Gameplay

Unified Mechanics Ideas 

Dramatic Conflicts

Many in the d20 gaming community may have heard about Spycraft’s chase mechanics. Indeed, these rules are popular candidates for repackaging as Open Game Content.

The authors decided to take the concept of chases and develop it further. The basic set of mechanics used in chases has been simmered down and used for the basis for a variety of different situations called dramatic conflicts. In addition to chases, the dramatic conflict rules cover brainwashing, hacking, infiltration, interrogation, manhunts, and seduction. (The seduction rules are not just limited to romantic seduction; the scene with the Emperor and Luke Skywalker at the end of Return of the Jedi might be modeled as a non-romantic seduction.)

Three basic terminologies are retained from the chase mechanic: predator, prey, and lead. The aggressive character is designated the predator and the passive one the prey. The lead is a score from 0 to 10. If the predator reduces the lead to 0, she achieves her goal. If the lead is raised to 10, the prey “escapes” (resists the seduction, interrogation, etc.)

Dramatic conflicts are resolved in a series of conflict rounds. Each round, predator and prey each select a strategy. Strategies can change the lead as well as provide other benefits. The selection of strategies may be limited to the predator or prey, and may also be limited by skill ranks or class abilities. Most strategies are resolved with an opposed skill check; the particular strategy governs which skills may be used and possibly provide modifiers.

In play, dramatic conflicts provide formalized methods for conflicts other than combat, but still providing a feeling of evolving tension. Additionally, they can be used abstract away some action that might take a long time to resolve “on screen”, that might otherwise provide an excessive focus on the activities of a single character. This is probably the biggest boon to the espionage genre, as it facilitates more individual action without bogging down the game.

Dramatic Conflict Game Mechanic

Google Earth is a program that displays a 3D world with visible landmarks and satellite imagery and terrain.

Empowerment Activism Activity Map

Empowerment lightmap shows not only the places where people live with electric lights, it shows the places where people are emancipating or idealizing like little stars that grow into suns that connect. Communications show up like strands of light.

Earth At Night

http://www-static.cc.gatech.edu/~pesti/night/#

Orbital Movement

The globe can be orbited by rotation, altitude and angle.

Interfaces should stay on the edges of the screen, especially the bottom, and be minimalist translucent vector lines of white light.

A console is always available for issuing programmatic commands but it should not be necessary for normal operations or casual players will be intimidated and alienated.

Controls should be infinitely configurable, scriptable and saveable online along with other account information. Defaults should be easy to learn and a help button and key should show a keyboard overlay with rollover explanations of what each key command does.

What is the game like?

Playing the game is like having the power to try anything in the world without consequences.

The Key Power Center Locations

Sim Empowerment’s “game world” is meant to simulate whole Earth, but it can only achieve an incrementally improving approximation as new locations are modelled with ever increasing levels of detail.

It Has To Start Somewhere

Empowerment’s first version starts with some key power center locales and some iconic locales that can represent typical smaller regions from the school up to the town up to the national capital. The most important pla

The White House: Political

State Capitals:

Liberal, Conservative, & Battlegrounds

Campuses

Universities Georgetown

City Colleges

San Francisco: Silicon Valley Technology Industry

New York: Financial & Media Industry

Los Angeles: Hollywood Entertainment Industry

Vancouver: Cool place to network but cut off from US influence

Activism Simulation

The simple value of an “activist” simulator is the main new idea. Play a hindsight, run up against a really nasty outcome, identify the causes, go back in time, try to avert them without telling people you know the future.

A side-effect of Empowerment is that your perspective can be focused on your role so that this world seems the realest of worlds.

Automating the campaign world is an interesting goal.

Interests are a definite Idea feature. Reading things and doing things sparks interest in different topics.

tech: thumbscrews replace tool screws. Makes it serviceable without parts.

Empowerment network: the simplest payment form in the world: pay for the bandwidth cost to your provider!

 

Playing Empowerment

This document is an introduction to the gameplay of the Empowerment computer game.

Tutorial

The tutorial introduces new players to the Sim and familiarizes them with the controls and concepts needed to play the game competently in a very short time.

Profiling People

The personality profiling should show the whole character at once rather than making it take many steps. A single unified interactive profile is the interface with choices for fields displayed to the side column without covering things up like dialog boxes do. You click on each item to change it.

There are several steps to creating a character.

Flat Characters

Flat characters are like characters described in a story. They are figments of our imagination without substance outside of the context of our story. Story characters can be beloved by listeners and we may cry when something sad happens to them, but we know that this is art and not real.

When we start simulating story characters, they take on more complex attributes and behaviors outside of the context of the immediate story or player’s perspective. They may have simulated relationships with other NPCs and follow daily routines between work and home. They may have intricately modelled traits and a unique appearance. But they lack self-awareness. They do not know themselves to be alive, and they cannot deviate outside their programming in a signifigant way. Replication is a strong characteristics of life.

Open Data

Open data is as important to the Empowerment as open source code is, and it is far less abundant or popular.

Databases

satellite imagery

intellectual property

legal barriers

Computer-Aided Character Creation

Profiling a realistic Person approriate to a particular real-world culture is more complicated than concoting a fictional character in a pure fantasy game. Empowerment must provide assistance to inform players on what is appropriate for their chosen background.

Choosing a Name

Typing A Name

Uniquene IDs

Most online games enforce a uniqueness requirement for names but in the real world there are pages of the phone book for a single name. A different unique ID scheme is required to identify players. Heading 2

Random Generation

You can have a name generated that matches a chosen background ethnicity.

Assigning Abilities

Randomization Random abilities are generated and assigned. ‘Re-rolling’ is irrelevant if results greater than the assignment method cost skill points. Point Assignment Selecting Skills

Joining Worlds

Solo worlds

You can play single-player stories by running a solo world. This lacks the multiplayer interactivity of an online world but it can be played without an Internet connection. A solo world is served on the player’s computer locally, so a fast computer is needed to handle both client and server processing.

Online Worlds

If you have a fast Internet connection, you can play in online worlds with other players. The list of online worlds tracks their statistics and descriptions, telling the player how many people are in each world, what its admins have to say about it, what rules it runs by, etc. Worlds can be listed in groupings according to their administrators’ wishes. Thus several worlds with similar characteristics or shared affiliation can be seen in a tree format. Branched worlds with diverging versions are listed in this way.

Creating Worlds

Players who create worlds are just called Creators to clarify their all-encompassing power to create the world. Game-master is an antiquated term suited to the limited scope of role-playing. The debate about whether god intervenes in human affairs or set up the initial conditions and stands back is relevant and hilarious and deserves parody in the story.

Starting Stories

Branching from existing worlds

Multiple interwoven stories on a single world run by multiple storytellers. Running Worlds Playing

Playing Daily Life

Coming out of the womb and seeing the hospital and your mother, Seeing your life flash before their eyes as major memorable snapshots recur.

Talking to people on the street

Ecosystems

Civilizations

The SimEarth perspective of seeing technology advance from one age to the next can be done on the micro--scale by progressing your civilization all the way from stone age technology as activists instigating the various scientific and cultural revolutions.

Politics

Running for offices and getting appointed to offices, quote Pogo the monkey from GTAIII

Starting Organizations

One of the joys of playing Empowerment is that you can start organizations to achieve goals as a team.

Server Architecture

Individual sim servers can handle a limited number of regions and trade messages with other servers for interactions like global messages, players pass from one server to the next as they travel between areas, caching gets the server ready for you before you switch to keep it smooth

Unrealisms

Sometimes too much realism can get in the way of having fun. Many games have features that defy belief called unrealisms. Empowerment will incorporate some unrealisms to simplify development and make others optional for varying styles of play.

Why unrealism?

A fun-moded game is pretty much making up for the limitations of an imagination interface. In a full immersion sim, even boring events could become exciting and extraordinary without modification. Graphical Unrealisms Graphical unrealisms are largely due to technical limitations and don’t seriously interfere with gameplay. Identical Objects Duplicate game objects are identical copies to save space with a few variations to lessen the uniformity. Indestructible Objects Many walls, doors and other objects cannot be broken or damaged. Exaggerated Moon Size Many games greatly exaggerate the size of the moon in the sky to make it look more visible on a small computer screen.

Fog Many games have view distances limited by their hardware capabilities and fog or haze is a convenient way to let objects fade into view rather than popping in and out suddenly.

Gameplay Unrealisms

Gameplay unrealisms make the game less tedious or more enjoyable to play by cutting corners on how things really work in ways that frequently make a significant difference manipulating what happens.

Difficulty

The difficulty level is decreased to make people more easily influenced.

Instant Item Pickup

Walking over an item causes you to take it instantly without stopping you or disrupting the aim of your weapon.

Instant Item Usage

Using an item like a medical kit is instantaneous and requires no skills. Abandoning a weapon and drawing another is almost instantaneous. Seen in Quake and other early shooters. Inventory can be set by the creators to work different ways. I

Realistic Inventory

Everything the player carries is visible unless it goes into a container. For example, wallets go into pockets, computers into carrying cases. Items can be seen being taken out of their containers through an attached animation. Weapons go into holsters and rifles with shoulder straps hang visibly. Other characters can spot visible carried items. That way, a person carrying a missile launcher slung on his back will certainly arouse the attention of police. Held weapons pointed at people will arouse reactions like dodging out of the line of fire, crying out and fleeing unless they have other ideas like armor.

Unlimited Inventory

Players can carry as much as they want without any visible bulk except what is held in their hands. Optional maximum kg limits. This system is a popular unrealism in many games today like GTA III, Quake and Unreal.

Limited Equipment

You can carry an unlimited load of weaponry and gear without consideration of where you carry it. Or you can carry an arbitrarily limited amount of equipment.

Crosshairs

While using firearms, you have an artificial crosshair in your field of vision wherever you aim. This provides a +10% bonus on Ranged Attack.

Consistent Clothing

You can wear the same clothes every day without getting dirty or other people caring. Many cartoon characters are clothed consistentently to maintain their recognizability.

Unlimited Ammo

You can shoot and shoot without reloading.

Superhuman Strength

S

Vehicle Driver Invincibility

You cannot be injured while driving in a vehicle until it catches fire and explodes, even by clear shots and penetrations of the windows or chassis that would hit you.

Upturned Vehicles Explode

Streets are magically cleared of debris after a short time.

Perfect Medecine Revives Dead

Nobody has to die with magical medical miracles.

Bloodless

No red gore to offend or frighten anybody at the expense of realism.

Kills For Cash

You get money for kills with which to buy weapons from a limited selection.

Age Restrictions

Examples of games that have only superficial age differences or more restrictive ones. Sims children can’t do some things that kids can, for example.

Combat Unrealisms

Many combat oriented games employ a raft of unrealisms to make violence more cartoonishly fun and less horrifically real.

Respawning

When you are killed, you come back to life in a starting location after a short time.

Perfect Aim

In many early shooter games, shots hit your crosshairs unerringly. Running, jumping and recoil have no effect on the accuracy of your ranged attacks.

Reticle Aim

Reticle size is supposed to indicate the tightness of the aim. Showing the shaking of the gun itself would be much subtler and more realistic.

Damage Resistance

In games like GTA, damage that would normally kill is only slightly damaging, allowing players to jump off 3rd story rooftops without dying or suffering permanent injury.

Ablative Armor

Armor absorbs damage and degrades until it runs out and injuries are sustained by the wearer directly.

Age Restrictions

Examples of games that have only superficial age differences or more restrictive ones. Sims children can’t do some things that kids can, for example.

Precognition Rewind

You can actually rewind time if you just had an experience that was precognitive of an impending event.

Time Slowing Combat

Breaks down in multi-player, easier to just make attacks artificially hit more and dodging better.

Turn-based vs Realtime Initiative

Many RPGs simplify initative letting participants simply take turns for an arbitrary number of actions per round. Allow people to use this old system if they mustl, with “realtime equivelants”.

Respawning

Players who get killed can come back to life in a random area controlled by friendlies after a short delay such as 10 seconds.

Equipment Protection

You can’t steal people’s equipment after they die.

Team Switching & Balancing

You can switch teams. The game can automatically equalize the number of players on teams. RPG elements of technology are there for fun. Eg. Neocron-gene replicators and goguardians let you transport and respawn.

Retro Gaming

Sometimes a modern player will be using an old engine with antiquated unrealism parameters. Object lists for the early game or for historical accuracy of what the system is capable of. You can’t reduce things to technology levels. Technologies have dates. Technology is a timeline and not just an era

Combat Multiplayer Mission Types

These are some common game types of multiplayer combat matches. King of the Hill The player who spends the most time in the central area of the map wins. Last One Standing: The winner is the last player or team standing. Body Count The winner is the player who has the most kills at the end of the game. Escape Players must get a VIP or their entire team out alive. Skirmish The map is seeded with randomly placed enemies, whom the player must defeat. Coop Missions The game plays like a single-player mission, with the same objectives, enemies and so on. If your team does not have the required equipment for a mission, a chat message will go out informing all players of this and the game will not advance. Escape The players must make it from the insertion zone to the extraction zone. Team vs Team Multiplayer Search and Rescue The winner is the team that finds the hostages placed on the map and escorts them to safety successfully. The hostages are invulnerable to fire. Last Man Standing The winner of this game is the last team still alive at the end of the game. If time runs out before one team can eliminate all of its rivals, the win goes to the team with the most kills. Flag Domination A number of objectives in the map must be held as long as possible. Controlling the flag area in a 10 meter radius grants control. One point is accumulated for each flag held for every round. Capture the Flag Teams have bases and flags, cannot capture enemy flag without returning your own Classic Games Although simulation gaming focuses on the real world, there are many classic computer game worlds that have enthusiastic fans who will jump at the chance to translate their favorite universe into the Empowerment system. Classic game worlds must be done carefully to avoid violating the rights of the original creators, and so will be treated elsewhere. Two common game types are callede Tactical and Deathmatch. Real Time Strategy scenarios of tactical command of large forces. Players issue commands to forces who work for them. Fog of War fog of war affects commander knowledge and invovlement, GMs may aside a tactical player to handle an unobservable engagement secretly after which they can try to report to commander, who must keep issuing orders without being there. Game bots are the precursors of Sims and ultimately Ints or Intelligences.

Roleplaying Game Time vs. Simulation Microseconds

The simulation cannot be the same as the roleplaying system because it occurs in real-time detail instead of second-based abstraction in the imagination.

Examples

BioWare’s Baldur’s Gate, Neverwinter Nights and Knights of the Old Republic convert the round-based D&D RPG to a hybrid real-time rounds system. The types of compromises made there are interesting.

Simulation Combat

In roleplay, the players roll dice and cannot influence the skill-based result of their attacks by direct participation. In simulation, the player has direct control of their weapon, and skills can only modify the accuracy or performance of their hand-aimed attacks. There are a number of approaches to this.

Auto Aim

The player merely chooses a target by pointing in their general direction and the character automatically aims and fires according to their skill. The accuracy is determined by the character’s skill and luck like in role-play, so even if the player points at the target perfectly with an unskilled character the shots will likely miss. This deemphasizes reflexes and gaming experience and emphasizes the importance of character skills, preventing expert gamers from shooting much better than their character could do.

Player Skill versus Character Skill

Sometimes a player will have a skill their character does not, such as combat reflexes.

Automatic deviation

The player still has to aim but the skill and other modifiers cause the margin of error to increase, causing well-aimed shots to deviate somewhat. This emphasizes both player skill and character skill, because without both, the shots will not be accurate.

Perfect aim

The weapon always hits exactly what the player points at without any deviation or scattering. This is unrealistic but makes player skill supreme.

Serious Violence

It is not the realistic depiction that makes violence in videogames dangerous; it is the lack of serious consequences that disassociates violent acts from their horrifically inhuman consequences. When game characters die, players laugh because those characters had no signifigance or life to be taken away. This is rather like the difference in attitudes people have towards killing of pets as opposed to killing of cows. By giving pets names and love, people anthropomorphize them and attach some of the human right to life. Animals that we never see or name have no such right to live in the eyes of many people. The consequence of killing the pet is the heartbroken family, whereas the consequence of killing the cow is the desired food product. Videogame characters merit no tears because they have no individuality to be lost.

Time Compression

Time compression of various types is one of the essential unrealisms simulations use to compress the important parts of long processes into brief sessions. It is a staple of simulation and strategy games. It is used in fiction and film narrative.

Some games gloss over time to make it more rapid, but this would be silly if a player tried to do something realistic involving time. E.g. The Sims makes bathroom breaks take a disproportionate amount of time in the day. Uplink lets you fast-forward when you are waiting for something to happen.