Back in the day I absolutely loved Dragon Age: Origins. The many different starting points, often having more than 2 completely binary options for the major plot points and lots of dialogue options made Origins sort of a precursor for me when it comes to roleplaying. I played as lots of characters that felt meaningfuly different from one another in that game, despite the confines of the videogame medium.
Dragon Age: Inquisition is not at all the same, and in many ways inferior to Origins (though in my opinion still better than Dragon Age 2). However, from the context of my current project, Inquisition is more interesting to me, as it focusses on building up a community. Though the excecution often isn't great, there are some ideas in there that I think are worth considering for my current project:
1. Focus on Root causes
A running theme in especially the first area The Hinterlands is that enemies will continue to roam the place endlessly until some underlying cause is resolved. It is a shame the underlying cause is basically always 'kill everything in the camp of faction X', but the basic idea, that fighting a symptom is insufficient to deal with a bigger issue, is good.
This is the approach I would like to take with project Social as well. Though, rather than putting the emphasis on fighting threats to the community I hope to encourage people to consider how these threats came about. Maybe the wolfpacks attack the sheep only because the hunters scare off or kill all the deer. Killing all the wolves should then be harder than (or at least, just as hard as) convincing the hunters to change their hunting practice. The same should be true of why people don't want to or simply cannot help you, why resources are unavailable, etc.
2. Background projects
One of the first things you are introduced to after the introduction of the game is the Wartable. Here you can give your advisors a task that they will complete in the background while you go off adventuring. As these tasks are resolved in real time, this reinforces the gameplay loop of Inquisition of 'go out into the world to do stuff' -> 'return to your base' -> 'go out into the world to do stuff' -> etc. Often doing stuff in the world will open up options in your base (party members wanting stuff, wartable options becoming available, upgrading your base) and the actions on the Wartable open up options in the outside world (new area's, expanding existing area's, gaining resources). The execution of this idea sucks for reasons I can get into in the comments, but the idea is interesting.
In project Social, the loop would be somewhat similar to the loop in Inquisition: i) The town needs something, ii) players go out to make that something possible, iii) to benefit from that something the town has to adapt. To give a more concrete example: 'The town needs iron for tools, the party secures a mine, the town needs to get the mine up and running'. Point iii) would be the equivalent of the Wartable actions on Inquisition, something that is taken care off, while the party goes out on their next adventure.
On paper I really like this. It emphasizes that the players aren't the only actors in the world and reinforces the idea that they need the town and its people just as much as the townspeople need them. The level of input players should have on these processes is something I am uncertain about. I would prefer the players are integrated into the community and not rulers commanding from on high. I'll have to return to this point later.
3. Factions with conflicting goals but a common cause
In Inquisition, everyone you can recruit wants to close a whole in the sky that is spewing demons (and later stop the Big Bad that put it there in the first place). However, what the world is supposed to look like afterwards is something everyone disagrees on. In fact, if you piss people off enough with your methods or stated goals, they might leave your group and continue independently.
I love this idea, as it forces you to think about how you'll want to improve things. Like, if the Guard is ineffective at keeping the people safe, you could push for reforms or just abolish the Guard and start a Militia or something. In a vacuum, you might be inclined to pick whichever option seems most likely to result in a safer town or whichever one takes the least resources, but if there are people or factions that are invested in the Guard or who have a vendetta against the Guard we now have to consider these factors as well as keeping the people safe.
How far I want to go with this is currently up in the air. On the one hand, I would love the idea of players having these different goals from oneanother and being forced into this position of needing to work together, while also trying to accomplish their own individual goals. On the other hand, that might be too limiting on the players, so maybe having factions with goals creates the same effect without forcing the players into conflict. I'll have to come back to this.
4. Modular Party
This works particularly well because of point 3, but I really like that after you start recruiting party members, you are never able to bring all of them with you. This means that depending on where you are going or what you plan to do you tailor your party not just based on their abilities and prowess, but also based on their beliefs about the subject. Again, the execution in Inquisition is far from perfect (at least in Origins, people would actually try to stop you if you chose to do things they fundamentally disagreed with), but the idea is interesting all the same.
For project Social that probably means I am going have to look into West Marches playstyles or take my socialization even further and divorce characters from players. The former would mean a cast of characters + a cast of players, and depending on the players available characters come along on the adventure. The latter would mean that there is a cast of characters and players can choose which one they want to play for this session, allowing for multiple players taking turns playing the same character. The last one seems like it would again be a step removed from the traditional tRPG experience, but I find it interesting enough that I'll keep it in mind as I move forward.
Irregardless of the way I want to do this, I'll clearly need some procedure that will allow it to make sense that some people aren't coming along with the adventure. I would probably want to tie this to these background processes mentioned above. Maybe you can improve the speed or the odds of success for these projects back at base if you can explain how your character makes a meaningful contribution. This would allow you to contribute to the game even while absent.
5. Cutting endless discussion short
There is a great little moment in Inquisition, that doesn't get enough attention in discussions in my honest opnion. During a little sidequest you get to talk to someone who ordered an ambush on you. You can respond immediately, or do the RPG thing, where you first ask endless questions. One of your companions has already made up her mind and wants to just get over with it and if you question the NPC for too long, she will interject and cut the conversation short. Unfortunately, this happens only once to my knowledge and is thus greatly under utilized.
This option, to ask endless questions even when it isn't narratively justifiable, is a staple of videogame RPGs, but I find it often creeps up in tRPGs as well. A lot of players end up seeing NPCs that they talk to as information dispensers, that will continue to talk to them for as long as your players want them to. It might be worth making a tiny MOSAIC strict system to allow GMs that would want that to let NPCs cut off a conversation to do so in an interesting way. Either because they are sick of talking to you, or because they are sick of you talking to someone else.
6. Requiring reputation or other resources to gain access to places and people
This is probably one of the worst executed ideas in Inquisition that would have been interesting had it been done well. To progress the story, you need to do certain main quests. All of these require you to have enough Power before you can start them. Power is an abstract stat that I think is meant to measure your militairy might, spy-network and connections, though to my knowledge this is never clarified in the game. With Power you can open up new area's in the world or progress the story. And that sort of makes sense, as gaining a foothold in an area that is very unstable would require some military force, or access from the ruling nobles or some spies to find the area of interest. Again, the execution is terrible, but the basic idea is really interesting. For example, there is a moment where you have to warn the Empress of a country about some terrible thing that will happen, however getting an audience with her is almost impossible. There is a ball coming up however, but you would need to be important enough to get an invitation. The way it is done in game is that you just need enough Power, which you get from doing any random quest, but the basic idea again is fascinating.
Project Social probably won't have that level of political intrigue, but this basic idea, that there are people who won't bother listening to you unless you have a certain reputation, or have proven yourself is something I would like to consider. Or, even just more broadly: the idea that you can't go somewhere unless you get enough people to help you reach it, seems like a lot of fun to me. Like maybe you want to enter an ancient cave system, but the entrance is blocked. Clearing it is going to be a massive endeavor for which you will need the support of at least X amount of people. Or get your hands on some magic that will do the trick. Or any other plan the players come up with that makes sense. I mean, it is still tRPGs, anything that makes sense and that people at the table can agree upon should be allowed.
7. Recruiting people to your cause
If there is one idea that Dragon Age Inquisition explores the worst of all, it is the idea that you don't only need the right material conditions, but also people that are willing and able to help. It seems to constantly flirt with this idea, but never meaningfully commits to it. We see this for one in how the symbol that represents Power is a person carrying a huge flag, remenicant of the symbolism of social movements, but the game primarly attempts to show this idea through your ability to recruite people to your cause. The only good thing I can say about recruiting agents in Dragon Age Inquisition, is that they aren't always immediately willing to help. Everything else about it, is horribly handeled.
However, neading to onboard people in order to get things done is something I would really like to explore more. I feel like often base building games make it seem like all you need is resources to get stuff done. This is the sort of 'investing' mentality that really irks me. If people aren't there to do the work, all the resources in the world won't get anything done. The premise of project Social is that everything currently sucks. People will probably have better things to do than try and make things better, even if they directly benefit from things being better. Of course the hunter wants to help get food, he is hungry as hell. But with an ill husband and a kid to look after he simply doesn't have the time. If his husband was healthy, or if there was someone trustworhy looking after the child it would be a different matter completely.
8.Optional Content and Multiple Routes
If I give a charitable reading of the Power system in Dragon Age Inquisition, I could see how it is a compromise to it to simulate something that is hard to do in videogames: the idea that you can achieve a goal in a large variety of ways. There are main quests in the game that further the story, but most of the content in the game is completely optional. And even with some of the main quests there is the implication that there are multiple ways to tackle a problem. Mind you, I don't think simulating the possibility of approaching a problem in various ways is the most likely reason the devs made these design decisions. You get rewarded with power for doing almost anything, so there is no need to stop and think about which approach you would like to take. And the story mission where you can choose your approach seems like it is mostly a contrived way to make you choose a side in the conflict between mages and templars. However, even if it wasn't one of the goals of their design, it is at least an side effect and one that I will gladly try to do better.
In project Social, the main area is lacking in various resources (food, ore, wood, hides, etc.) and very unsafe. The goal of the game is to change this for the better, and initially I wanted to create some sort of flowchart or techtree to show what would be required to get access to the next thing. Like, to get better weapons, you need a smith and a source of metal. But if I truly want to embrace the 'multiple routes' approach, I think I'll have to leave it way more open than that. So rather than a techtree, I would just note what is currently lacking and allow the reader/players to infer from that what is and isn't available. This approach has another potential benefit: it doesn't tell players or GMs what the correct level of detail is. Some tables will only require the fish to return to the lake and people daring to brave the open water to say that food has become more available. Others would also want to focus on getting wood for the ships, cloth for the sails and rope for the nets. Of course, if I don't give any structure or advice on how to run it, players and GMs might feel lost or overwhelmed, so I'll have to figure something out to prevent that from happening, while allowing for the variable detail and multiple routes that I would like to capture.
9. Item crafting
Crafting items in the first part of Inquisition is rather lame. It reliably gets you better gear than most stuff you can find as loot, but loot items tend to have fun effects that craftable items don't (like causing enemies to explode on death). That is, until you unlock the ability to create Masterwork Items. If you have a Masterwork Material, you can add it to an item to give it a cool bonus effect. From static bonusses (which are a bit boring), to having a chance to cast a spell or ability on hit, these give your items abilities that rival the stuff some of the better loot gives you. However, in true Inquisition fashion, almost all Masterwork Materials are really boring and the associated abilities have nothing to do with the material, making it a rather counter intuitive and lazy implementation, but the basic idea is amazing.
Crafting in RPGs is always hard to do satisfyingly. It either requires a shitload of work from the GM to create recipes, sorts of items or even unique qualities of specific items, or is so vague and freeform that it doesn't feel like crafting but more like purchasing with different flavor text. But I think I might be on to a way to do crafting that puts almost all of the creative work on the player end, while still making it feel like crafting. I'll probably dedicate an entire post to the idea, but basically the player has to describe what they want to do craftingwise, what result they expect and why they think it would work (yes this is directly lifted from the Chris McDowall's matrix game, that I had the pleasure of playing in).
10. Upgrading recipes
Other than gear you can also craft potions, elixers and grenades in Inquisition. Creating these is super simplistic and rather boring (have the recipe, spend 1 of the correct plant per potion, elixer or grenade), but the interesting bit comes from the idea that you can upgrade these recipes. This idea is really novel to me. Rather than having a large variety of poisons, there just is a single 'poison' that can be upgraded to do more things. The way it is done makes almost no sense, as to create poison you will always only need 1 of the same plant and upgrading simply costs a single payment of an assortment of plants per upgrade. But this does give me ideas for herbcraft in project Social. Expect a post on this somewhere in the future.
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