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2019年5月24日星期五
For Coin & Blood By Alan Bahr, RPG Review
Heroes work diligently to rid the world of evil. It is their goal to make a world that is better for everyone to live in. Well, everyone but those they see as evil. The warlords, necromancers, and cult leaders also have their goals of making the world a better place.Most role-playing games (RPGs) are focused on playing heroes. For Coin & Blood by Alan Bahr takes the typical format of RPGs and spins it around. The concept of the game is to play an antihero. Those men and women who survive and thrive by swindling, thieving, manipulating, and murdering.
For Coin & Blood is subtitled Grimdark Old School Roleplaying, and that promise is met. For Coin & Blood was designed to explore the underside of human behavior. Giving players the opportunity to be in a world where they are the ones who are despised and hunted down by the heroes. The game deals with mature themes and as such, each gaming group and game master (GM) looking at running adventures in this setting should consider the implications for whom they have at the table. You have been forewarned.
Review
For Coin & Blood was developed using the open gaming license (OGL) and gives a feel of the original style of Advanced Dungeons & Dragons. For players who prefer the counting up of AC, to hit, etc., there are also rules for creating an increasing scale instead of a descending one. Like the earlier versions, there is a higher fatality rate expected for the player-characters—you are the evil ones people want to stop by either death or incarceration (those murder-hobos usually prefer killing everything).
The rules are easy to read and understand. With our first reading of For Coin & Blood, 4 of us were able to understand of the game, create characters, and then run an encounter. One of our players has no experience with earlier versions of DnD and had no problems with the information.
For Coin & Blood simplifies some of the rules allowing for a quicker start and faster play. Six attributes are created in the same fashion as the parent system. There is only one saving throw instead of 3 or more. Hit points are the constitution score and go up 1 point a level. During play most every dice roll is done using a d20 and d6s.
Although the game is designed for playing the evil side of humanity, the book doesn't go into anything explicitly. There are no horrific details of what characters can do, nor does the art reflect anything of that nature. Honestly, you could play these characters as heroes instead of antiheroes (villains see themselves as the hero of their own story). You also don't have to worry about leaving the book open with concern about who might see it.
The front half (pages 13–71) of the book is about character creation and general rules. The back portion (pages 74–119) is about designing adventures, descriptions of encounters, treasures, and other information for the GM. Nearly everything presented will be familiar with players who have played fantasy based RPGs.
Character Creation
For Coin & Blood uses a score of 3–18 for 6 attributes. Again, these are the ones DnD players are familiar with. It is designed with only one race, humans, and there are no alignments. After rolling up your attributes you choose a class.
There are 7 classes to choose from: assassin, blackguard, cutpurse, knight, magus, priest, and sellsword. The names when taken with consideration of the general premise of the game provide almost all of the information you need when making a decision. A character's class provides some benefits, restrictions, and a saving throw. Starting wealth for everyone is 3d6x10.
Since the characters are creating a reputation, an additional score for Infamy (1d6) is added. Infamy is a representation of how well known the character's evil acts are known. Its progression is based on the deeds the character participates in.
Different character classes get experience point bonuses for high (15+) attributes and Infamy.
As characters advance, they gain benefits at a slower pace than many of the newer RPGs. They earn an additional hit point and they might gain a spell or a bonus to hit. When characters are a level or two within each other, they are comparable enough not to throw an adventure out of balance.
Flexibility
For Coin & Blood is clear about leaving a lot of room for GM alterations. Don't be shocked by the gaps in the descriptions and tables, they were done on purpose.
The simplification of rules allows for storytellers on both sides of the GM screen to create the adventures they want.
Overall
For players who are looking for a grimdark adventure setting, For Coin & Blood is an excellent choice.
We had fun playing For Coin & Blood. We enjoyed the quick start and faster pace. We liked the fact that we had enough options to create the characters we wanted without so many options that we needed an entire gaming session getting characters ready.
There is enough structure to give random outcomes without getting bogged down in what rule applies to what activity.
We decided For Coin & Blood is a game we will play again. A couple of our test group already have ideas for one shot adventures and a campaign setting.
You can find For Coin & Blood on DrivethruRPG (link).
Gallant Knight Games website (link).
If you have a comment, suggestion, or critique please leave a comment here or send an email to guildmastergaming@gmail.com.
AI Versus Environmental Interactivity In Gaming (Monday Musings 70)
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| Horizon: Zero Dawn's Thunderjaw |
One such example that my friend mentioned is that in Breath of the Wild, when you're in the lava area and drop a piece of raw meat, it falls to the floor cooked and then burnt.
I was hoping, however, that developers will move more toward advanced enemy intelligence so that when you're fighting a trash mob or a boss, they respond to where you are and your attack patterns, so it actually feels like you're attacking a real monster.
For instance, even with my favorite game, Dark Souls, the bosses' attack patterns are very stylized, so even as you move behind the boss to whack it, he or she would attack in front, grasping at air, which is not realistic.
I think that's why I was so impressed with Horizon: Zero Dawn's machine design where they actually see what you're doing. I placed a trap, and the Watcher, noticing it, actually jumped over it.
I was going to do the usual strategy of Dark Souls and attack the Thunderjaw behind him when he was shooting lasers at me when I was facing him. My thinking is that if I run behind him, he'd continue to shoot lasers in front of him, like the typical Dark Souls boss. However, since he saw me make a mad dash behind him, he stomped me with his hind legs, turned around to face me, and started shooting his lasers at me.
For me, interacting with the environment is really cool in-game, but I can do a lot of these things in the real world (i.e. pushing benches, picking flowers), so it's not that exciting to push objects around in-game.
However, in real life, I'd never be in a situation where I have to fight soldiers, monsters, and other enemies, which is why I enjoy video games, to experience things that I'd never experience in real life. To be transported to another world, and face these awe-inspiring enemies.
Therefore, I'm hoping that if developers have to chose between environmental interactivity versus enemies that respond realistically to your attacks, I hope they'd work toward the latter so battles will feel more real, visceral, and get my heart pumping.
I'm not sure what is harder to code, but it appears due to limitations of budget and computing power, a given developer will have to emphasize one aspect over the other.
What do you prefer? The intricate, extremely detailed physics of a Breath of the Wild or Red Dead Redemption 2, or fighting extremely intelligent enemies of the likes of Horizon: Zero Dawn?
The How of Happiness Review
SOMA - Two Years Later
It's over two years since we released SOMA, so it's time for another update on how things have been going.
First of all, let's talk about sales. As I've said many times before, sales are not straightforward to count, and the number you come up with is reliant on many different factors. For instance, SOMA was part of the Humble Monthly Bundle, which meant that everybody subscribing to that service was able to download a copy of SOMA. These are not really "sales", so should we count them? It's also worth noting that pricing differs a lot between different sales. A single unit sold at full price means more than one sold when the game is 75% off. I think it's important to think about these things, and remember you can't directly compare the sales of two games.
With all that said, what I'm going to do here is to basically take every single download of the game as a sale. Doing so gives us a total of 650 000 units, a 200 000 units increase since the the same time last year. This is a very good result.
It's interesting to compare how sales have changed across the two years for SOMA. The normal day-to-day income, when there are no discounts or anything, is 33% of what it was the same time last year. However, when the game is at a discount (such as a Steam summer sale), the generated income is about 75% of what similar events generated last year. This means that discount events are extra important this year.
Taken as a whole, the sales that we make from all our games will cover all our expenses every month, and even make us a profit. This is quite amazing. Given that we currently have about 16 people working with us full time, we have a pretty high burn rate, and to still be able to support all that on your ongoing sales is great.
This means that we still have a good buffer from our launch sales. While it will by no means last forever, it gives us peace of mind and lets us take the time we need. While we'll continue to generate income next year too, I'm not so sure it'll be enough to cover all our costs. This is when that initial buffer comes in handy, and will let us continue working on our projects without any monetary worries. To put things in perspective, it is worth noting that most companies start using up their buffer just a few months after release, so we are in no ways in a dire situation right now - quite the opposite!
However, this also makes it very clear that we need to be able to release games at a more regular rate. We were lucky that SOMA was a hit, and that the money is easily able to sustain us for the time we need to complete our next project. Had SOMA been a flop, the situation would have been a lot worse now. That's why we are focusing on becoming a two project studio, and the goal is to be able to release a game every two years. Had we managed to set that up prior to SOMA, we would be in the process of releasing a game right now. Needless to say, it would makes us a lot more financially stable, and able to handle a less successful release. In turn this should allow us to take greater risks, which I think is a key element in being able to create great games.
This leads me to another thing that's been on my mind. A few months back someone asked me: "How do you get people to buy your game?". This is a fairly basic question, but it really made me think. When it comes to sales made during launch, the answer feels quite self-evident. We generate a lot of buzz, there are reviews, let's plays and so on. There are a number of fairly obvious ways that people learn about our game.
But what about the customers that buy our game two years after release - why do they do it? That's a much harder question. I think most of this is via word-of-mouth recommendation. When the right circumstances arise (e.g.: "I feel like playing a game tonight") and when external influence (e.g.: "your friends said they liked our game") is strong enough, that's when a sale happens. I know that Steam and other stores have some forms of discovery tools, but I don't think they play a major factor. What really matters is not a single source, but the slow build-up of good will around a game - eventually this will make a player consider buying it. Discovery tools, such as "you might also like"-adverts, surely help, but they are just part of a much larger process [1].
Because of this, and considering the sheer number of games that are currently being released, I think the best strategy is to focus on unique experiences. You want to create the type of experience that is not only hard to get elsewhere, but also leaves a mark on those who play it. This is now a core philosophy here at Frictional. I guess we sort of always had it unconsciously, but we have now made it official. Our goal is to create games that are more than forgettable escapism. We want people to come out of their experiences feeling changed. A lofty goal? You bet. While it'll be impossible to make sure every single player has this type of experience, it feels like the perfect thing to strive for.
Now I will round of this post with a brief discussion on the status of our current projects.
The first project is in full production, and about 80% of the team is currently working on it. The focus for most of this year has been on creating the first few maps of the game to create a solid vertical slice based on our experiments last year. However, we recently came up with some new avenues that we wanted to explore. The stuff that has come out of this recent detour is feeling really great and I am certain it'll make the game feel very special. All of this came out of what I just discussed: our focus on making games that leaves a mark on the player. I'm not sure we would have gone down this route if we hadn't explicitly stated that goal, which makes me confident it's a really good way of thinking. I'm afraid I can't go into any details on this, other than to say that the project will be horrific in nature. There will be no release this year, but we hope to announce something during the first six months of next year.
As for the other project, that's also going well. We've been a bit delayed due to new tech taking longer than anticipated to develop [2]. The upside of that has been that the game has had more time in pre-production than any of our previous games. This has been incredibly valuable, as the things we aim to tackle in this game are quite difficult, and allowing it all to brew for a bit has meant many of the basic aspects are clearer for us. This game will be less about direct, visceral horror, and more about the player gaining an understanding of different concepts. This can, as we know from working on SOMA, be quite tricky to get right and requires a slightly different approach than when working on a more direct horror game. Release for this game is quite far off though, so don't expect to hear any concrete details in the near future.
That's it for this update. I'm incredibly excited about the things that we have planned, and I'm very eager to give you all more updates. I also want to thank everybody for the support over the years, and rest assured that while we might not reply to every single mail, tweet, etc. that you send us, we make sure to read every single one!
Notes:
1) For games that are heavily based around online communities, such as a Rocket League, I think things work slightly differently. There is still a word-of-mouth zeitgeist going on, but a lot of it comes from your game become a habit for your players, something that they participate in on a daily basis. This forms a feedback loop that helps drives new buyers, which I think is quite different from how our games work.
2) We are currently working on the fourth iteration of our HPL engine for this game, and due to some of the things we need to be able to do for the game, we've been required to make some major adjustments. These things take time, but luckily we have most of it done now.
2019年5月23日星期四
Resident Evil 6 Download Free
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