battle for Eleysia" (iOS) , and I'm still not sure if it's the right reference to what I have rolling around the back of my mind. Especially the fighter portrait draws my eyes back all the time (so, well done ); something about it is unusual, but I cannot put my finger on it. Did you (or your artist) e.g. use a special drawing/painting technique?
Another week, another progress screenshot. Starting to add some inhabitants now and writing initial creature AI.
This looks good, great job on the Skeleton artwork especially. Nice to see one in heavy armor for a change.
Is The Deep Paths getting close to an iOS release? Hello Steve J., I have been following this since your early posts in the TA Forums. Is there any news you can share about when this may be coming to iOS AppStore? I am excited to play your new FPDC RPG!
Hey all, I thought it was about time for me to update this very stale old thread with some new information, given that today sees the launch of the Windows version of The Deep Paths: Labyrinth Of Andokost. You can check it out on Steam. I'm now focusing on getting the iOS and Android versions up and running, and I'm hoping to have them released within the next couple of months. I'll keep this thread updated with progress. In the meantime, here's the latest trailer for the game, as well as a gameplay demo video that I put together.
