Some of my thoughts concerning DC and Frua

[Stephan1980]

Hello!

I really didn't know where to post this message. I hope it is in the right place here and doesn't annoy anyone.
I used the search function for "combat" and didn't find a thread that I could put this into. So I created a new topic.

My name is Stephan. I have played Ua for many years.
I really loved it and played almost every module. I sometimes had the impression that I was the only one actually PLAYING Frua. It seemed that almost everyone was there for either discussing new art or art hacks, new rule set hacks, world hacks, wish lists for hacks, collaborating projects, their upcoming megasuperbig campaign design using all dungeons and all overworld maps. It was great to read all that but I wondered what the use of it was, if designers put an adventure together with great effort and nobody played it.

Well I was playing and tried to give feedback. Then it became more difficult to play UA because of Windows and then Windows XP. I somehow managed to get it to run even though I really have problems with everything that goes beyond clicking the start icon on my desktop.

Eventually the discussion rose, that UA was dying. At first I thought, "no it isn't", but I soon realized that designers became more and more frustrated, because very few people actually played their designs. Ben Sanderfer said that he can fully understand Harri Polsa for going to Neverwinter Nights because of the bigger audience he has there.
And I understand that perfectly.

I asked myself why nobody was playing the games anymore and eventually I lost interest in UA, too. While I can't speak for someone else, I think I know what the reason was that I stopped playing.

I remember reading somewhere something like "FRUA is a game based around a combat engine". And I got to realize that that was the "problem". In many posts people were complaining about "too many combats" in this or that design. Designers tried to stretch the engine far beyond what it was meant to be. While this could be a good thing, I think it came to a point where they were denying FRUA's origin.
Many of the adventures that came out were all about a new set of rules and then railroaded text events from the beginning to the end.
I think that if you want to create a good UA design, you have to accept the combat system and build an adventure around it. If you don't like it, then you won't really have fun creating or playing an adventure.

What struck me the most was, that many of the big designers stated their annoyance and predicted the end of FRUA and most of the positive "No it will never die, everything is good"-people didn't seem to play UA. They seemed to be there to discuss about new rule sets and hacks and storytelling possibilities.

When I first read about Dungeon Craft I was so happy you can't believe it. I was looking forward to play thousands of designs and actually I thought of creating some of my own. No more dos emulating problems!
But then I started to doubt if there actually was an audience that would play all the new adventures. I surely would play new goldbox style adventures.
But I got the impression that even more than in UA, people didn't really think of new adventures but new rule sets, world rules and so on. and while I think it's great that people request features like this or that special race ability or spell thing, I wonder if they will ever see the light of day in an actual design.

I think we should remember what goldbox games really are about. Of course, they need to be improved! I have played so many FRUA designs, that I got tired of it. Yes it took a really long time for me to become tired, but in the end I just didn't want to play the same thing over and over again.
But I think the solution to this problems are not new races, classes, skills and so on.
--> Goldbox games are build around a combat engine and I think improving the combat system would make
it playable again. When DC was announced back then as "UA forever", many people wrote wish-lists.
and I always wondered why there were soooooo little wishes regarding combat.

I love goldbox style combat and I think that in order to get people to playing the games DC should:
- allow the designer to have more control over the actual combats
- give the player better handling
- give the player more options

Some of my ideas are:
1) Allow the designer more freedom than to place monsters east or west of the party. for important battles, he or she should be able to place every individual monster freely on the combat screen. this would allow tomake ambushes more effective. you could place archers behind defensive structures, bodyguards around the boss and so on. the player had to really use tactic to win.

2) allow the designer to set boxes to "chasm" or the like. for example there could be a chasm on the combat screen. any combatant standing next to it and getting hit, is likely to fall down the chasm. this would give more tactical options.

3) the "attack from behind" was one of the few tactical options in frua. you had to set up your heroes perfectly, sometimes skipping the turn of one, to attack later. you could elaborate on that. there should be bonuses or maluses when someone is surrounded by creatures. this could even make kobolds and goblins more fun, because they then really could make use of their numbers. in UA it didn't matter how many goblins there were if you had reached a certain level, because no goblin could hit you anymore.

4) comparing UA to modern games shows that the only combat option was "Deathmatch". Wouldn't it be great to have different settings? There could be:
- The party has to reach marked boxes at the other end of the combat screen. The battle is won if they reach the boxes. This could make for exciting escape situations with an unstoppable amount of monsters. (of course that's not the only possibility: you could also use it in a siege situation where the party battles thorugh the defenses.)
- The party has to survive for x numbers of turns or a certain NPC has to survive x numbers of turns. You could use this in epic battles against a superior enemy until help arrives. And the latter option would allow for the typical escort missions, like in "x-wing". hehe, yeah, it's funny to name x-wing here. but why not. it gets the point across.
- Possibilies are endless. "Capture the flag" "domination"....all the ego-shooter options would make sense.

5) I didn't use ranged weapons(except when it was really necessary) because it was a pain to unequip sword and shild and then equip bow and arrows. It would be great if the player could make two or more configurations. One for ranged weapons and one for melee combat and switch easily between them.

6) Perhaps monsters should lose some of their abilities when their hit points are seriously reduced. A monster with 1 hit points fights as effectively as the same monster with 200 hit points.

7) Initiative was often bugging me. An example was in one of Harri Polsa's "Jade" adventures. This is not against the great design by him, but against the combat system. There was a tough battle against a white dragon. I started the battle for numerous times and the dragon got initiative and immediately hit all of my characters rendering the mages helpless. then after loading about twenty times, my party got initiative and I almost won. Then I had to load another twenty times until I got initiative again, and this time I beat the dragon and his minions without any effort.
While I understand that initiative is one of the d&d rules, I think it doesn't make sense in situations like this. The battle can't be won without having the first turn. So I have to wait until I get the first turn.
The designer should have more control here, beeing able to give the party initiative.

8) Destroyable structures that have an effect on the combat. Destruction of them could result in ending the combat, ending ongoing waves of monster reinforcements, killing certain monsters (eg destroying a cursed altar killing ghosts on the battlefield or the like).

9) Having control over NPCs should not depend on the paladin skill but be a choice of the designer.

10) I like the fact that combat screens are generated out of the dungeon automatically. But for important battles the designer should be able to do individual combat screens. i don't know how exactly, perhaps in a similar editor like the dungeon editor. you could place different blocks, make them blocked are not, trees, boulders, castle structures and what not. make them destroyable, make them burnable (more use for fireballs), make them freezable (rivers and icestorms perhaps? cross that river and get that archers by surprise), make them portals, make them closable...... you could even make blocks like tables that are passable by characters but give defense bonuses against archers.

11) One of the most annoying things in FRUA was, that you couldn't surrender in a combat. For example if your mages were all killed and you really didn't have a chance to win, you couldn't end the combat. You had to wait until all your remaining party members were killed. This could take ages. (best way was to unequip all armor and the walk away from monsters so that they could attack you from behind). A simple button to take you to the "load" screen would have made FRUA ten times better. The fact that I read all kinds of complains about the restrictions of FRUA concerning rule sets, art and so on, but never read a single thing about this problem, gave me the impression that most people didn't really play FRUA.

12) New skills and abilities that really show in combat. Stealing from Neverwinter Nights: Give the player the opportunity to knock down enemies, attack harder with the chance to do more damage but with the risk of not hitting the enemy. Again, the possibilities are endless.

13) Stealing from other games. I like "Tony hawk's pro skater" "return of the king" and "The punisher" a lot. Just because they reward you for playing flawlessly. It isn't just a matter of loading a save game over and over again until you master a certain situation. You really have to get better to get more experience points.
Panzer dragoon saga gave experience points depending on how well you fought. It was an rpg, too.
It's just an idea, I don't really know how to have this in a goldbox style game. Perhaps more experience points for fewer lost hit points? or you could have secondary goals in some battles ( you win the battle if you beat all opponents but get more experience points if all of the peasants survived. this could even trigger some event where a mayor thanks you for saving all the peasants or the like). or you could get more exp if it took you just x number of turns to win. as I said, it was just an idea, I wanted to show that you could steal from games of different genres to make the fights more fun.

and this brings me to the whole point of my typing: FUN!!
the battles have to be fun. Everything and I really mean everything is going to be ineffective IN THE LONG RUN if people don't like the combats. The game is built around a combat system.
Automatically darkening overland maps would be great, thief's skills would be great, perfect adaptions of greyhawk/ravenloft/dark sun/superhero settings and rules would be great.
But if you really want people like me to play it, the core of the game itself has to be fun.

I really wanted to like Neverwinter nights, but I hated it because of the combat system. I played the main campaign and shadows of undrentide. I really dig the underdark and started to play hordes of the underdark for nwn, but I couldn't stand it, because I didn't have fun with it. Story and characters are great and important but Neverwinter Nights is a GAME and it is not a good game. I don't want to struggle through the game parts just to see how the plot continues. I want to have fun DURING the game and not only when the story continues.
Yeah, it's great to have the d&d rules and endless possibilities to create your hero, but what is the use of it, if it isn't fun to play the game with him or her?

I wrote this, because I have the impression or rather I fear that many designers will stop creating new adventures because of the lack of feedback. Yes UA needs to be improved, but I think the efforts don't always go into the right directions.
I admire everyone who plays a role in designing, programming and creating for UA and DC. I really do! You can't imagine how much I bow my head to everyone. I have had so many memorable playing experiences back then and I often think of these times.
I have never created anything for UA or DC, so you could think that I don't have any competence to talk about it. And I wondered if I should write about UA and DC for a long time.
But now I think it's right for me to write this.
I never created anything for UA or DC but I played hundreds of designs and I wrote feedback to the authors when I liked it.

Yes, the goldbox enginge is not dead. The community is there! But I'm convinced that most people in the community don't PLAY the games, they want to create. They have their vision and a story to tell. I'm asking if DC is the right platform for this vision if you don't like the combat system and try to tweak the enginge beyond it's limits to make a text adventure out of it. Or a perfect "rule simulator" that allows to play in your favorite world with every rule detail perfectly but without any fun.
It's great that there are so many creators here, but without an audience, I'm convinced that there won't be a future.

Thanks for reading this, I'd love to hear your opinion.
Bye
Stephan

[Dinonykos]

Originally Posted by Stephan1980 They have their vision and a story to tell. I'm asking if DC is the right platform for this vision if you don't like the combat system and try to tweak the enginge beyond it's limits to make a text adventure out of it.

I can definitely not answer to all your points, but this hit me., because I indeed am no great fan of the FRUA/DC combat system. Nevertheless, although I tried dozends of editors for text adventures, graphic adventures and rpgs (Dungeon Master Java, TADS, AGS, two Wizardry 7 emulators, a german text adventure creator... to name only a few), I have always returned to DC. I am convinced that it is ideal to tell stories to people who want something inbetween text adventures and real-time rpgs (and don't mind only to be able to make 90° turns... ).

Ah yes, you are possibly right that also among the DC users there is right now more creating than playing activity, but e.g. the feedback to FD's demo indicates to me that people are waiting to play.

[manikus]

Originally Posted by Stephan1980 Hello!

Hi, Stephan. Welcome to Dungeon Craft.

Originally Posted by Stephan1980 I really didn't know where to post this message. I hope it is in the right place here and doesn't annoy anyone. I used the search function for "combat" and didn't find a thread that I could put this into. So I created a new topic.

To me, this seems to be more about the meta-game than the game. Creating a new topic was what I would have done, too.

Originally Posted by Stephan1980 My name is Stephan. I have played Ua for many years. I really loved it and played almost every module. I sometimes had the impression that I was the only one actually PLAYING Frua. It seemed that almost everyone was there for either discussing new art or art hacks, new rule set hacks, world hacks, wish lists for hacks, collaborating projects, their upcoming megasuperbig campaign design using all dungeons and all overworld maps. It was great to read all that but I wondered what the use of it was, if designers put an adventure together with great effort and nobody played it.

I don't know how many DC users in this forum use FRUA, maybe three or four, but I think all of us have played at least one of the Goldbox games.

Originally Posted by Stephan1980 Well I was playing and tried to give feedback. Then it became more difficult to play UA because of Windows and then Windows XP. I somehow managed to get it to run even though I really have problems with everything that goes beyond clicking the start icon on my desktop.

I run FRUA on a very fast machine running XP Pro. I use the UAShell utility, which among other things, plays FRUA just like my old 286 did. I know of other people who use DOSBox to play FRUA.

Originally Posted by Stephan1980 Eventually the discussion rose, that UA was dying. At first I thought, "no it isn't", but I soon realized that designers became more and more frustrated, because very few people actually played their designs. Ben Sanderfer said that he can fully understand Harri Polsa for going to Neverwinter Nights because of the bigger audience he has there. And I understand that perfectly.

I'm guessing that you must be at least somewhat familiar with the Yahoo group for FRUA. I've been part of the FRUA community for a while and have always been under the impression that Mr. Polsa and Mr. Sanderfer left the community because of the limitations of the FRUA engine, not because of lack of feedback on their designs. If you haven't played the DC versions of Harri's designs they're available through the official website in the "Designs to Play" section, but one of the reasons he came to DC for a while was because of the limitations FRUA imposed but DC didn't. His designs, for a lack of a better term, are gigantic, both in size, but also in the amount of text and graphics that he included.

Originally Posted by Stephan1980 I asked myself why nobody was playing the games anymore and eventually I lost interest in UA, too. While I can't speak for someone else, I think I know what the reason was that I stopped playing.

Right now in the FRUA group there are around 500 members with a couple dozen active folks and I don't know how many like me who mostly just read it. In the spirit of full disclosure, I still download new mods for FRUA, but play very few. However, most of the people who are active on the list play and comment on every design that comes out. Several people only play and have no design aspirations. You can look at any of UANLs (news letters) to see copious amounts of reviews of designs.

Originally Posted by Stephan1980 I remember reading somewhere something like "FRUA is a game based around a combat engine". And I got to realize that that was the "problem". In many posts people were complaining about "too many combats" in this or that design. Designers tried to stretch the engine far beyond what it was meant to be. While this could be a good thing, I think it came to a point where they were denying FRUA's origin. Many of the adventures that came out were all about a new set of rules and then railroaded text events from the beginning to the end.

FRUA came out in '92 when SSI decided there was no more money to be made with the Goldbox series. They did however, realize that there was a large fan-base that might want to make their own stuff. They also supported the line by creating the original NWN on AOL which only ended when AOL wanted to start charging money and SSI (along with TSR) said that they wouldn't charge because this (the Goldbox engine) was something that they had released to the community with FRUA.
Since 1992, a hell of a lot of games have been released. Dungeons and Dragons itself has gone from the First Edition ruleset that the Goldbox games were built around to the Fourth Edition ruleset which bears little resemblance to First Edition. Games in general moved from turn-based to real-time. It seems pretty reasonable to me that designers would take a game editor that they were comfortable with using and try to adapt to new things. From the very beginning, SSI had planned for FRUA to do more than it did when it was released, as has been made evident by the inclusion of "underwater" art work and stub code for underwater rules.

Originally Posted by Stephan1980 I think that if you want to create a good UA design, you have to accept the combat system and build an adventure around it. If you don't like it, then you won't really have fun creating or playing an adventure.

I fundamentally disagree on this point. I've never thought of FRUA or DC as combat engines first. I do completely concede that it may be so for some designers and that their perspective is equally valid to my own. I've played a lot of FRUA designs, just as you have, and there are nearly as many styles as there are designers, but it seems to me that all of the decent designs, no matter how much combat they contain, are only good becuase of the story and the way that it is executed. I think Ben Sanderfer's designs are arguably the most like the Goldbox games, but have a compelling story with interesting characters (I personally feel that his games surpass the quality of the Goldbox games).

Originally Posted by Stephan1980 What struck me the most was, that many of the big designers stated their annoyance and predicted the end of FRUA and most of the positive "No it will never die, everything is good"-people didn't seem to play UA. They seemed to be there to discuss about new rule sets and hacks and storytelling possibilities.

I've always been under the impression that the "big" designers were upset by the limitations of FRUA and the lack of work-arounds, coupled with a lack of participation by the greater design community, that caused them to leave. I do agree that Ben Sanderfer has several times stated taht he was going to stop creating designs for FRUA if people didn't give him feedback, and yet he is still active and working on a design even now (in addition to his NWN projects). I think that the vast majority of designers leave because they want to create games that look and feel more like contemporary games than like a Goldbox game.

Originally Posted by Stephan1980 When I first read about Dungeon Craft I was so happy you can't believe it. I was looking forward to play thousands of designs and actually I thought of creating some of my own. No more dos emulating problems! But then I started to doubt if there actually was an audience that would play all the new adventures. I surely would play new goldbox style adventures. But I got the impression that even more than in UA, people didn't really think of new adventures but new rule sets, world rules and so on. and while I think it's great that people request features like this or that special race ability or spell thing, I wonder if they will ever see the light of day in an actual design.

I am sure this is true for some of the designers here. But, many of the requests come out of the fact taht DC is still in beta and doesn't have a fully working combat or magic system. Just as you make a number of suggestions further down the post, the designers, or would-be designers are doing the same thing hoping that there ideas will make it into a final version of the engine/editor so that they can get their pet project done.
I readily admit that I am one of the people who is always posting the "wouldn't it be great if..." threads and comments. I do this because I have a lot of story ideas that I would like to share or at least put into a DC format and they go way beyond the scope of Goldbox games. In my opinion, Dungeon Craft should be as truly unlimited as is possible.

Originally Posted by Stephan1980 I think we should remember what goldbox games really are about. Of course, they need to be improved! I have played so many FRUA designs, that I got tired of it. Yes it took a really long time for me to become tired, but in the end I just didn't want to play the same thing over and over again. But I think the solution to this problems are not new races, classes, skills and so on. --> Goldbox games are build around a combat engine and I think improving the combat system would make it playable again. When DC was announced back then as "UA forever", many people wrote wish-lists. and I always wondered why there were soooooo little wishes regarding combat.

Again, we will have to agree to disagree about the nature of the engine. I am a bit confused about teh above paragraphs, as you seem to be saying "don't forget Goldbox games" and "I'm tired of playing Goldbox games". Looking at the 500 or so FRUA designs available, I would say that maybe only four or five are Goldbox-syle games. Two-thirds of the games are pretty much Monty Haul adventures, depending on hack and slash instead of a good story. That leave us with about 170 designs that are not Monty Haul or Goldbox. Of these designs, I would say that only half are set in a traditional AD&D world or setting, while the other half are sci-fi or horror or modern day or super hero, etc. I would wager that if you played hundreds of FRUA designs that you are mostly tired of the Monty Haul hack and slash games and not the latter group (which includes the Goldbox style). I might be wrong about that, but I know that I personally can't stand the thought of playing another hack and slash game, no matter how cool the graphics are or which game engine is used. (For anyone wondering, no, I will not be buying the new Diablo. ) The problem with the designs that I don't like and may be the ones that turned you off of FRUA are problems of the designer and not the engine or editor.

Originally Posted by Stephan1980 I love goldbox style combat and I think that in order to get people to playing the games DC should: - allow the designer to have more control over the actual combats - give the player better handling - give the player more options Some of my ideas are: 1) Allow the designer more freedom than to place monsters east or west of the party. for important battles, he or she should be able to place every individual monster freely on the combat screen. this would allow tomake ambushes more effective. you could place archers behind defensive structures, bodyguards around the boss and so on. the player had to really use tactic to win. 2) allow the designer to set boxes to "chasm" or the like. for example there could be a chasm on the combat screen. any combatant standing next to it and getting hit, is likely to fall down the chasm. this would give more tactical options. 3) the "attack from behind" was one of the few tactical options in frua. you had to set up your heroes perfectly, sometimes skipping the turn of one, to attack later. you could elaborate on that. there should be bonuses or maluses when someone is surrounded by creatures. this could even make kobolds and goblins more fun, because they then really could make use of their numbers. in UA it didn't matter how many goblins there were if you had reached a certain level, because no goblin could hit you anymore. 4) comparing UA to modern games shows that the only combat option was "Deathmatch". Wouldn't it be great to have different settings? There could be: - The party has to reach marked boxes at the other end of the combat screen. The battle is won if they reach the boxes. This could make for exciting escape situations with an unstoppable amount of monsters. (of course that's not the only possibility: you could also use it in a siege situation where the party battles thorugh the defenses.) - The party has to survive for x numbers of turns or a certain NPC has to survive x numbers of turns. You could use this in epic battles against a superior enemy until help arrives. And the latter option would allow for the typical escort missions, like in "x-wing". hehe, yeah, it's funny to name x-wing here. but why not. it gets the point across. - Possibilies are endless. "Capture the flag" "domination"....all the ego-shooter options would make sense. 5) I didn't use ranged weapons(except when it was really necessary) because it was a pain to unequip sword and shild and then equip bow and arrows. It would be great if the player could make two or more configurations. One for ranged weapons and one for melee combat and switch easily between them. 6) Perhaps monsters should lose some of their abilities when their hit points are seriously reduced. A monster with 1 hit points fights as effectively as the same monster with 200 hit points. 7) Initiative was often bugging me. An example was in one of Harri Polsa's "Jade" adventures. This is not against the great design by him, but against the combat system. There was a tough battle against a white dragon. I started the battle for numerous times and the dragon got initiative and immediately hit all of my characters rendering the mages helpless. then after loading about twenty times, my party got initiative and I almost won. Then I had to load another twenty times until I got initiative again, and this time I beat the dragon and his minions without any effort. While I understand that initiative is one of the d&d rules, I think it doesn't make sense in situations like this. The battle can't be won without having the first turn. So I have to wait until I get the first turn. The designer should have more control here, beeing able to give the party initiative. 8) Destroyable structures that have an effect on the combat. Destruction of them could result in ending the combat, ending ongoing waves of monster reinforcements, killing certain monsters (eg destroying a cursed altar killing ghosts on the battlefield or the like). 9) Having control over NPCs should not depend on the paladin skill but be a choice of the designer. 10) I like the fact that combat screens are generated out of the dungeon automatically. But for important battles the designer should be able to do individual combat screens. i don't know how exactly, perhaps in a similar editor like the dungeon editor. you could place different blocks, make them blocked are not, trees, boulders, castle structures and what not. make them destroyable, make them burnable (more use for fireballs), make them freezable (rivers and icestorms perhaps? cross that river and get that archers by surprise), make them portals, make them closable...... you could even make blocks like tables that are passable by characters but give defense bonuses against archers. 11) One of the most annoying things in FRUA was, that you couldn't surrender in a combat. For example if your mages were all killed and you really didn't have a chance to win, you couldn't end the combat. You had to wait until all your remaining party members were killed. This could take ages. (best way was to unequip all armor and the walk away from monsters so that they could attack you from behind). A simple button to take you to the "load" screen would have made FRUA ten times better. The fact that I read all kinds of complains about the restrictions of FRUA concerning rule sets, art and so on, but never read a single thing about this problem, gave me the impression that most people didn't really play FRUA. 12) New skills and abilities that really show in combat. Stealing from Neverwinter Nights: Give the player the opportunity to knock down enemies, attack harder with the chance to do more damage but with the risk of not hitting the enemy. Again, the possibilities are endless. 13) Stealing from other games. I like "Tony hawk's pro skater" "return of the king" and "The punisher" a lot. Just because they reward you for playing flawlessly. It isn't just a matter of loading a save game over and over again until you master a certain situation. You really have to get better to get more experience points. Panzer dragoon saga gave experience points depending on how well you fought. It was an rpg, too. It's just an idea, I don't really know how to have this in a goldbox style game. Perhaps more experience points for fewer lost hit points? or you could have secondary goals in some battles ( you win the battle if you beat all opponents but get more experience points if all of the peasants survived. this could even trigger some event where a mayor thanks you for saving all the peasants or the like). or you could get more exp if it took you just x number of turns to win. as I said, it was just an idea, I wanted to show that you could steal from games of different genres to make the fights more fun.

Feel free to visit SourceForge and post any or all of these as feature requests. All that I ask is that you scan through the titles of the other requests first to avoid a double post.

Originally Posted by Stephan1980 and this brings me to the whole point of my typing: FUN!! the battles have to be fun. Everything and I really mean everything is going to be ineffective IN THE LONG RUN if people don't like the combats. The game is built around a combat system. Automatically darkening overland maps would be great, thief's skills would be great, perfect adaptions of greyhawk/ravenloft/dark sun/superhero settings and rules would be great. But if you really want people like me to play it, the core of the game itself has to be fun.

Again, this is personal taste. I guarantee if the story is lacking or bad, I will never play long enough to get to the first combat.

Originally Posted by Stephan1980 I really wanted to like Neverwinter nights, but I hated it because of the combat system. I played the main campaign and shadows of undrentide. I really dig the underdark and started to play hordes of the underdark for nwn, but I couldn't stand it, because I didn't have fun with it. Story and characters are great and important but Neverwinter Nights is a GAME and it is not a good game. I don't want to struggle through the game parts just to see how the plot continues. I want to have fun DURING the game and not only when the story continues. Yeah, it's great to have the d&d rules and endless possibilities to create your hero, but what is the use of it, if it isn't fun to play the game with him or her?

Did you not like the combat because it was real-time or because it was Third Edition AD&D as opposed to First Edition of the Goldbox games? Or, maybe a combo of the two and/or something else entirely?

Originally Posted by Stephan1980 I wrote this, because I have the impression or rather I fear that many designers will stop creating new adventures because of the lack of feedback. Yes UA needs to be improved, but I think the efforts don't always go into the right directions. I admire everyone who plays a role in designing, programming and creating for UA and DC. I really do! You can't imagine how much I bow my head to everyone. I have had so many memorable playing experiences back then and I often think of these times. I have never created anything for UA or DC, so you could think that I don't have any competence to talk about it. And I wondered if I should write about UA and DC for a long time. But now I think it's right for me to write this. I never created anything for UA or DC but I played hundreds of designs and I wrote feedback to the authors when I liked it.

I don't think that the fact that you've never created anything for FRUA or DC in any way delegitimizes your point of view. Every person is an expert at knowing what they like, or more typically, an expert at knowing what they don't like.
The above paragraphs are really more germaine to FRUA than to DC, as there are really only a few designs available to play. Most would-be designers, by their own word, are put off by DC not being finished rather than any other issue.
I'm curious to know what it is that we are doing that you think is in the wrong direction. Do you mean discussing Worldhacks and the such? Or, do you mean something int he development of the game? The main diference being what the fans are doing/thinking about doing and what the development team is doing, respectively.

Originally Posted by Stephan1980 Yes, the goldbox enginge is not dead. The community is there! But I'm convinced that most people in the community don't PLAY the games, they want to create. They have their vision and a story to tell. I'm asking if DC is the right platform for this vision if you don't like the combat system and try to tweak the enginge beyond it's limits to make a text adventure out of it. Or a perfect "rule simulator" that allows to play in your favorite world with every rule detail perfectly but without any fun. It's great that there are so many creators here, but without an audience, I'm convinced that there won't be a future.

I will speak on behalf of the DC community to say that everyone who is active in the forum at the moment has commented on FD's recently released demo. The Yahoo list hasn't commented because he hasn't posted over there, so those that are not members of this list do not know that there is a new design demo to try out.
(And as part of the FRUA community, please look to my above comments. Not only do I think that the current group of people support designs by playing and talking about them, Kaz-Keith is discussing an upcoming design to which many people have expressed interest in advance as to playing and reviewing it.)

Originally Posted by Stephan1980 Thanks for reading this, I'd love to hear your opinion. Bye Stephan

Thanks for writing this, Stephan. I think it does any project good to have an open and hearty discussion about topics involved with it.

To give you, and everyone else, a bit of contect into why I do what I do, let me tell you why I use DC and before it used FRUA. I love AD&D. I prefer 1e (the ruleset used for the Goldbox games) and 2e (used int he Baldur's Gate, Icewind Dale games), but have played many, many hours of 3e in NWN and the Myth Drannor game. I've even been playing as of late using the 4e rules (see the Tiny Adventures thread elsewhere in the forum if you're interested). I tolerate all levels of graphics and all kinds of combat systems as long as the stories are compelling and to be honest, sometimes when they are not.
I've played thousands of hours of AD&D on the computer since the late 1980's. But, my first love for AD&D was, and always will be, the pen and paper game. I've been playing this game for 25 years. (Yes, I am old, but not that old.) I don't mess around with DC to make Goldbox games. I mess around with DC in hopes that I've got one good game in me that I can somehow translate into a computer setting. FRUA and DC do not come close to allowing the kind of control as a designer that I can get with the pen and paper game. The Aurora toolset for NeverWinter Nights allows more control than FRUA/DC, mostly because you can be active as DM while the game is being played, but it's still not that close.
I'm a frustrated artist and writer who finds a small outlet with DC (among the other projects that I work on) and that's where I find the fun. Don't get me wrong, I obviously like playing games as well.

If anybody made it this far and is still awake, you should get a gold star.

[SilentThief]

We welcome the post, and any ideas you have; as well as a new user (Welcome to the forum, btw). Some of your suggestions we have posted as feature requests, some we can do, and the others sound like good suggestions.

The developers are still in the process of making the DC engine, and this means the DC game has some limitations compared to FRUA, but it does have a bunch of functionality that FRUA never had. It currently is a work in progress, tho.

ST
ps and I got a star for the long post

[Stephan1980]

Wow! Thank you all for the answers! You made many things clearer for me.
Unfortunately I don't have internet connection all the time right now, so I can't reply immediately. SO, sorry, for the late reply. I'm going to answer in detail soon.

Oh, and right now I'm really hooked again. I so hope that DC will be finished soon. I'd love to play a UA-style game so much right now.

Bye
Stephan

[manikus]

Post when you can. I think several of us at times, including myself, have connectivity issues.

[Arminius]

Welcome Stephen. I like your ideas about the ways the combat system could be improved upon. On the other hand, after earning my gold star for doing a forced march through manikus' post without stopping for rest, I feel that I must agree with his exception to your POV regarding the nature of FRUA/DC.

I actually sympathize with your aversion to the tendency that sometimes exists in the world of RPG to obsess with rules. That is one of the reasons I didn't like the newer edition rule books that came out for AD&D and the many AD&D clones that have followed. I think rules are an important aspect of traditional RPGs and a well designed set of rules can make any RPG a more enjoyable and rewarding experience but they can never be a substitute for the DM's ability to tell an epic tale that manages to completely immerse the player[s] and capture their imaginations.

Manikus is 100% correct that story and not combat is everything. Harri Polsa's designs prove that you can make a great game using FRUA or DC without any combat at all! However, I can and have enjoyed many different design styles created with FRUA. Some were combat intensive while some were more like first person graphic/text adventure games which I also happen to enjoy.

Personally what I look for in an RPG and get the most enjoyment out of [after the first qualification //IMMERSIVE PLOT!!!// is met] is character development [earning levels, learning new skills, gaining experience, raising stats, building wealth and then using it to get better equipment, etc.]. I would rather have the option to choose my combats or at least be able to flee and live to fight another day [when I've leveled up or become better equiped to handle an enemy I know I am not ready for yet] and not be thrown into and forced to fight an endless barage of random encounters.

But random encounters used in moderation and strategically placed higher risk/higher reward special encounters are of course a very necessary and desirable component to the above aspect of RPGs I am most attracted to. Without them my party would have to rely on the use of non-combat skills to gain XP and they would have to either rely on the skills of a thief to fund their adventures or be forced to earn an honest living doing odd jobs around town working for the man as a wage slave. Wheres the fun in that right? lol

BTW: One of my all time favorite CRPGs EVER was Bard's Tale [the original 80's version which I played on an Apple IIgs]. It was practically nothing but combat the whole way through it yet somehow it all worked and it was seriously addictive! So I have no doubts whatsoever that you can certainly create an enjoyable and highly addictive CRPG that is totally centered around combat.

But I also think you really have to know what you are doing to pull that off. You have to test and test and test and make lots and lots of calculations and tweaks to make sure every combat that happens in your game falls within a certain range of difficulty for which the PCs are prepared for [if not very well equiped or leveled up for - they should at least be aware of what they are getting into before the dying starts].

They should also be contextually appropriate from the PC's point of view. And the combats all need to be balanced with other elements of the game such as availability of weapons, armor, equipment and treasure at shops and special quest items, and the cost of goods and services in the relatively 'safe' zones where the PCs can buy and sell and trade goods and services.

So really I think making a good combat oriented game is actually more work and more difficult to do well than creating a well written story based adventure. The more so considering the fact that even the best designed combat oriented design must also have a well concieved and written plot to provide the context within which all combat encounters must live.

EDIT: TWO PLATINUM STARS to anyone who gets this far!

[LurchBrick]

I claim 2 platinum stars.

[Arminius]

Congratulations LurchBrick!

I ran across this review of one Gold Box game that failed. The review and the reasons listed for the failure of this game are relevant to this discussion so I thought I'd post a link to it. I think it provides a valuable lesson for all of us FRUA/DC designers with a perfect example of what NOT to do. And the game can be downloaded and played from the same page the review is on. So if you haven't already play the game and see why plot is so important to your game.

Spelljammer: Pirates of Realmspace

[manikus]

I also claim my two platinum stars.

In some senses, I think a false dichotomy is being created between story-telling and combat. In the context of a DC design, they are not and probably shouldn't be mutually exclusive. However, there are different interpretation of what combat may or should entail.
I'm going to be bold and say that random combat has no place in a design, but only with what I shall define random as. Random in the context of this statement is that it appears for an unknown reason at an unpredictable place and time. There should not be one single thing in a design, be it combat or a bit of punctuation in a text event that is not there for a reason. Let me give an example: Tim the game designer makes a 2-level dungeon. In the far corner of the bottom level is the boss for that level. In Tim's story, the level two boss has complete control over it's level, but nothing to do with the first level. Tim puts zone combat all over the second level to represent the creatures placed there by the boss to protect it. Tim creates a complex and interesting chain of combats that fire on a percentage chance if the event above it in the chain does not fire. This is what I think most FRUA/DC afficianados think of as 'random' combat, but it is far from it. Tim chose every creature, how likely they are to appear and in what area they are likely to occur, and most importantly they are there to support the story. It turns out that they're not random at all. But, let's say Tim runs out of steam and can't think of anything for the first level. He makes the level all one zone chooses the random combat event for that zone. Tim knows something will happen in that zone, but he doesn't know what and he doesn't know why. This is random combat, and this is what I'm saying doesn't belong in the design or any design. "WAIT!" You say. "Tim picked where the random combats were going to occur, doesn't that work under your definition?" No, it doesn't. Tim has no reason as far as the story is concerned nor does he know anything about the combats. "But, what if Tim decides that an evil wizard wants to keep the PCs away from the second level b/c he has a lair on the third level?" If the player can find this out at some point, the combats are no long random.
I am saying random is in the intent. If it's filler, it's random and you should cut it from your design. Note, this is aimed at the designers. A player doesn't need to necessarily know why something is happening when it's happening, but they will need to know at some point. Not to be rude to any members of the community who are just interested in playing, but the talk of creation is the realm of the designer.

Some more examples of appropriate, non-random combat:
You create a forest where various wild animals may engage the PCs on their adventures. - It is completely plausible that a designer would fill a forest full of animals to make it seem more real. That's not random

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