I'm Jacob Kurzer, Creative Lead and Designated Recipient of All Cathartic Yelling for Rule of Cool. I've also written a couple of RPGs. Today, I'd like to tell you about an accident called Legend and the virtues of planned RPG parenthood. Let us set the stage ...
A long time ago in a forum far, far away....
It is the twilight years of D&D 3.5.
The once-great Communities have fallen
into tremendous and often hilarious decadence,
languidly stirring to debate the merits of monks. It is
into this community that a vivacious hero springs. He is
bold, but somewhat idiotic.
He is also me...
Back in 2009, I started an arena game called the Test of Spite, pitting various characters against a cruel obstacle course and each other. Little did I know I would come up with almost fifteen pages of altered abilities, banned feats, and rules clarifications to ensure that the Test of Spite could be run fairly. Perhaps farthest from my imagination was that I had accidentally begun to write an RPG. At the time, I couldn't tell what was happening; but looking back, it's evident that the turning point from arena balancing to RPG writing was my decision to create a couple of augmented base classes. My intent was to reduce the amount of esoteric book knowledge required to be truly competitive in the Test of Spite. Until then, I had never specifically added new content. Of course, the first few attempts weren't pretty. In fact, they were downright wretched. But people still enjoyed the classes because they could stab a Wizard -- touted king of kings among classes -- like it was nobody's business. And so, three months later, I received a text from a fellow referee for the arena:
"I think we've got enough material to make a book."
Predictably, me being an idiot -- did you forget the subtle foreshadowing in the prologue? -- we pasted huge blobs of text into a text document, mixed in a significant portion of the Open Game Content from D&D, and called it SUPR: the Static Underlying Progression Revision -- catchy, eh?
I rate it as one of my greatest fumbles. Legend was a long ways away.
Piece by piece, we did everything completely wrong. We never made a design document. We never made an outline. We didn't lay roots in the community, instead ignoring the entire existence of D&D's Fourth Edition and ostracizing the still-nascent Pathfinder community (in hindsight, this probably ranks as one of our biggest blunders).
We neither produced consistent material nor produce material consistently. We didn't implement review procedures or revision control. We used poor communication and collaboration tools.
So, piece by piece, we had to make it better, stronger, faster. As we fixed each of these problems, we would realize the purpose and shape of Legend.
In a sense, Legend is an apology, a long-hand love letter to a hobby I had carried, with so many others, into an ivory tower. It's perhaps the first large project I've ever finished. I'm immensely proud of it; but simultaneously, like that letter, it's a little embarrassing. Its most serious flaws are my fault. Its excesses are mine, its noticeable aversions my own coyness. So, dropping the illusions, I would like to invite you to follow me through these next few columns as I talk about some of the design mistakes we made, some of the clever fixes we made, and how a designer capitalizes on good ideas. In each column, I'll dig into a single issue, and then talk about our solutions and other solutions found in the industry at large. In this column, I'll talk about how we ran into incredible problems with play-testing in our first attempt at making an RPG. Then we'll talk about how some design policies from the software industry can be cleanly applied to the problem, and what that wins you.
One of the first problems we hit was that we'd inherited a huge snarled mess in the form of Third Edition's multiclassing system. The system allows you to alternate class levels, or arrange them any-how you want within certain (often arcane) limits. As a result, there is an implicit relationship between the design of each class and the design of every other class. On top of that, Third Edition was plagued with huge swaths of characters that were either very bad or, in some cases, even unplayable. In that system, changes to one class affected and altered the worth of every other class -- in fact, every level of every other class.
One of my close friends who works in test automation mocked me relentlessly for even thinking about this as a testable system.
I deserved it.
During the first wave of testing, about half of the truly excellent character builds contained either two levels of Paladin or three levels of Monk. Berserkers, archers, arcane researchers, master summoners, even sneaky thieves all had a spare set of beautiful monastic robes or a handy holy symbol. (At this point, we hadn't shifted away from the idea of immutably depicting the flavor of the class in its mechanics.) This wouldn't have been as large of a problem normally, but these classes also carried class requirements which exacerbated the problem. Playtesters bent over backward to make sure they satisfied alignment restrictions and creed rules.
While I'm glad we later dropped those restrictions, then discarded alignment entirely and radically changed the paladin's creed for a minimalistic approach, I was incredibly grateful they existed at the time. They highlighted a certain stupidity in lying to players about how to best build, say, a Barbarian, and then lying to game masters about how the game would support their campaign worlds. Why have cohesive classes if they represent a deeply sub-par approach to the game?
I racked my brain for a solution, and we started damage control. The Paladin got scrapped for a complete rewrite that removed enormous parts of the class. Then we rewrote it again, bringing those parts back. Then we rewrote it a third time. With the third rewrite, we settled on a bizarre little system for just the Paladin. Paladins got most of their items from their class and chose two sets of abilities from a total of four sets. Then they got a third set of abilities common to all Paladins. Shortly, the Rogue was rewritten to follow a similar scheme, though the Rogue didn't get items from its class.
This was when my co-author, Chris Campbell, mentioned something odd. He found it easiest to think of balancing any given part of the Rogue in terms of the Rogue's other ability sets. Tuning the class was pretty easy. Making sure it was balanced against Paladin was also easy. In what turned out to be a totally awesome plan, he made the petrifying suggestion that we move all classes to a "tracked" system, where each ability set became a "track."
After making a few character prototypes with the track system, we made one giant leap: we tore out the entire concept of class balance. Instead, we focused on these tracks, which were smaller sets of abilities that were easier to test and to polish. Sure, they snap together to look like classes, but Legend is really about these tracks of abilities. Even items and feats are actually organized in similar manner, though it's less obvious. Finally, we switched to a multiclassing method where you could simply exchange one of your tracks for any other track. Combining this approach with rigorous metrics and strict rules about interaction between tracks, we were able to build a system where small groups of people could comfortably work independently.
But tracks aren't just a slick way of handling multiclassing. They're a slick way of breaking the tight coupling that makes designing and writing RPGs so difficult sometimes. A track merely needs to meet the metrics for damage or utility, and be sufficiently independent of other tracks. Then, if it is approximately balanced in worth with similar tracks, it can be released into the wild for play-testing. We've had shockingly few surprises. This is called loosely-coupled design in the software industry, and it hinges on the idea that complex systems can be made simpler by making their parts more independent and more interchangeable.
Yet, in order to actually take advantage of this cool idea, we had to throw away about 3,500 man-hours of work. Two whole classes were pitched. Nine months of work on an economy system was thrown away in an afternoon. Huge swaths of the early Legend design were.... actually left totally unscathed, and were completely usable. One of the hard realities is that, to be clever, you must learn carefully what to toss and what to keep. Part of being clever is admitting you weren't clever before; but part of being clever is making only small changes when you can.
Another interesting example that I just indirectly touched on was that we threw away gold as a currency. In fact, we threw away most of what would traditionally be thought of as a currency when we tossed our economy system. Legend's magic item economy doesn't involve wealth at all. Hoarding items isn't an issue either, because we changed how characters equip items. Changes like this, which seemed wild, actually enable the game to work much more smoothly. It's really easy to add new things to Legend. We just draft, balance, and test a new track, which is something I'll talk about more in later columns. I think it's worth including some proof of this process, so you'll find our most recent track at the end of this column.
The lessons we learned from the success of tracks have helped to inform a great deal of the process of creating Legend. Seeing how well they worked also helped give us hope that we were on the right track for creating the kind of system we wanted to create. The next column will delve further into that creation process, addressing playtesting and how to use it. Thanks for sticking with me this long, and stick around for the next column!
New Track: Knight
Skilled swordfighters, accomplished riders and excellent jousters, Knights are the go-to men when a monster needs slaying, or a war needs fighting. While traditionally Knights are considered honourable and just, plenty of less-than-scrupulous individuals use that image to take advantage of unsuspecting victims.Acquiring the Knight track changes your KOM to Strength unless Strength is already your KDM.
Special: Knight is only available with Guild Initiation.
Restriction: Knight abilities do not function while unarmed or using weapons based on unarmed attacks, such as Knuckledusters.
1st Circle -- Deadly Blades: Any successful combat maneuver you perform deals additional damage equal to your KOM plus your character level. This damage is [Precision] damage, and applies to all maneuvers, including Charge, except Power Attack and Deadly Aim. This damage never stacks with itself. So, for instance, if you Trip on a Charge due to some special ability, it only applies once.
2nd Circle -- Valiant Challenge: Creatures in your [Melee] range must attack you if able when making melee attacks. The first instance of this ability to apply against a given creature overrides subsequent instances, so the first Knight to arrive is the mandatory target until he leaves, even if a second Knight also engages the same foe at a later time.
3rd Circle -- Indefatigable: As a move action, you may become [Steadied] for one [Round]. While [Steadied], you may make one additional attack of opportunity each [Round], and whenever you make an attack of opportunity, you may place yourself anywhere inside your [Melee] range. This does not trigger attacks of opportunity, as it is not movement.
([Steadied] is a new condition granted by the Knight's Indefatigable ability. It has no inherent effect, but represents the Knight's defensive stance.)
4th Circle -- As The Six Hundred: You may Charge twice as a standard action: make a Charge, and then make a second Charge immediately afterwards. The penalties and benefits of these Charges do not stack.
5th Circle -- Interrupt: While [Steadied], once per [Encounter], you may negate any one ability used within your [Melee] range as an immediate action. This includes spells or spell-like abilities cast within your [Melee] range, but not regular attacks. You may also use this ability against ongoing effects such as [Fast healing]. They are negated for one [Round], which still counts against their duration.
6th Circle -- On Heroes: As part of a Charge, at any point in the Charge, you may move anywhere within your [Melee] range and make a [Bonus attack]. This movement does not provoke attacks of opportunity. After you make this [Bonus attack], you may continue your Charge in a straight line from your current location.
7th Circle -- New And Old: You may use any combat maneuver other than Charge in place of an attack of opportunity. Alternatively, you may Flurry with your attacks of opportunity. This allows you to make two attacks instead of one. Additionally, you may now use Interrupt twice per [Encounter].
