RJ's DG4-Temple of the Elders (Ponderings and plans)

[Mamono Assault Force]

This place is for ideas, and discussion about those ideas.

This is all just idle pondering while I wait for Tass to tell me DG4's complete enough to start building upon this idea.

Ideas so far:

-Much, much randomization. Potions can yield good, bad, and random effects. Even stepping on trap plates can yield unpredictable results, such as opening a treasure room, or dropping a den of monsters on your head. (Tass: Dubious merchants with random lists of items, possibly discounted, and possibly cursed.)

-Many pre-dungeon options. Fetishes, perma-loss, starting state (Standard DG or lower), NPCs/Players to tag along.

-Finding your lost character within the dungeon and getting them back. Death isn't always the end. Even when it is, a second adventurer can possibly bring your old character back to life should you desire it.

Dungeons get harder the deeper you go, despite player growth. I'll initially design dungeons to have an end point, but the general idea is that dungeons deeper down become increasingly dangerous and less likely to survive in.

Things to Ponder:

-Experience. Normally handed out at a GM's discretion, it must obey some sort of system in the roguelike version so that the characters who make it farther get stronger at a consistent rate. Characters should be strong enough to face danger as things get tougher.

-Random Loot. Handling Materials will be easy. Equipment however, is a different story. Must ponder how finding random things around ye roguelike dungeon can be fun and interesting.

-All of the random effects. All of them. There needs to be lots of randomization for all elements, but there must also be balance between the random effects. If the worst effect of a potion is instant death, and the best is a second life (1UP, essentially), the instant death will end your adventure immediately while the second life just means you can die twice. Entirely possible if you end up in a bad situation, which makes the bad result hold more weight than the good. All random effects must allure you as much as they scare you.

Must be lots of results as well, for potions, traps(pressure plates, trip wires, etc), and for interactive environment objects(glorious buttons and shrines). It should be fun to even step on a pressure plate for the hell of it and see what happens instead of always assuming rocks fall and everyone dies.

Playing Without a GM, even Solo. Dice will have to handle all of the bad things that can possibly come the player's way. Must make it as simple as possible.

Players without a GM need an available list of various creatures that is easy to access and easy to understand.

-Must ponder for more things to ponder. Hurr

 

[Zilrax]

Re: RJ's DG4-Roguelike Edition Suggestion Bin

Seems legit. I don't know much about DG4 I'm afraid, so can't speak systematically. It strikes me perhaps as a more interactive version of that CYOA dungeon of Mindflayers. You might ask him for ideas or notes or something to get ideas on the sort of potions and cursed items and effects you may find.

Besides the usual advancement things, you may want to draw a simple map of sorts. Start small and just expand on it as it becomes necessary. Assuming you want a single megadungeon of sorts, this will allow you to drop groups into different sections you draw on. While it can make things a little inconsistent in shape or architecture as the different regions connect to each other, this can also provide for interesting little thoughts as well. If a submerged temple one group is in suddenly meet and connects with another groups starting section in a volcanic region, perhaps there's a low visibility section in between, due to the steam.

That all assumes you want a single large maze though. You could make it smaller and go for a more tower stack style, a small series of rooms or corridors with a level change at some position. This can be easier but does mean you'll need more if you have two groups, as they can't both be in this one area, else you have a single big group, or one group leaves nothing behind for the second. Unless you go for a literal symmetric tower, one group heading for the top, while one delves through the basement...

I like to design dungeons if it isn't obvious. I'm no cartographer but I enjoy coming up with such things. Hope this was of use at all, I can brainstorm traps and such but it's not of much use til I see something mechanical to know what to work within.

 

[GargantuaBlarg]

Re: RJ's DG4-Roguelike Edition Suggestion Bin

>Death
>DG
>Not loss-smut instead


Also, 'lol, this potion kills you and you die' would be a pretty crap way of ending a game. Damage is one thing, instant, fairly random death is another.

 

[Vyrian]

Re: RJ's DG4-Roguelike Edition Suggestion Bin

Personally, I'd err more on the side of "chugging this potion makes your life really difficult" more than instant death, simply because instant death is extremely annoying; even more so when you've put work into posts and a character story and all that, which you rarely do in a standard roguelike. Maybe replace actual deaths with simple transformations into a 'special' dungeon monster that other players can run into? That way losing your character would still mean, well, you can't win the gauntlet, but you still would be able to play them.

That being said, if death is going to be a standard fare I'd suggest making character creation a more agile process, so that at least you don't lose that much work. Not having a story, or having a common story for everyone thrown into the roguelike, would simplify things, for example.

Randomization could extend to "zone generation" kind of stuff, making the handing of loot an easier task (you found a treasure room!). Personally, I'd make a random table for "floor themes" such as slime, oviposition, bondage, whatever (then the player can just pick which ones they don't like and remove them) and then another table for "zone types" like... treasure room, challenge room, shop, empty... Give each one a set weight, and then adjust it so the actual ratios happen. Example:

Spoiler

John goes into a "Canine" themed level, which has a 60% chance of landing him an enemy, a 10% chance of landing him a friendly NPC, a 10% chance of landing him a shopkeeper, a 10% chance of landing him a treasure room, and a 10% chance of him finding a challenge room.

He lucks out and finds a treasure room so, for the next roll, the chance of finding a treasure room would be lowered, and the chance of finding everything else would be higher. This adjustment would keep happening every time he runs into something, so while luck would still be important, it lowers the impact of getting lucky at the early stages of the game. The actual math is somewhere out there, possibly in a Pseudorandom generation thing.

If the thing's meant to be a multiplayer gauntlet where several players can run it and run into each other, and specially if they start in different places, then all this is a mess that won't work. If they start in the same place, you can just add a test thing before the next floor that blocks them from leaving if all the surviving crew aren't together.

 

[Tassadar]

Re: RJ's DG4-Roguelike Edition Suggestion Bin

A

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to a non-editable version of the rules for people to comment on, either here or via googledocs comment system. It isn't in order, and isn't in a state that I would call finished at this point, but it is playable in the sense that enough of it is done that it could be beta'd. Not included here but (more or less) finished are the newly fattened Spell, Feat, and Skill lists, the Talent/Flaws lists, Mutations, or Succubus Powers. Races, items, and everything for Spirit Wielders still need to be converted over and expanded on, and the new things that are being added for DG4's actual timeline like Mechanists and all of the new Races aren't done yet and will be very selectively shown until it comes time that most of the current DG threads are on their way to wrapping up.

Also, as a side note, I do intend once ye mechanics are finished to let people in active DG threads to switch over, and will encourage some people who are more experienced with the system to do so. DG4 is a lot more random in its results than any of the previous DGs, meaning that the more powerful characters will still have a (very remote) chance of being beaten by mooks, while ye extremely powerful creatures will have that same potential vulnerability, whereas now they're pretty much invulnerable once they get a turn to buff.

 

[Mamono Assault Force]

Re: RJ's DG4-Roguelike Edition Suggestion Bin

@Zilrax

The map needs to be fairly random. GM-made maps would lack a certain random element that all roguelikes need to have. Though that's just personal opinion on my part. The GM should be allowed to do whatever they want with their map, though it should still contain plenty of randomness. A smart player will be able to identify patterns very easily.

This is just my personal opinion again, but roguelikes are most fun when it has just a pinch of pattern with a lot of randomization to keep things interesting. The actual roguelike itself can vary greatly depending on what everything thinks will be fun.

@Blarg

Ze blarg is very much correct. Instant death would suck pretty bad, and there's almost no positive effect that could justify having it there. No matter how much positive there was, the chance of instant death would be pretty scary, enough to make someone never want to drink said potions. So it's likely never to see the light of day.

@Vyrian

That will be the general idea of potions, yes. Such things must hold an equal balance of good and bad factors to make taking it a pure and fair gamble.

Your character joining the dungeon's various things to encounter is an idea to be sure, but I might one-up you on that.

How does finding your lost character within the dungeon and getting them back sound? Playing a bit of Galaga at an arcade made me think of it. Losing your character, but then possibly rescuing them and sending them back to town for recovery so you can play them again.

The simplification of character creation would be nice indeed. That's why I thought of a more dumbed down version of the standard DG creation, in that you simply have less talents and the like to work with. You start with a weaker character, but you also don't have to pick a bunch of stuff and make this complicated character from the get-go. They're only complicated as you go on and they develop. Losing early characters shouldn't be a big deal, but feeling awesome about a successful and developed character should also be there to enjoy.

The random factors will require much thought. Such as zones, themes of dungeons, and the like. I'll likely toss this concept around a lot until I feel that I've reached the best possible method. Though, as far as multiplayer goes, everyone won't all be in the same dungeon. Each group will be in their own dungeon.

 

[Tassadar]

Re: RJ's DG4-Roguelike Edition Suggestion Bin

In the interests of efficient power scaling, here's the general idea of how stuff is supposed to work in DG in terms of power levels: The starting PC, with 5 Talents and then 3 more picked from Flaws plus a total of 50 stat points, is supposed to be extremely powerful. We've seen people make very impressive characters, both focused and not focused and of every class, with only starting gear to work with when we look at some of Blarg and Hafnium's derpgen stuff, and even with only about 40 exp such characters are able to represent a very serious threat to some of the most powerful beings in the setting.

Mook fighters, or the "average warrior" types who were originally classified as Tier 1 NPCs back in like DG2 had the same 50 point spread but only 3 Talents and 1 extra from Flaws. Tier 2 had 4 Talents and 2 extra from Flaws plus 10 more into stats, and Tier 3 stuff (like knights and juggernauts which I use as low exp bosses) had another 10 more into stats plus the regular 5 and 3 Talent/Flaw business. In the interests of making simpler and potentially weaker characters, you could just use Tier 1 or 2 Flaw/Talent numbers and possibly fiddle with stats, or you could lock out certain things from characters until they'd earned them in the dungeon, such as non-passive Skills/Feats/Aptitudes and such. I would recommend just completely disavowing the more naturally powerful races like Angels and Kitsune, or possibly all races save for non-supernatural ones, and simply blocking all Templates except for Psyker in case people want to fiddle around with that. Alternatively, all Warriors would make for easy times since that means no constant buffs to worry about, though it would mean no raping of magical girls if you opted to go that route.

 

[Mamono Assault Force]

Re: RJ's DG4-Roguelike Edition Suggestion Bin

Warrior would indeed be the best choice for a solo adventure, though I was thinking of having NPCs for lack of other players to tag along, allowing more class choice. Who doesn't love a healer in their prolonged dungeon adventure?

The adventure could be solo or not. I'm assuming everyone's fine with that being a pre-dungeon option. In case they want to play a spirit user and have npc warriors to body guard them.

 

[Mamono Assault Force]

Re: RJ's DG4-Roguelike Edition Suggestion Bin

Just to ask a question and to shoot two birds with one stone,

What if playing this roguelike did not require a GM at all?

Taking the system of randomization into account, if all unforeseen events could be determined by dice, then what if the system could be handled in such a way that required no GM to overlook the game? Players could take turns rolling dice, which would decide all random elements.

Nothing solid, just more theory crafting and pondering.

 

[Tassadar]

Re: RJ's DG4-Roguelike Edition Suggestion Bin

Is an idea, but it would require a bit of work for setup to make ye randomization interesting, and a lot of options to choose from. It would be entirely possible though, and might help people write long streams of text if they wanted to go solo and just roll for themselves. Unless you meant players rolling for each other, which is how Mud Wrestling worked.

 

[Mamono Assault Force]

Re: RJ's DG4-Roguelike Edition Suggestion Bin

Players being able to play this solo with no GM would be a nice feature to have (I'd hope). It'd be easy to just leave everything to the dice, but when you're rolling for even the simplest things (like what kind of attack an enemy makes), the solo player will end up rolling over and over and over again.

So I occasionally beat myself over the head trying to think of a way to make this as far away from tedious as possible. One idea I had is combining the various possible combinations of dice that could occur into one table, and have the player roll from that when encountering an enemy.

For example, A Warrior, a Spirit User, and a Succubus walk into the next room. The dice decide that a group of humans await them, and of average strength and numbers (making it a moderate fight where the PC's may suffer some damage, but not that hard to overcome). Once the amount of enemies, and their strength is decided, then the Player rolls from a table to decide the enemy's preferred target and their method of attack.

Said table may look like this,

Roll: Preferred Target / Method of Attack / Skill(or spell) to be used

1: Hero 1 / Basic Attack / None
2: Hero 1 / Grapple / Rape
3: Hero 1 / Spirit Power / Demonologist(Devil's Lightning X=3)
4: etc.

It all makes sense in my head, but so do many bad ideas. I'll have to test this out, or get a better idea from others.

 

[Tassadar]

Re: RJ's DG4-Roguelike Edition Suggestion Bin

Is kinda what I'd intended by saying lot of options to choose from. Such would also require easily available monster stats, because obviously someone shouldn't be statting something that they're going to fight themselves. That will be covered by ye monster archive eventually, but that's not going to be something that becomes very expansive with any amount of speed.

Scaling for more experienced characters or larger groups will also be an issue if there's no GM involvement.

 

[Mamono Assault Force]

Re: RJ's DG4-Roguelike Edition Suggestion Bin

Yes, enemy scaling is an important thing, but must come later until ze Tass finishes applying his wrench to the rules. One thing I do want to ensure remains consistent though, is that enemies that the PC is strong against will remain helpless against their might, and enemies that prey upon a PC's weakness remain somewhat devastating (Allies are a wonderful thing for this.) Though, the idea of scaling difficulty hasn't escaped me either... Rather than the difficulty remaining the same, I do plan on having the idea of surviving deeper levels of the dungeon appear more bleak as time goes on.

I'll likely have to make my own variation of the monster list made specifically for the roguelike. Until I can think of a better one, this shall be my format.

Spoiler

Lvl: (To be decided what this means. It's my placeholder for organizing the mobs so that players fight the weakest first and the tougher guys later)
Name: (Name of the enemy in the dungeon)
Toughness: (How strong the enemy is as a threat. Ranging from Pathetic to Champion)
Race:

HP:
PP:
EP:

Body:
Mind:
Spirit:

Speed:
Dodge:
Armor:
Resistance:
Perception:
Stealth:
Grapple:

Talents and Flaws:

List of Attacks:

 

[Tassadar]

Re: RJ's DG4-Roguelike Edition Suggestion Bin

List of attacks definitely simplifies things.

 

[Mamono Assault Force]

Re: RJ's DG4-Temple of the Elders (Ponderings and plans)

Ponderings of Experience and How to spend it​

After some more pondering (following the apparent 75% interest I gathered), I came to an idea of how experience would work, and how it would be spent.

• Monsters scale with about how strong the player should be.

I've devised a plan using something similar to Tassadar's tier system he already has in place for monsters. The only issue I have with it as-is, is that it's too broad, using only about four tiers iirc. I plan on making my own model of tiers that enemies will use as they get stronger throughout the session. Their strength should reflect how strong the player should be on average. Because of the nature of this alternative method of play, the game should be open to players to get lucky or unlucky. The possibility should exist for them to get enough exp to be ahead or behind of where they should be, and be able to experience as much. The monsters will need to be balanced so that they're only as strong as the player would be on average.

The benefits of this method will help add that little bit of predictability to the game that players will be able to gauge as they play. The enemies won't randomly be stronger or weaker without consistency. They'll know fairly well how much opposition they'll be facing in relation to how far they've come in the Temple, and the knowledge of just where they stand in terms of being able to deal with the incoming threats should be readily apparent, but not necessarily impossible to deal with should they be behind or down on their luck (though there's no helping the terribly unlucky).

• How PC's should acquire exp

In DG, experience was always up to GM discretion. in TotE(Temple of the Elders), it needs to be more consistent. In general, as Players go through each level of the Temple, they need to be awarded on average enough exp to moderately handle the next level. The nature of the RNG is open to cruelty, but it must always give a fair chance.

How much exp is awarded, and how the monsters scale need to be relative to one another. Whichever I build first needs to reflect the other, so I plan to build the scaling of PC exp first and then build the monsters to give them a fair challenge. It should be fairly spaced out, but at the same time not to spacious to that the PC's take forever to actually reach the end. I plan to make TotE somewhat short, so that the heroes can reach victory without having to spend a million posts to do so, only to end up losing to a Super Boar near the end.

By the end, PC's should be able to take on the final boss of the Temple, which is the Elder. It's power will amount to the elite foes you would encounter in DG, so that makes for a good ending point. This also comes with the issue of whoever gets initiative wins, but I plan to try and circumvent that. The easiest solution is to give PC's natural damage% resist so they die less quickly, and to give bosses more health.

I plan on having PC's for TotE start out with fifty stat points, two talents, and one flaw. As with everything else, this is subject to change based on my own tests and how others feel. I cannot have PC's start out as standard DG characters, as Tass has said, due to them already being quite powerful.

After that, I'll be using this table as an early model of how much exp players should have gathered at the end of each floor of the Temple.

End of Floor Average exp:
First: 16
Second: 24
Third: 32
Fourth: 40
Fifth: 48
Elder: Total=160

This should allow the PC's to be plenty powered up by the time they fight the Elder, and I feel five floors is long enough for a session of TotE to last. If playing via live RP, it shouldn't last more than for 2-3 sessions at most, though your mileage my vary depending on if you're playing solo or with a GM who decides to add great detail and extra story elements.

• How PC's spend their EXP

The ability to pick whichever talents that you desire is no more. In TotE, you may only spend your hard earned exp at Shrines, and they come in different flavors.

The first variety are the Talent Shrines, and they come in five different flavors, with one extra. The Warrior Shrine, The Mage Shrine, The Spirit Shrine, The Succubus Shrine, and The Basic Shrine(for General Talents). At each of these five shrines, you may spend exp within that given list, but if you are a succubus at a warrior shrine, wanting succubus talents, you're out of luck. There's also a chance you might encounter a Flaw Shrine. You will have no idea what Shrine you've encountered until you activate it, and when you encounter a Flaw Shrine, you will be forced to take one flaw that is relevant to the Temple you're playing in. For example, if you're playing in the temple of no spiders, then you cannot take Fetish[Spiders]. A GM must approve your chosen Flaw, and in solo play, you should try to pick a relevant flaw, unless you want to cheat. A relevant flaw would be one that actually affects you in some way. For example, if you're already sluggish, then taking sluggish again wouldn't hinder you much. In the end, it's all up to personal opinion. This can be randomized too, but for now I feel it's better if the player decides.

The second (and last) kind of shrines you will encounter are Stat Shrines. They will govern the three main stats in the game, Body, Mind, and Spirit. You're allowed to spend your exp here to boost the governing stat, and if by doing so you'd unlock the ability to acquire a skill or aptitude depending on your class, then you get to pick that bonus immediately.

That's all for now. I must ponder more over pizza and alcohol.

 

[Mamono Assault Force]

Re: RJ's DG4-Temple of the Elders (Ponderings and plans)

also, Temples will have themes which will determine basically what events the PC encounters, and the fetishes they can expect to enjoy. There will be a temple that contains simply human enemies, as well as another, separate temple that contains bestiality, BDSM, etc.

There will also be a non-ero temple, for the weird people.

Also-also, after brief discussion, I should include an option to make Flaw Shrines random or not for the player to choose. Some may be perfectly fine with whatever choice the game throws at them, while others may not.

In short, I must add an option to make Flaws Random by the player's choice.

 

[Tassadar]

Re: RJ's DG4-Temple of the Elders (Ponderings and plans)

A sheet of all the options players have to pick ought to be included as part of the character sheets, which you'll have to make up once you come up with all the options that people will have to pick. I did some more work on DG4 over my vacation, but the bits that you still need aren't all done yet. Also, given that chunks of DG4 won't be revealed until the actual story of DG3 is at least mostly wrapped up, I will probably only release the DG3 era mechanics originally.

 

[Mamono Assault Force]

Re: RJ's DG4-Temple of the Elders (Ponderings and plans)

Then why am I calling this DG4. I feel so stupid now.

 

[Tassadar]

Re: RJ's DG4-Temple of the Elders (Ponderings and plans)

Because you're using the DG4 mechanics for it, including the STORM OF D10 ROLLS instead of using the d20, but I'm just withholding stuff that would essentially be spoilers from the general public. Everything that's in DG3 right now, plus a bunch of new stuff that's just expansions to existing mechanics, will be available. But people won't get Mechanists, the new races, or the more advanced weapons, because depending on how DG3 goes some of them may not actually exist. Also because I am being extremely lazy regarding actually making the Mechanist mechanics, since that's going to be a lot of stuff to make up and will probably not be finished for a while.

I called it the DG3 mechanics somewhat incorrectly, in other words. Really, it's the DG4 mechanics but without some of the new things.

 

[Mamono Assault Force]

Re: RJ's DG4-Temple of the Elders (Ponderings and plans)

It shall continued to be called DG4 then! And to not make this post a waste of space, I'll babble on further of my ponderings and plans for TotE. Namely, combat. I briefly touched on it before, but I think I'll try to cover it in greater detail now.

• DG Combat: Things can die fast, including you

As I consider lower floors of TotE going on, and all the scary stuff PC's will encounter there, the damage potential of enemies outscales the amount of durability they'll have to offer, meaning by DG's standards, the PC can easily die in one turn despite how good they may be doing. This is a problem mostly for Solo, and a little for multiplay as well. There are a few solutions that can be done to counter this, and the one I have considered first is simple Damage reduction.

Things that are powerful can appear, and with some situations, they can instantly win a fight. So, the current, basic model I have is flat percentage damage reduction to everything that harms the PC. I've also decided to remove some damage reduction for players who are in a group. By balancing this out, I can perhaps only work on a single list of monsters and have the game balance itself simply by making the enemies do more damage to players as they assemble a larger group.

If you disapprove of this handling in any way, let me know before I actually start working on it, and by all means, please give an alternative suggestion that would allow for simple management. "Just make about five huge lists of monsters, RJ!" is not a valid solution, just for reference.