RPG Design Patterns

Provide a means to quickly assign a group of abilities to a character.

Package Deal

Class, Gift, Skill, Trait

A template is a collection of flaws, gifts, traits, and/or skills that are given to a character when his player adopts the template. Often templates are used in games where skills and traits can be “bought” by spending some resource provided for that purpose. In such games, different templates often consist of nothing more than a pre-packaged group of abilities whose total costs have already been determined. “Buying” a template is equivalent to buying all of its individual abilities. This application does not prevent the character from buying other abilities in the future if he has the resources to do so. Once a template is applied to a character its utility may be finished. In such cases, the player need not even record the fact that it was used.

Though rare, it is possible to use templates in trait-based games as well. By definition, traits are not pre-defined (if that makes sense). But, templates incorporating traits can still be designed if they merely act as examples of how traits might be put together.

Templates are often used in place of classes (see the Class pattern). They gain the Class pattern’s advantage of rapid character creation while avoiding the inflexibility produced by the Class pattern’s niche protection. Whereas classes restrict a character on the kinds of abilities he can possess, templates do not.

Applicability Use the Template pattern when you

1. Want to quickly provide pre-designed groups of abilities to characters.
2. Do not want to restrict characters in the kinds of abilities they can gain.

While character restrictions sound like a bad idea at first, they can actually benefit games having characters with similar abilities in common. This can happen, for example, in a game where all of the characters are thieves. Players could choose from a number of pre-defined thief types such as Safe Cracker, Con Artist, Cat Burglar, Fence, Rogue, Thug, and many more. Each of these thief types could have a unique and important role to play in an underworld style game. However, without some restrictions, character distinctions in a game of this kind could quickly blur. If you want to ensure that characters maintain meaningful niches in your game, you might want to consider the Class pattern instead.

The Template pattern pretty much accomplishes what it sets out to do. It doesn’t complicate a game, because all it really does it package groups of abilities for easy consumption. It also doesn’t interfere with the rest of the game design, because templates are ordinarily “disposable” game mechanics. Players usually use them once and forget about them (there are exceptions, most notably in trait-based games).

Templates are not a replacement for classes, merely an alternative. Since templates don’t really impose restrictions on characters, they also don’t provide a game designer with any means to keep characters from “stepping on each others’ toes.” No character can truly claim any role as his own “territory”, because any other character could gain his abilities any time he gained enough resources to “buy” them. Consequently, players can have a more difficult time distinguishing their characters from others in their group.

Since templates are essentially pre-packaged groups of abilities, you need to decide how characters gain access to those packages. One very common technique is to assign each character a resource that he can spend on gaining skills and templates (see the Resource pattern).

If you want to encourage the use of templates over the purchase of individual skills for some reason, you might want to consider package deals. “Buy 10 skills, get one free!” In other words, make the total cost of the template slightly less than the sum of the abilities it grants.

The following might be an example of a template in a game containing middle-age thieves in which the Skill Rank pattern is used:

Cost

20 Development Points

Bandits often group together to form ambushes on caravans and wealthy nobility. They constantly try to invent new ways to trap and overcome opponents normally considered too powerful to defeat. Of course, they frequently set up their surprises in ravines and mountain passes, but imaginative ploys always inspire these thieves. They realize that only a limited number of ambushes are safe at a given spot before some real force shows up.

Skills

Stealth (rank 2), Setting Traps (rank 1), Climbing Walls (rank 1), Horsemanship (rank 2), Tracking (rank 1)

Weapon Proficiencies

Sword (rank 2), Firing crossbows (rank 1)

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Hero System 5th Edition has “Package Deals” that are essentially groups of skills, gifts (“Perks”), and disadvantages that cost “Character Points.” Game Masters are encouraged to come up with their own package deals, which can be professional (“policeman”) or racial (“elf”). In general, package deals cost a character fewer Character Points than if he had purchased all of the characteristics individually.

HeroQuest has “Keywords” that act as a sort of trait templates. Keywords can be used to describe a profession, homeland, species, or magical proficiency. They are essentially groups of traits that all share the same “rating” (see the Trait and Rank patterns). Keywords generally have a rating of 17, but there are exceptions (most notably for species). These ratings cannot normally be improved as play progresses, although there are optional rules that allow this. Through play (and player agreement), keywords can be altered or even eliminated over time.

TORG has rules for creating templates, and provides a number of pre-defined templates in supplements. Essentially, every new character has 66 “attribute points” to spend on attributes (see the Point-Spend Attributes pattern) and 16 “skill points” to spend on “skill adds” (see the Rank pattern). Magical characters get an additional 12 skill points to put into “Arcane Knowledges.” The templates distribute these points in a rational fashion according to technology level, race, culture, etc. Since these templates spend all of a beginning character’s resources, the player simply decides which one he likes and sets his stats accordingly.