FRDT Author - The Meta Weta

Now that we have our basic and not-so-basic stats for our hypothetical game, we need to talk about classes. About time, too, I am such a slack blogger.  But before we can get stuck into individual character classes, we need to talk about class categories . We've already got The Big Three divisions of Fighter, Rogue and Mage, so what else is there? Well, c haracter classes are essentially jobs : the specific role that a class plays in order to Make It Work, whatever 'It' happens to be: saving the world, defeating the dark lord, baking a cake, whatever.  It is interesting to note that when designing any system in which you have different roles for different characters, you can never quite get away from the spectre of specialisation . If you want multiple classes for people to choose from, you need to have them be good or bad at different things: there truly seems to be no way around it, at least none that I can think of. It's also still u p in the air whether this system ...

So in this post I'm going to be tackling something that I'm probably wildly unqualified to do: design RPG mechanics from scratch. Woo!  Basically for the next few posts, we're going to be breaking down the logic of so called 'standard' fantasy RPG mechanics and classes and building them back up again. It bears mentioning that I have never played a tabletop Role-Playing Game in my life, and at this rate I probably never will. But it would be remiss to not mention them in a post on RPG mechanics, even though I usually approach and think about RPG elements in a video-gaming context as opposed to a table-top one.  For this first post, we're starting with with character statistics. Character classes are defined by their abilities, therefore what they are good or bad at and therefore: basic stats.  Standard D&D Stats This is literally the first image that pops up if you image search, D&D.  ... is it bad that I keep forgetting that there are dragons in it? So l...

I have a strange relationship with the Dark Souls series. On the one hand, the only true Dark Souls game I've played is Dark Souls 3, and not for very long because I wasn't having fun with it. On the other hand, through watching other people play through the other games I have developed a fascination and kind of grudging respect for the series as a whole.  If nothing else, there's no denying the success and critical acclaim the series has received: anything that lends its name to a new sub-genre of role-playing video game is worthy of analysis. 'Soul-like' or 'souls-borne' games are reasonably commonplace now, characterized by difficult gameplay, branching path exploration and the developers taking sadistic glee in human suffering. The particular Soul-like I've played the most is Salt and Sanctuary, which is pretty much exactly the same as Dark Souls except it's a side-scrolling action platformer with better controls. Oops, shots fired.  It i...

Being the paleontology nerd I am, it's no surprise that one of the first things I put up on this blog is that a Far Cry game with dinosaurs would be totally friggin' sweet .  Hell yes.  On a similar note, I recently got hooked on the topic of speculative zoology. In particular, a specific website dedicated to one rather bizarre thought experiment: what if you seeded a world with just enough life to support a population of canaries, and just let natural selection take its course for millions of years? That website is Serina: A Natural History of the World of Birds  (the brainchild of artist Dylan Bajda, a.k.a Seather888 ), which is one of the best hard-science speculative zoology projects I've ever heard of. Piece by piece, the reader is taken through a journey through millions of years of evolution on the moon of Serina, as the canaries and other creatures diversify and evolve into some truly bizarre and epic creatures. In fact, it's mostly the creature design ...

So I've been playing an inordinate amount of Far Cry 5 largely. Yes, I know, it was released almost two years ago, but I was futilely waiting for it to go on sale. I'm cheap like that.  It's alright, I guess.  Ok, I've more than once completely lost track of time while playing it. Despite the numerous irritations the game has (temperamental side quests, occasionally suicidal AI companions, the fact that the whole game is a blatant cash-in on the fact that America as a nation currently hates itself), I find it weirdly compelling and I can't help but enjoy it.  Best boy ever.  But as I fly in my attack helicopter blowing boats full of drug-peddling straw-man religious nutters to oblivion, I do think to myself: what does Far Cry really need?  Dinosaurs. Obviously. 🦖 The reason I say this are numerous: 1 . I really like dinosaurs, and most likely a large segment of the open-world-mayhem enthusiasts that like this kind of game do as w...