http://rpg-design-patterns.speedykitty.com/ Sun, 20 May 2012 10:24:54 -0400 FeedCreator 1.7.2-ppt DokuWiki http://rpg-design-patterns.speedykitty.com/lib/images/favicon.ico http://rpg-design-patterns.speedykitty.com/ http://rpg-design-patterns.speedykitty.com/doku.php/pattern:alignment Intent Differentiate characters by segregating them into different categories that define how in-game events affect them physically. Characters can also be distinguished by limiting their abilities based on these same categories. Also Known As Not applicable. pattern Thu, 05 May 2011 04:41:54 -0400 http://rpg-design-patterns.speedykitty.com/doku.php/pattern:anonymous_rule Intent Hide game complexity and save paper or formatting space by incorporating rules of little importance within the text of more important rules. Also Known As Not applicable. Related Patterns Modularity Motivation An Anonymous Rule is a rule buried in the text of another rule or game entity. Such rules lack names of their own, and so are “anonymous.” This does not describe the process whereby two or more rules are simplified through the creation of a single, more general rule. Rather, … pattern Thu, 05 May 2011 04:41:45 -0400 http://rpg-design-patterns.speedykitty.com/doku.php/pattern:attendance_reward Intent Provide players with incentives that reward them for showing up to gaming sessions. Also Known As E.P., X.P., EXP, Character Points, Development Points Related Patterns Failure Reward, Idiom, Narrative Reward, Success Reward Motivation The Attendance Reward pattern is a means of rewarding players for attending gaming sessions. The idea is to encourage player participation and help ensure everyone shows up. A game follows the Attendance Reward pattern if it does the following: pattern Thu, 05 May 2011 04:42:10 -0400 http://rpg-design-patterns.speedykitty.com/doku.php/pattern:attribute Intent Provide a means to gauge universal character aspects within a game environment. Also Known As Ability, Stat Related Patterns Point-Spend Attribute, Random Attribute, Resource, Template, Trait Motivation In order to judge the key capabilities of a given player’s character within an imagined world, games often give characters attributes, or stats. Attributes are specific, named gauges usually associated with numbers that have a pre-determined meaning within the game’s rule system (a… pattern Thu, 05 May 2011 04:42:14 -0400 http://rpg-design-patterns.speedykitty.com/doku.php/pattern:class Intent Provide a means to quickly assign a group of abilities to a character and, at the same time, protect character niches to ensure each character plays a meaningful role within the game. Also Known As Profession, Occupation Related Patterns Class Tree, Skill, Template pattern Thu, 05 May 2011 04:42:15 -0400 http://rpg-design-patterns.speedykitty.com/doku.php/pattern:class_tree Intent Provide the niche-protection benefits of the Class pattern while allowing players flexibility in customizing their characters along with the ability to gain new abilities as game play progresses. Also Known As Class Path, Career Path, Life Path pattern Thu, 05 May 2011 04:41:50 -0400 http://rpg-design-patterns.speedykitty.com/doku.php/pattern:conflicted_gauge Intent Provide a gauge that aids a character sometimes and hinders him at other times. This forces players to make difficult character defining decisions to balance various goals. Also Known As Not applicable Related Patterns Attribute, Gauge, Skill, Trait pattern Thu, 05 May 2011 04:42:07 -0400 http://rpg-design-patterns.speedykitty.com/doku.php/pattern:contest_tree Intent Provide a mechanical means to create rising tension within a game. Also Known As Escalating Conflict Related Patterns End Game, Generalized Contest, Last Man Standing, Negotiated Contest, Structured Story Motivation A Contest Tree is a high-level conflict resolution system made up of many contests arranged in a hierarchical fashion. The results of lower level contests feed into and affect the outcomes of higher level contests. Supposedly, players have an interest in the outcome of … pattern Thu, 05 May 2011 04:41:39 -0400 http://rpg-design-patterns.speedykitty.com/doku.php/pattern:currency Intent Provide a flow of mechanical influence between gauges in a game system. Also Known As Not applicable Related Patterns Gauge, Generalized Contest, Negotiated Contest Motivation Gauges derive their meaning from the relationships they have with each other. Currency quantifies that meaning. Any two gauges that transfer mechanical influence from one to the other demonstrate the Currency Design Pattern. The transfer usually occurs by adding or subtracting one gauge value to or from anoth… pattern Thu, 05 May 2011 04:41:58 -0400 http://rpg-design-patterns.speedykitty.com/doku.php/pattern:endgame Intent Provide rules that drive a story or character toward an end state. Also Known As The End, Happily Ever After, Finis Related Patterns Hit Points, Structured Story Motivation The Endgame pattern borrows its name from a chess term. In chess, the endgame is a phase characterized by the two opposing players having only their kings and one other major piece and/or a few pawns. This stage of the game quickly builds to the climax of checkmate or stalemate. Similarly, a role-playing game ma… pattern Thu, 05 May 2011 04:41:42 -0400 http://rpg-design-patterns.speedykitty.com/doku.php/pattern:faction Intent Segregate characters into opposing groups to promote in-game conflict. Also Known As Clan, Code Related Patterns Alignment, Idiom Motivation A faction is a group or category to which characters belong. A faction may be represented as an organization, such as a mob family or police department. Or, it may be abstract, as is represented by the concepts of “good” and “evil.” What is important is that factions adopt codes of conduct, either explicitly or implicitly, that come into oppos… pattern Thu, 05 May 2011 04:41:41 -0400 http://rpg-design-patterns.speedykitty.com/doku.php/pattern:failure_reward Intent Decouple player success from character success. Also Known As Not Applicable Related Patterns Attendance Reward, Idiom, Narrative Reward, Success Reward Motivation The Failure Reward pattern awards players for character failure, whatever “failure” means within a game’s context. A game follows the Failure Reward pattern if all of the following apply: pattern Thu, 05 May 2011 04:42:09 -0400 http://rpg-design-patterns.speedykitty.com/doku.php/pattern:game_master Intent Assign a single player a special role with different responsibilities than other players, commonly including acting as the final authority in disputes, playing NPC’s, describing scenes, and any other tasks not otherwise covered by the game rules. pattern Thu, 05 May 2011 04:41:38 -0400 http://rpg-design-patterns.speedykitty.com/doku.php/pattern:gauge Intent Provide a concrete way for an abstract concept to have mechanical interactions with a game system. Also Known As Not applicable Related Patterns Attribute, Currency, Resource, Skill, Trait Motivation Understanding gauges is vital to designing mechanical game systems. A Gauge is a graduated value generally associated with a name. Commonly, the graduated values are numbers, but this is not always the case. Gauges are introduced into role-playing games in order to highlight some key g… pattern Thu, 05 May 2011 04:42:19 -0400 http://rpg-design-patterns.speedykitty.com/doku.php/pattern:generalized_contest Intent Provide a mechanical means to resolve disputes where the possible set of outcomes is negotiated in advance of a conflict’s introduction. Also Known As Task Resolution Related Patterns Contest Tree, Negotiated Contest Motivation The Generalized Contest design pattern structures contests is a way where the possible set of outcomes is negotiated among the players before a conflict is even introduced. Generalized Contests accomplish this goal by making available a set of allowable acti… pattern Thu, 05 May 2011 04:42:16 -0400 http://rpg-design-patterns.speedykitty.com/doku.php/pattern:gift Intent Provide a means for players to customize their characters with specialized, well- documented abilities that do not improve in effectiveness as play progresses. Also Known As Feats, Talents Related Patterns Class, Skill, Trait Motivation Most role-playing games allow players to customize their characters with new abilities. Sometimes, it makes sense to allow those abilities to improve over time. In other cases, it makes more sense to simply bestow an ability upon a character as a we… pattern Thu, 05 May 2011 04:42:20 -0400 http://rpg-design-patterns.speedykitty.com/doku.php/pattern:hit_points Intent Provide a resource to gauge when a character is incapacitated or dies. Also Known As Damage Capacity, Health, Life, Vitality Related Patterns Endgame, Resource, Trauma Gauge, Wound Trait Motivation Role-playing games originally evolved from various war games. As such, many of them deal with combat and death. Such games require some means to determine when a character becomes incapacitated or dies due to injuries. Hit Points are among the earliest techniques devised to accomplish th… pattern Thu, 05 May 2011 04:41:55 -0400 http://rpg-design-patterns.speedykitty.com/doku.php/pattern:idiom Intent Provide players with a character aspect that mechanically rewards them for role-playing a previously declared personality type. Also Known As Humanity, Path, Spiritual Attributes Related Patterns Alignment Motivation The Idiom pattern rewards players for accurate portrayal of a character’s persona. A game follows the Idiom pattern if it does the following: pattern Thu, 05 May 2011 04:41:57 -0400 http://rpg-design-patterns.speedykitty.com/doku.php/pattern:last_man_standing Intent Provide a Generalized Contest Tree to resolve which side attains victory in battle. Also Known As Not Applicable Related Patterns Contest Tree, Generalized Contest, Hit Points Motivation The Last Man Standing design pattern is one of the oldest, most traditional forms of Generalized Contest Tree in existence. Its roots go all the way back to the pre-role- playing era of war-gaming. The pattern’s intent is to provide a means to judge which side of a battle is the victor. Even though… pattern Tue, 12 Jan 2010 12:45:31 -0400 http://rpg-design-patterns.speedykitty.com/doku.php/pattern:level Intent Provide a rough gauge of a character’s survivability in a given environment and, optionally, a number from which skill effectiveness is derived. Also Known As Not Applicable Related Patterns Class, Rank Motivation Any game that provides a number (or small set of numbers) to represent a character’s overall level of “experience” or “power” follows the Level pattern. Of course, this usually implies that a character’s power increases in some way as play progresses. At the very least, t… pattern Thu, 05 May 2011 04:41:43 -0400 http://rpg-design-patterns.speedykitty.com/doku.php/pattern:loose_coupling Intent Provide a means for one game concept to indirectly reference another game concept without tying one directly to the other. Also Known As Not Applicable Related Patterns Class, Gift, Rank, Skill Motivation This pattern gets its name directly from an important software engineering principle of the same name. Software designers often want various software modules to communicate with one another without either module depending on the implementation details of the other. pattern Thu, 05 May 2011 04:42:11 -0400 http://rpg-design-patterns.speedykitty.com/doku.php/pattern:modularity Intent Boil each rule down to a single basic concern that it addresses. In other words, separate each concern into its own separate rule and give each its own unique name. Also Known As Don’t Repeat Yourself (DRY) Related Patterns Anonymous Rule, Loose Coupling pattern Thu, 05 May 2011 04:41:49 -0400 http://rpg-design-patterns.speedykitty.com/doku.php/pattern:narrative_reward Intent Provide players with an incentive to create imaginative narrative descriptions of scenes and character actions. Also Known As Not Applicable Related Patterns Attendance Reward, Failure Reward, Success Reward Motivation The Narrative Reward pattern awards players concrete game advantages for describing character actions and game scenes with novel and interesting prose. Many games encourage players to use inventive phrases and approaches to game situations, but fail to provide any re… pattern Thu, 05 May 2011 04:42:13 -0400 http://rpg-design-patterns.speedykitty.com/doku.php/pattern:negotiated_contest Intent Provide a mechanical means to resolve disputes where the set of inputs and possible outcomes is negotiated by the players specifically for the conflict. Also Known As Conflict Resolution Related Patterns Contest Tree, Generalized Contest Motivation The Negotiated Contest Design Pattern strives to provide a mechanical means of resolving conflicts while retaining the great flexibility promised by role-playing games. It does this by first recognizing that role-playing is first and for… pattern Thu, 05 May 2011 04:41:47 -0400 http://rpg-design-patterns.speedykitty.com/doku.php/pattern:point_spend_attributes Intent Provide a means for players to design their characters’ attribute values by trading them off against one another. Also Known As Not Applicable Related Patterns Attribute, Random Attribute, Resource Motivation Many games assign Attributes to their characters so that various important game aspects of the character can be gauged. The reasons for assigning Attributes to characters is sufficiently covered in the Attributes design pattern, and will not be repeated here. However, the pr… pattern Thu, 05 May 2011 04:41:33 -0400 http://rpg-design-patterns.speedykitty.com/doku.php/pattern:random_attribute Intent Provide a means to generate attributes values within a game environment through the use of die rolls or other random means. Also Known As Rolled Attribute, Fortune-Based Gauge, Generated Gauge Related Patterns Attribute, Conflicted Gauge, Point Spend Attributes, Resource, Trait pattern Thu, 05 May 2011 04:41:51 -0400 http://rpg-design-patterns.speedykitty.com/doku.php/pattern:rank Intent Allow players to customize their characters by assigning individualized proficiency ratings to abilities. Also Known As Attribute Level, Skill Level Related Patterns Skill, Skill Tree, Template, Trait Motivation The Rank pattern individually associates a proficiency rating to all (or some) of a character’s abilities. The ratings are usually numeric in nature, but the pattern does not demand this. For example, ratings of “novice,” “competent,” “professional,” and “expert” could be a… pattern Thu, 05 May 2011 04:41:46 -0400 http://rpg-design-patterns.speedykitty.com/doku.php/pattern:resource Intent Provide a limited quantity of game-world influence that a player may manage, expend, and earn in pre-specified ways. Also Known As Not applicable Related Patterns Attribute, Gauge, Trait Motivation Game designers often wish to allow players to customize their characters to limited (but sometimes variable) degrees and within certain boundaries. This forces the player to make conscious choices on what is important to his character. A resource is a gauge that is usually associated wit… pattern Thu, 05 May 2011 04:41:36 -0400 http://rpg-design-patterns.speedykitty.com/doku.php/pattern:safety_valve Intent Provide a scarce resource to players that they can spend to dramatically alter the outcomes of fortune-based contests after the fact. Also Known As Fate Points, Luck Points, Force Points, Karma, Hero Points, Possibilities Related Patterns Resource pattern Thu, 05 May 2011 04:41:34 -0400 http://rpg-design-patterns.speedykitty.com/doku.php/pattern:skill Intent Provide a means for players to customize their characters with well documented abilities and allow those abilities to improve as play progresses. Also Known As Not Applicable Related Patterns Attribute, Level, Rank, Resource, Skill Tree, Trait pattern Thu, 05 May 2011 04:42:06 -0400 http://rpg-design-patterns.speedykitty.com/doku.php/pattern:skill_tree Intent Provide a means for players to customize their characters with well documented abilities, allow those abilities to improve as play progresses, and expand the number of available options as characters gain proficiency. Also Known As Not Applicable pattern Thu, 05 May 2011 04:42:04 -0400 http://rpg-design-patterns.speedykitty.com/doku.php/pattern:structured_story Intent Provide a means to ensure players always know what to do “right now.” Also, generate a story plot following appropriate genre conventions building up to an exciting climax. Also Known As Structured Session Related Patterns Contest Tree, Endgame pattern Thu, 05 May 2011 04:42:05 -0400 http://rpg-design-patterns.speedykitty.com/doku.php/pattern:success_reward Intent Provide players with incentives to find ways to have characters overcome obstacles. Also Known As E.P., X.P., EXP, Character Points, Development Points Related Patterns Attendance Reward, Failure Reward, Idiom, Narrative Reward Motivation The Success Reward pattern awards players for character success, whatever “success” means within a game’s context. A game follows the Success Reward pattern if all of the following apply: pattern Thu, 05 May 2011 04:42:01 -0400 http://rpg-design-patterns.speedykitty.com/doku.php/pattern:template Intent Provide a means to quickly assign a group of abilities to a character. Also Known As Package Deal Related Patterns Class, Gift, Skill, Trait Motivation 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 pr… pattern Thu, 05 May 2011 04:41:59 -0400 http://rpg-design-patterns.speedykitty.com/doku.php/pattern:trait Intent Provide a flexible means to specify a character’s abilities within a game environment without requiring the game to provide a pre-defined list of abilities. Also Known As Not Applicable Related Patterns Attribute, Rank, Resource, Template pattern Thu, 05 May 2011 04:41:53 -0400 http://rpg-design-patterns.speedykitty.com/doku.php/pattern:trauma_gauge Intent Provide a gauge for harmful effects on characters that hinders the use of related attributes and abilities. Also Known As Health Level, Weariness Related Patterns Endgame, Hit Points, Wound Trait Motivation Many role-playing games deal with exhaustion and mental or bodily injury. Games that want to incorporate the incremental effects of various forms of injury, whether physical or emotional, need some means to adequately simulate these effects without bogging down the game mechanic… pattern Thu, 05 May 2011 04:41:37 -0400 http://rpg-design-patterns.speedykitty.com/doku.php/pattern:wound_trait Intent Maintain injuries, physical or otherwise, as individual character traits. Also Known As Not applicable Related Patterns Endgame, Hit Points, Rank, Trait, Trauma Gauge Motivation Games that individually track character injuries follow the Wound Trait pattern. In its simplest form, the pattern does not provide any mechanical means of modifying a character’s abilities when harmed. It merely describes the specific injuries a character has sustained. If wounds need to impose some mechan… pattern Thu, 05 May 2011 04:42:18 -0400