Elven Academy

I’m returning to work on the game after some months hiatus, after several completed oil paintings, and during a deep sense of ennui with everything that has engaged my free time lately.

Generally my oil paintings look worse after I let them sit and come back to them with objective eyes.  The Elven Academy game is the same, but what else can we do but trudge on with our mediocrity, and with the belief that people out there will appreciate and enjoy our work someday.

It appears this game was a bit of a mess when I left. So I’ve fixed some glaring issues right away. Patch notes are below.

The new content is just a completed Spanish translation of module B2, and a new library book on the origins of Impressionism.  But now that these bugs are fixed and things are mostly up to date, I can work on the real new content, the module in progress, which is B3.

B3 is a diplomacy-focused module set in the Seelie Court. The module will use the reputation gains you’ve made in factions along the way, as well as your diplomacy skills. I am very happy with the meaningful choices you make in B2, involving who you side with, the deals you make, etc. and I hope to expand on this theme in B3.

After B3 will come, at long last, a sea voyage adventure. This adventure is inspired by the Tunnels and Trolls module Sea of Mystery, which I enjoyed when I was a kid. But Tunnels and Trolls modules were never big enough, and Sea of Mystery was no exception. So a big motivation in my game is to push further and farther.

I expect B3: The Seelie Court to take months to complete, but a new big, grand adventure format (as opposed to more linear storytelling of B3), is the carrot on the stick. I hope to see you in the Seelie Court soonish, and then on to the life of a seafarer. Here are the patch notes:

General:

Fixed a major bug preventing most item purchases in the game. This bug was caused by a scope issue, which was caused by revising core code to use the relatively recent javascript ‘let’ keyword for variable definition. (‘If’ statements count as a block for purpose of block scope…)

I believe I fixed a bug causing most adventure modules to falsely declare that you’ve already completed them.

Added a new library book on impressionism, and translated module B2 to Spanish. Greatly increased stat gains for reading library books, whereas they have always been too brutally stingy, especially for the modern day…

Fixed a bug on UI display of affection sometimes showing undefined after affection is gained.

A1:

Fixed dialogue with Roxanne to accurately reflect ‘dark game’ choice made.
Fixed wardrobe gender issue in your room.
Fixed a typo.
Fixed some missing translations.

A3:

Various edits, additional poetry for Connor, a few more dialogue options.
Fixed a bug where the Sea God’s blessing was hurting you, not healing you.

A7:

Three new sound tracks for important scenes.
Fixed various bugs, added some conversation options.

B2:

Fixed many small bugs, incorrect nomenclature, translated remainder of text into Spanish.
Fixed broken ending.
Fixed a missing graphic and a few non-preloaded conversation images (needs more).

Library:

Greatly increased stat gains from reading library books. There will always be some gain for 75% or better on the quiz questions. It is now relatively easy to grind out a few attribute points by memorizing the quiz answers and completing books repeatedly, but the max attribute gains from library books are now capped at 15.

Updated the library hub to includes an arts section, completed and translated a book on 19th century painting. (Fin de Siecle pre-impressionist and early impressionist period.)

Fixed missing and garbled text in the English Poetry book.
Fixed a lot of missing translations in the hub.
Fixed some minor typos in the Dating book, added some image preloads.
Fixed broken Spanish accents (HTML Charset) throughout pirates lore book.
Fixed bug in Fungus book.

The main project this month was writing the game’s first dungeon. Currently there are 79 locations, 37 dialogs, and 3 fights. Possibly one fight is a giant rat of sorts. This actually isn’t big enough.

I’m working on the maps now, and the maps are too sparse. They are not nearly impressive enough. So I thought I was being clever writing the dungeon without constraints of map or art, and now I’m adding locations to the map. And more locations. That means more coding. I’d like this to be the largest module so far, and right now it’s not.

I revisited the Tunnels and Trolls app this week. They’ve revamped it since launch, and it’s much better now without throwing you into Naked Doom to get going, iirc. (Or maybe that’s just the one I originally chose. I don’t remember.)

Reflections on the gameplay so far:

The combat is still a boring experience of dice rolling. I continue to be very motivated to do it differently – an experience of puzzle solving and decision-making with educated guesses combined with some luck and the familiar HP attrition.

I was disappointed by the result of only 2 attribute points as a reward for gaining level 2. At that rate, I’m going nowhere in terms of surviving higher level dungeons and encounters.

I was reminded, however, of how a level represents a major goal of achievement in a small-scale RPG like this. I’ve played so many MMORPG’s in recent years that another level is like another raindrop falling.

Recently I added a “bonus XP” feature to Elven Academy adventures. I am currently planning to try giving these to the player to allocate at the end of an adventure, instead of the way they are now randomly awarded during the adventure. This is consistent with my use-skill-to-improve design as opposed to the level design used by T&T and D&D, etc.

Another issue in T&T is that the app is warrior-only, and a few races are much better warriors. This is the same problem in WoW classic. Forced to play a specific race (to wit, not an elf) or be significantly gimped.

Unfortunately, since I’ve purchased a fair number of T&T adventures and products in softcover and PDF formats, I’m just not going to invest any money into the T&T app, thereby buying the product twice.

So here are this month’s patch notes for Elven Academy.

January 2020: Updates/Fixes

A3: More bug fixes, added Seelie Court rep. Archmistress Glumskayah now has wings? Not sure about the wing thing. I wanted to make her more devilish and less human, basically. I have a big problem with all of my non-human NPC’s managing to look lamely human. More dialog and options. Fixed removal of Learaiche’s wand.

A4: A few minor bug fixes, dialog cuts and improvements, added a skip option for theatre talking.

A5: Several bug fixes, broken conversation lines. Preloads.

A6: more bugs fixed, extended ending, new longest, most complicated module by far. Preloads.

D1: First dungeon is in development.

Tarot Training– added preloads for tarot cards

French Club – fixed more bugs, broken dialogue, Spanish language

Connor library – edited, translated.

Help – another edit through the dialogs to update for diplomacy changes

Library – fixed map, reduced high rate of special encounters prior in place for testing

General

Playtested server version of the game to find bugs related to delivering content by server, and files not uploaded properly with lower case file names. Fixed many loading issues with preloads.

Fixed broken save code regex-checking after recent diplomacy/affection changes

Improved text field backgrounds.

Improved timeskip splash panel with new graphics and function.

In my last post, I reviewed the Tunnels and Trolls Solo Design Guidelines: How to Write A Solo Adventure, which was written mostly by Michael Stackpole many years ago. The most useful takeaway from that PDF was to make a flowchart.

Over the Christmas holiday, I completely played through a couple of the best adventures for T&T—Elven Lords (Deluxe) and City of Terrors (Deluxe), both authored originally by Michael Stackpole. I flowcharted them as I went, per his adventure writing advice. (See example image.)

So this blog post is a writing analysis of Elven Lords and City of Terrors. Both of these were the most recent deluxe versions purchased from DriveThruRPG.com, and they are chock full of beautiful artwork from my favorite pen and ink fantasy illustrators, Liz Danforth and Rob Carver.

I’ll go over Elven Lords pros and cons, then City of Terrors pros and cons, then finally sum up with some takeaways to use in my own adventure writing. Hopefully!

Elven Lords (1987)

First the negatives.

1. Author/reader contract failed. Don’t buy this module looking for elves. It’s like they had to pick a title, so they chose the one elf scenario. So there was a failure to live up to the author/reader unspoken contract. This is a thing in fiction. Readers expect to be paid off for taking the time to read, and a book title and cover make promises.
2. Characters. I mentioned the lack of advice from Stackpole on this topic in my previous blog post. He doesn’t mention characters at all in his guide. Elven Lords is consistent with this weakness. Some important characters have no names in this module (or weak ones like Mr. Big), including the titular elves.
3. Paths are too short. Stackpole tried to live up to his stated goal of 30+ endings. Turns out many of those are far too short. City of Terrors is designed better, because short episodes loop you back to the hub, where you can hunt for the longer stories.
4. Moral decisions with no clues. A frequent shortfall of T&T modules seems to be giving you decisions that are just plain random. Pick one door. Good luck! I really feel like something to go on is worth the effort and words, even if it amounts to nothing.
5. Unbalanced rewards. Final boss fight ended with no conversation or ceremony, same XP as any other storyline.
6. Stackpole is revisiting Gull, but it isn’t as good. Elven Lords is set in the same city as the City of Terrors module published years earlier. As an artist/writer, I have to assume Stackpole wanted to improve on his original effort. (I would.) The question is why? Or was he just writing a sequel for the money, and, well, it’s a sequel. Maybe it’s as simple as that.

A list of positives next.

1. Some saving rolls are blind, some not. Sometimes you know how hard something is before you try, other times you are surprised. This a realistic way of handling SR’s.
2. Choice of attributes to roll against. Solving a puzzle with your luck vs. your agility, for example.
3. Saving rolls are consistent with adventure themes. If you choose a roguish path, you get more agility and luck situations. If you choose a scholarly path, you get some INT rolls. Solid design.
4. Start a scene with a mini-mystery hook. Once or twice, the text mentions something very strange in a scene right away, which makes you wonder what it’s about, but you have to read on for some paragraphs to find out. This was very effective. This is also a contract! You’d better pay off the reader.
5. Superlative art as a reward. In a few cases, an important scene has gorgeous art. This could be seen as a payoff. Big budget video games do this today with spectacular cut scenes for example. It’s just not something you normally think of as a reward.
6. Meta paths. Elven Lords has outstanding design in terms of short paths unlocking longer, more important storylines. Unfortunately the dead end paths really needed to loop around like in CoT.
7. Final boss. In a few T&T modules, there seems to be a concept of a final boss (even way back 40 years ago.) This seems effective.

City of Terrors (1978)

Negatives first.

1. Cover Art. I don’t like the colored cover. It sucks compared to the original line art back in the day. Sorry, I just needed to get that off my breast plate!
2. Number/letter system. I like the numbers better than the number/letter combos for various reasons.
3. Incorrect use of the verbs Lie and Lay. Come on, guys. Laying in bed is not a thing (also one instance of this in Elven Lords— ‘You lay low and…’)
4. A missing page. Page 12. I was unable to go to 12B from 56B.
5. Moral options don’t have clues. See above with Elven Lords. There are some situations where your pick turned out to be moral, but it was totally random. You had no chance to choose correctly. I don’t like that.

That’s it. That’s all the negatives for City of Terrors. The positives for City of Terrors mostly mirror the design takeaways for this blog post. So I’ll just go right into them.

Adventure writing insights from T&T modules:

1. Illustrations show action. This was design advice in an Amazon prime documentary I watched recently, featuring the greatest old school fantasy art painters. Make fantasy art with action happening. The concept is working here. The trick is that T&T has the style of showing a random adventurer dying, or whatever. You sort of have to go all-in on that style of presentation, and it might not appeal to most today. I’m just used to seeing it due to T&T.
2. Short paths loop, long paths end the adventure exclusively. I like looping back to a road, instead of the adventure just ending. The optimal adventure design, I think, would be for all short and medium adventure paths to loop back to the beginning. The only true exits are by boat (i.e. voluntarily quitting from the main hub), or an exclusive long story line finale. There are only a few story finales, and you can only complete one. After that, you can’t run the adventure again.
3. Mixed telegraphed and blind roll difficulties. So, in some cases you know how hard something will be (climbing a pillar). In other cases, you don’t know until you go through the door or whatever, in which case the saving roll will be blind.
4. Permanent attribute losses as a penalty for failure. Maybe your foot got caught in a trap and maimed. Permanent loss of DEX. Or you were burned in a fire. Loss of CHR. This is a solid idea. It’s not instant death, but the player will have to decide whether to start over regardless.
5. The gods are not pleased. This was an interesting ‘thing’. If you’re a coward, the gods curse you, basically. I’m a big fan of divine powers in fantasy settings. It expands the universe, the feeling of magic and enchantment, basically everything without much drawback. The Temple of the Beetle in CoT brings in this aspect, which is missing from Elven Lords.
6. Places to rest. There is a healer shop in CoT. I was not rolling dice or doing any combats, but surely adventurers get worn down. Or are you supposed to heal between every combat? In any case, I think more opportunities to rest along the adventure and gain a bonus or healing would be an immersive thing.
7. Options have agency and roleplay. Other T&T modules are boring because options are very, very dull. “Go east?” “Go southeast” “Go down?” Etc. etc. Stackpole warned about this in his designing advice, and implemented choices that allow you to roleplay your character (if you’re a rogue, you can sneak in the back.. etc..) This is kind of obvious.
8. Sex. City of Terrors has as much or more than any other officially published T&T module (I believe. I don’t own literally all of them.) Elven Lords had some hard drug scenarios, where you can run drugs for example, but those were pretty eh.

So. Sex. Stackpole warns against sex in his design guide, citing the importance of writing for all ages, but then he writes sex scenes? Since this is a big question in my own adventure writing, I wrote down examples from these T&T modules.

I feel like I want the classic, Age of Conan experience with handsome, bare-chested studs and wenches. I’m concerned about criticism, since I also want my game to be educational, but I also want to do what I want. The game has mature themes.  That’s the Fey/Underworld setting.

By the way, I’m 100% committed to gender equality in Elven Academy. Literally if there is a ‘scantily clad’ (cringe) woman, there is also a scantily clad male to roughly the same degree.

If you can sleep with a female dwarf, you can also have the chance to sleep with a male ogre, for example, somewhere.

In any case, here are the cringy classic “sexcerpts” I found for future reference. I’m interested in the standards for erotic suggestiveness in fantasy fiction today. The popular stuff on the bookshelves.

I also clipped the associated artworks in these modules showing partial nudity, but I decided not to post those. I don’t want to anger the gods.  You’ll just have to check out the modules for yourself.

Elven Lords

196 Since this is a family publication, we’re going to be a bit delicate here. As much as you would like to deny any desire to be there, you actually are curious (…) At the end of your service, you’re released into the world, maybe a little bit wiser, and definitely a whole lot sorer.

240 The book you pluck off the shelves is a lusty old romance tome entitled “I Was the Death Empress’ Love Slave”.

City of Terrors

40C If you want to make love to her, go to 50E.

46A You feel her reaching for you and moaning softly. She calls for you to make love to her. (If no, you are admonished for leaving a woman in need.)

50E It takes a real degenerate to proposition an old lady … She makes love to you after she casts a modified Bigger is Better spell on you.

1C You find she is an amorous lover. It is one of your greatest experiences. As you lay panting, she advances again.

37C You find the Sheik’s brother in bed with a beautiful woman (with illustration).

Thanks for reading, and happy gaming. Feel free to leave a comment.

In this post, I want to talk about adventure and story writing as a reaction piece to a recent publication by the makers of Tunnels and Trolls: T&T Solo Design Guidelines: How to Write A Solo Adventure. From Flying Buffalo, available at drivethrurpg.com.

This PDF is a collection of Tunnels and Trolls solo adventure guidelines and advice, which spans many years and a number of authors. The document was recovered and edited recently by Steve Crompton after the death of Tunnels and Trolls founder Rick Loomis.

The primary author is the legendary Michael A. Stackpole. Stackpole is a well-known and regarded fantasy fiction author, particularly in the genre of Star Wars. His Wikipedia page doesn’t have a T&T publication list, unfortunately.

In any case, Stackpole was the author of City of Terrors,  my favorite T&T adventure, and also the Elven Lords solo adventure.  I purchased Elven Lords and started playing it today.

I wanted to write down my thoughts as soon as possible about the Solo Design Guidelines, and then reflect on the design of Stackpole’s own Elven Lords after multiple play-throughs.

Stackpole is arguably one of the best T&T solo writers, along with Ken St. Andre.  He also has a lot of professional fiction writing credits. So let’s have a look at his early writing advice for adventures.

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Time In Adventure Writing

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In my last dev blog post, I wondered whether I could use time better in my adventure writing. T&T modules use a large amount of “telling” and summary to relate events. I tend to use a large amount of second-by-second dialogue.

I feel like my adventures could be better if I used more summary to enable more expansive adventures and more branching options, without having to create all of the needed art and moment-by-moment minutiae that a tight time focus would demand.

In other words, I could write more like a T&T module. Stackpole goes into time considerations on page 18 of the Guidelines. He notes that time movement is more important in a novel-type adventure. Geographical movement is more important in a dungeon delve.

Stackpole notes the Overkill adventure was the first T&T module to use “temporal progression.” I’ll need to play that to understand what he means. Stackpole also warns of a few major traps to avoid at all costs in temporal progression of adventures.

Temporal fugues: the text incorrectly acts like a character has already done something. This is a pretty obvious problem, and it’s shocking such a “bug” was actually published in Beyond the Wall of Tears.

Impossible Choices: the text incorrectly assumes a character has an item, or can do something that should not be possible (kill someone who is already dead.)

Looping: avoid the ability to loop infinitely.

OK. These things seem very obvious and simple. In fact, a lot of points in the Guidelines target very bad writers who were sending in manuscripts back in the day.

So I went to Google. I found the concept of Scene and Summary. When do you write a full-fledged scene? When do you just sum up events. You can open any fantasy novel and see how to do this. It’s sort of an art form.

In fact, Scene and Structure is a book that I’ve studied thoroughly. I’d recommend it. Am I doing it well in my RPG project? Not really.  I did it well in my novels.

The general rule, which seems obvious once stated, is to slow down time at times of the highest tension. When the blood, tears, or kisses are flying, you want to zoom in on every warm, wet droplet. When people are riding a train to Timbuktu and the next dramatic scene, you can sum up that train ride.

After playing Elven Lords, I see how T&T sums up time to its bare essences, the barest bones of a story.  In fact, one recommendation was to not have any paragraphs that do not offer a meaningful choice.

One very notable thing missing from the Guidelines is the actual heart and soul of fiction, which is characters.

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Characters: There Aren’t Any!

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I see virtually nothing about characters in How To Write A Solo Adventure. In fact, the second sentence of the advertising splash for this PDF says “how to develop NPCs” (last page of the published PDF), but there is nothing on this topic.

If you search “NPC” in the document, there is only one other use of the word NPC, which just says that Catacombs of the Bear Cult has a bunch of NPC’s. OK. Maybe that’s a good adventure then, but that doesn’t help us much. All “character” references refer to the player character.

So that’s a glaring mis-statement on the part of the advert. Actually, the best T&T modules do have the most memorable characters, but they are not discussed in this PDF.

That was a little disappointing, because I actually grabbed onto that advert sentence as a selling point for this PDF. This PDF is definitely worth the sale price of $4, and Crompton isn’t exactly going to rake in the dinero for his effort on this one. He should be commended actually.

I’m currently playing Vampire The Masquerade: Coteries of New York, and the characters there are a bit lacking as well. The takeaway is that characters are one of my strong points. I need to have better facial expressions for my NPC’s, reactions, etc..

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Flowcharting!

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Easily the most valuable part of the T&T Solo Design Guidelines is the concept of flowcharting an adventure design.  A big reason I am struggling with adventures is because they are much more complicated than novels.

Tracking all the branching paths is a big headache, so there tends to be less branching paths.  It turns out that no alternate paths is the path of least resistance!

Flowcharting is a great idea.  You will have to read and look at the PDF text for a full treatment. Stackpole’s examples include numbering the flowchart nodes to match your numerical system of categorizing locations.

There are also dead ends (literally you are dead), reward locations, exits to the dungeon, etc. all flowcharted. Stackpole notes that a repeating diamond chart (the way my adventures are going) tend to be boring.

On the other hand, Stackpole suggests he wants at least 30 playthroughs possible for the player, and that seems a bit insane.  He advocated for massive adventures, twice the size of City of Terrors.

To sum up, here are a few more takeaways from this easily digestible historical T&T development document, which I would recommend as a purchase for any adventure writers, historians, or fans of Tunnels and Trolls.

1. Try to give players heroic or moral choices, not road map choices.

2. When you need to make map choices, try to frame the choice within motivation, reason, or evocative language, something other than just a direction (“go north”).

3. According to polls on old T&T modules, replayability was highly correlated with enjoyment(?). The best adventures have lots of choices and ways to complete the module. This might be different in the modern day, however.

4. No explicit violence or sexual conduct due to age issues. Wait what? There are a few scenarios, including in Stackpole’s City of Terrors, where you can sleep with someone in T&T modules. I’m not sure what he means. Maybe explicit sex?

4a. Later in addendum #4, Stackpole mentions that Corgi publishing editors neatly skirted the COT and DED sex scenes. What does that mean? Which booklet edition did I originally play back in the day?

5. Try not to have any instant death choices without a saving roll.

6. Keep in mind your themes. (In other words, enrich the setting, but keep it consistent without anachronisms and without copyright infringement.)

7. Conflict is the fire in the the heart of fiction, and the heart is a character. Ok I might have mostly written that one myself. But even in T&T adventures with little character development or characters to speak of, there are plenty of ways that Stackpole creates conflict with monsters, factions, and the environments, etc..

To sum up, I wanted to get my thoughts down after studying the T&T Solo Design Guidelines: How to Write A Solo Adventure. I intend to play through Elven Lords a fair bit more (at least long enough to actually meet some elven lords!), then I may return to edit this post with some reactions and further reflection.

In the past two months, many, many improvements have been made to the game now called Elven Academy. Several more sound files are added. I’ve written a new game module and a new book for the in-game library: Fungus Facts!

I’m currently concerned about the 6 MMO-style faction reputation attributes. They aren’t fitting into a dialog-based single-player RPG. I either need to replace them with stats that provide more gameplay, or I need to find better ways to use them.

The elves and fairies are hardcore negotiators. They will steal your voice, steal your life, destroy your farm, and abduct your firstborn if you cross them.

Maybe I need diplomacy stats that offer gameplay, instead of the old boring reputation scores representing how much different factions like you, which only really offer rewards. So let’s research different diplomacy systems and ideas from articles and blog posts online.

Below is a digest of the each system, with a reaction summary. At the end, hopefully, we’ll have a useful conclusion.

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Vampire the Masquerade: Storyteller System

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The White Wolf wiki mentions the concept of “a character’s natural prowess and learned ability coming together to perform a task.” The “storyteller system” used by VtM/White Wolf, categorizes physical, social and mental attributes. These are for tabletop roleplaying, so we need to keep that in mind.

Social attributes:

Charisma
Manipulation
Appearance

Mental attributes:

Intelligence
Perception
Wits

Social Skills:

Animal Ken
Empathy
Expression
Intimidation
Persuasion
Socialize
Streetwise
Subterfuge (aka Deception in other systems)

Mental Skills:

(Various i.e. Medicine, Politics, Science, Computer, Academics, etc.)

Analysis: According to White Wolf’s Storyteller game System, an attribute + a skill creates a Dice Pool to roll to attempt an action. I’m not sure I want to use that in a CRPG, but I do want to derive character stats created by mixing skills and attributes.

Elven Academy has 6 attributes and 6 skills, so this approach seems promising. I really want to look at VtM:Bloodlines now (the CRPG), but let’s look at a few other tabletop games first.

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Tunnels and Trolls (Deluxe Ed. 2015):

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T&T has a talent system among its rule extensions in the latest edition. Looking through the list for ideas, I find:

Charming. This is literally the #1 stat in Elven Academy.
Cleverness. This is almost literally the #2 stat in Elven Academy. I didn’t copy T&T. I swear. Except for the Luck attribute. I’ll admit to an abnormal respect for Luck due to T&T, but it does fit into a fairy/elf/Irish themed setting.
Diplomat is included in a cultural category that includes History, Literature, and Poetry. I would like to do better in this area in an elf game, but stats could get bloated.
Persuasion. Leadership and Seduction are subcategories.

Analysis: This is why Tunnels and Trolls, although obscure, is an influence. It was created way back in the beginning as a KISS system. That’s why I started with it as a kid in the 1970s, and there is a lot of wisdom in that design principle.

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5E D&D:

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Neither the PHB or the DMG has Diplomacy or Reputation listed in their indexes. That’s a problem. 5E removed the Diplomacy skills.

Languages. Languages? D&D is still using languages for roleplay? Not something I ever considered as part of diplomacy, but it’s realistic and something to consider in game writing.

Feats of Actor, Leader, and Linguist.

“Fuck the 5E,” declared the party leader, with a grandiose tone. “No Diplomacy?”

Analysis: Is a dedicated Diplomacy skill useful? In my RPG project, I designated the attributes Charm and Cunning to be the primary diplomatic skill checks (currently), because they are personal. Whether you are more charming or more devious (as shown in the dialog text), you have more agency in the immediate outcome in the conversation.

Negatives: Diplomacy (as a skill) seems fitting for sitting down for a political negotiation in a meeting room. It works for a D&D live game where you want to sum up a scenario into a result/outcome instead of talking it all out. Surely 5E has a system, and I can’t find it in the books or online. So let’s go back in time.

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3.5E D&D (Baldur’s Gate 2, Neverwinter Nights):

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Appraise.

Bluff! Remember Bluff? Remember using Bluff in combat? That was silly. Then you have the Sense Motive skill in 3.5E to evade a bluff.

Diplomacy. DnD 3E and 3.5 had Diplomacy skill checks, with a DC based on initial attitude of the NPC (Hostile, Unfriendly, Indiffferent, Friendly, or Helpful). Success on the check moves the NPC’s attitude level. Charisma modifies the check

Disguise.
Forgery.
Gather Information.
Intimidate skill. The Persuasive feat gives a bonus.
Sense Motive.

Analysis: I like Intimidation. I do have a Fighter skill, which is underused. This and Cunning would go very well towards an Intimidation score. Suppose a monk is playing a Charm/Fighter ‘build’ in the game. Currently only Cunning can reasonably intimidate, since Fighter intimidation doesn’t really make sense in most elven diplomacy. Martial presence would just play a small factor. So I’m liking these amalgam diplomacy skills here.

Negatives: I can’t imagine using Bluff against elves very successfully. I notice these 3.5E skills again seem to be oriented towards tabletop, DM’d gameplay. There is a passage of time that’s awkward in an RPG? I need to work on expanding time in my CRPG. Allow actions that take much more time. Is worth an entire skill slot out of the 18 that I’m using?

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3.5E D&D (Neverwinter Nights 1 and 2):

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After reviewing D&D rules, it’s clear that many tabletop roleplay skills don’t translate well to a CRPG. So let’s study games again, instead.

NWN divided Diplomacy into Persuade and Taunt. Animal Empathy. Lore.
NWN2 brought in Diplomacy, Intimidate, Bluff, and Appraise.

Analysis: Someone in a NWN2 forum asked if party members contribute to Diplomacy. This is an interesting idea, since I’ve gone to the trouble of allowing the player to customize their party a bit when the embark on a module. Currently, I allow the player to ask a party member to handle something. I could consider modifications to rolls based on the company you keep.

Negatives: These options are underwhelming, made for a game where you are supposed to fight 90% of the time.

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Fallout 1,2:

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F1,2: Deception, Persuasion, Speech
F3: Barter, Speech (limited by Charisma)

Analysis: Fallout 3 actually removed a number of roleplay skills. Lame. I don’t really find other CRPGs that add to what has already been mentioned. Sadly.

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Knights of the Old Republic (KOTOR):

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Awareness (Wisdom) – used to spot mines.
Persuade (Charisma) – Level up to pass dialogue options.
Affect/Dominate mind – Jedi mind tricks! Worth considering.

It’s also worth noting that squad mates can help with skills in KOTOR. That’s about it. I searched Steam and found zero RPG’s tagged with diplomacy.

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Vampire the Masquerade: Bloodlines:

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Let’s look, at last, at the most promising inspiration for my CRPG design issues, which is the VtM:Bloodlines CRPG. Let’s see how they are putting attributes and skills together to form derived diplomacy-related stats, as mentioned by the White Wolf general game system wiki.

To be clear, I’m looking for inspiration, not emulation. The world of elves is very different from the world of vampires. For reference, I’m looking at a VtMB character sheet. https://vtmb.fandom.com/wiki/Character_Sheet

I have Charm and Cunning as main stats in my game. This sort of correlates to light side/dark side choices in Star Wars RPG dialogues. If I add an Appearance score to my character sheet, as a stat derived from quality level of outfit and perfume, that roughly correlates to the three VTMB social attributes.

I have a Perception stat as my third social/mental main stat of six. The other three are Toughness, Agility, and Luck. “Wits” in VTMB seems to be related to things like Hacking and Defense. “Intelligence” is not something I want. This post sums up my thoughts on it.

So I have three Social attributes: Charm, Cunning, and Appearance. Perception will also be useful. Next I’ll try to mix them with skills to create some new, useful diplomacy abilities, using everything I’ve gathered in my research.

Current learned skills in the game system:

Aesthetics (includes sense of fashion and style)
Scholar (includes history, literature)
Psychic (mind-reading, divination)
Craftsman (???)
Ranger (includes botany)
Fighter (???)

Learned skills used in other game systems:

Affect/Dominate Mind*
Animal Ken*
Barter
Deception
Empathy*
Expression*
Intimidation*
Persuasion
Socialize*
Speech (public speaking?)
Streetwise–will not use, this is a forest
Subterfuge–dupe of deception
Disguise.–not worth a skill
Forgery.*
Gather Information.+worth a look
Lie–dupe of deception
Jest–not worth a skill, just say the jest
Plead--persuasion
Fascinate–seduction
Perform–already have in aesthetics
Inspire–similar to Leadership

Analysis:

*Existing Aesthetics skill includes Expression, Socialize.
*Psychic skill could include Affect/dominate mind, Animal Ken, and Empathy.
*Craftsman could include Forgery.
*Fighter skill could contribute to Intimidation.

Gather Info is a time dilating/skipping skill, to be considered as a new game design approach. So the only categories not covered are Barter/Merchant. Deception, and Persuasion. Let’s move those down to a possible new diplomatic ability.

Possible derived diplomatic abilities:

Barter/Haggle/Merchant
Deception
Intimidate
Persuasion
Seduction dupe of Persuasion, Affect/Dominate Mind or Fascinate?
Leadership
Sense Motive.
Bluff, Lie–no, can be rolled into Deception

I need six derived diplomacy skills to swap out the boring set of rep scores and go “full diplomacy” mode. Do we have enough? It looks sketchy.

The problem I see is that Charm and Cunning are essentially lightside and darkside stats in the game. So a 100% build with one or the other will have trouble with certain diplomacy options. Seems fair, but they need to be balanced. That leads to a 3-stat derivation instead of two.

Charm-based Diplomacy:

Leadership** (includes Inspire): Charm + Ranger + Appearance
Empathy : (includes Sense Motive) Charm + Psychic + Aesthetics

Mixed Or Non-Charm/Cunning Diplomacy:

Mercantile (includes Haggle and Barter): Perception + Luck + Craftsman
Persuasion (includes Fascination, Seduction): Charm + Cunning + Appearance

Cunning-based Diplomacy:

Intimidation : Cunning + Toughness + Fighter
Deception (includes Bluffing and Lying) : Cunning + Perception + Appearance

Analysis: I’m remembering now why I created only 6 attributes and 6 skills. It’s because I was concerned I wouldn’t be able to create enough gameplay to satisfy the existence of more stats. The best RPG’s we have only use a small handful of simple diplomatic stats in conversations.

Also can I realistically add enough conversation options to satisfy these additional abilities? Will all of these stats confuse the casual player too much, and all be underutilized?

I do think they would satisfy the thinking RPG player who wants to get into the stats. I don’t think I need the complexity of the Storyteller dice roll system. I would definitely like to include more diplomacy in the game, with meaningful branching outcomes to dialogues.

At this time, I’m still keeping the reputation scores as invisible stats, quantified results of diplomacy. I need to find rewards to pay off the use of the diplomacy skills.

Final Bullet Points To Mull Over:

1. Natural ability + learned ability = Approach to a task (Storyteller system.)
2. Consider racial languages as a feature of the game writing.
3. Consider leaving immediate time sequence and writing diplomacy (or etc.) that skips a block of time, to leverage the player imagination into feeling a lot more is happening.
4. Allow party members to contribute to diplomacy?
5. Affect/dominate mind. Jedi and Sith. Vampires. These are huge favorites, worth considering in the gameplay and/or story writing.
6. Beware of diplomatic solutions giving significantly less rewards than violence.

**EDIT- after revising the game code for the new 6-skill diplomacy system, I decided to replace Leadership with Presence.  This is coincidentally a Discipline in in VTMB, which essentially boils down to mind control.

My concept is human presence, which encompasses Personality, Speech, Leadership, and other subtleties. I feel “Leadership” is not quite the right feel for a game that values emo, non-violence, tree-hugging, etc.

Thanks for reading. I hope this blog post helps stimulate some brain cells for someone out there in human land. In Part 2 of this essay, I will try to research uses of Diplomacy, how to handle it, ways to make it meaningful in game writing, etc.. Horse. Cart.