Let's Talk Game Mechanics!

[BigBaboon]

Does anybody dig in board and TTRPG games mechanics?
Namely - intrigue mechanic from The song of ice and fire RPG and social conflict from Diaspora come to mind.

 

[Saki_Sliz]

I'm not sure I'm familiar with what a TTRPG is.

 

[Synx]

I'm not sure I'm familiar with what a TTRPG is.

Table top Rpg. Like Dungeons and Dragons. Every character has a set of attributes which allows for certain interactions with npcs or the environment. Like having high enough illusion skill to see a fake door. Or strenght to lift up an heavy bolder blocking the road. It's often combined with a dice roll for a big of rng/luck involvement.

It's an interesting concept and can be converted to a game (Pathfinder as an example), but for a one man of even a small team it's a lot of work and I doubt it's feasible.

Got a question for you though: How would you integrate like slave training in a story? Pretty much all the slave training games, the training is the story.

 

[BigBaboon]

Table top Rpg. Like Dungeons and Dragons.Every character has a set of attributes which allows for certain interactions with npcs or the environment.

Computer RPG. Like Final Fantasy VII. Every character has a set of attributes which allows for certain interactions with npcs or the environment. Sorry, i couldn`t resist.
Table top RPG are much more than attributes and dice rolls.
Specifically -

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(warning! - 52 mb PDF). Chapter 8 - Intirigue. It is very nice social interaction mechanics, which can nicely model anything from seduce princess to decieve her about your intentions.
Diaspora -

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(warning! - 32 mb). Chapter 7 Social combat. Completely different but extremely potent mechanic with some examples.

It's an interesting concept and can be converted to a game (Pathfinder as an example), but for a one man of even a small team it's a lot of work and I doubt it's feasible.

Pathfinder and GURPS are extremely (sorry - I like this word) heavy. I think that are heaviest playable RPG systems. There are lots of lighter game mechanics that can be converted to a computer game.

 

[Kinderalpha]

Computer RPG. Like Final Fantasy VII. Every character has a set of attributes which allows for certain interactions with npcs or the environment. Sorry, i couldn`t resist.
Table top RPG are much more than attributes and dice rolls.
Specifically -

You must be registered to see the links

(warning! - 52 mb PDF). Chapter 8 - Intirigue. It is very nice social interaction mechanics, which can nicely model anything from seduce princess to decieve her about your intentions.
Diaspora -

You must be registered to see the links

(warning! - 32 mb). Chapter 7 Social combat. Completely different but extremely potent mechanic with some examples.

Pathfinder and GURPS are extremely (sorry - I like this word) heavy. I think that are heaviest playable RPG systems. There are lots of lighter game mechanics that can be converted to a computer game.

This could totally be done. The only thing getting in the way is design. Not a lot of us have great game design experience or the knowledge in how to implement mechanics as described successfully with adult content on top of it. It's tricky, but doable. This is a design problem id approach with a design document describing all the mechanics of and what roles they play in the game itself. Then take that document and share it with people to see if it's coherent and probable. If you're willing to draw it up, I bet somebody would be on board to program it (myself included). It's worth a shot.

 

[BossFloof]

I think for adult games a lot of designers leave the power of environmental storytelling aside, trying to tell you everything straight in your face. This prevents you as a player from actually immersing yourself into the world and also from growing with your own experience of the game. From this you could derive some interesting gameplay aspects, particularly for dating-sims.

For Nitro Girlz, we're trying to work with that kind of approach in multiple ways. The game blends arcade racing in an open-world city with a dating-sim.

You need to figure out yourself, what kind of driving maneuvers ("stunts") each girl likes to impress her the most when taking her out on a date. You cannot really fail as it is just a little harder to keep her excited all the way from pickup to date location. Knowing her preference will let you optimize the dating grind and lead to a more satisfying experience for optimizers.

Also, you need to learn the city. This will help you to find good stunt routes with semi-hidden shortcuts, again providing a more joyful game experience. You feel like you're gaining knowledge of the game world and its actually helpful for the game.

We also don't want to show you how many points a certain action provides. Instead, you have to get a feeling for what your date likes and what she doesn't. She reacts to your actions, of course, to make it easier to distinguish how successful it was. But on a real date you also don't see a score tracking your success with your partner and that makes it interesting and challenging.

The dating locations are planned to have some details that will again help you to figure out, what location will be best suited for a specific girl. Again, we don't tell, it's something you can find out but also you will never fail if you don't.

We believe this will lead to a better "game feel" and fill our smaller open-world with enough life and exploration to make up for a content-galore by just providing a lifeless-but-huge game world.

In my opinion, adult games don't need complex game mechanics with potentially hard-to-balance systems. I think HuniePop became such a success because it had a simple core mechanic but gave it a meaning by creating some actual meaning around it - not just clear the board, but ind the best combo for the current girl. It could have been even better if it didn't tell you straight-forward the preferences, tho.

 

[Kinderalpha]

I think for adult games a lot of designers leave the power of environmental storytelling aside, trying to tell you everything straight in your face. This prevents you as a player from actually immersing yourself into the world and also from growing with your own experience of the game. From this you could derive some interesting gameplay aspects, particularly for dating-sims.

For Nitro Girlz, we're trying to work with that kind of approach in multiple ways. The game blends arcade racing in an open-world city with a dating-sim.

You need to figure out yourself, what kind of driving maneuvers ("stunts") each girl likes to impress her the most when taking her out on a date. You cannot really fail as it is just a little harder to keep her excited all the way from pickup to date location. Knowing her preference will let you optimize the dating grind and lead to a more satisfying experience for optimizers.

Also, you need to learn the city. This will help you to find good stunt routes with semi-hidden shortcuts, again providing a more joyful game experience. You feel like you're gaining knowledge of the game world and its actually helpful for the game.

We also don't want to show you how many points a certain action provides. Instead, you have to get a feeling for what your date likes and what she doesn't. She reacts to your actions, of course, to make it easier to distinguish how successful it was. But on a real date you also don't see a score tracking your success with your partner and that makes it interesting and challenging.

The dating locations are planned to have some details that will again help you to figure out, what location will be best suited for a specific girl. Again, we don't tell, it's something you can find out but also you will never fail if you don't.

We believe this will lead to a better "game feel" and fill our smaller open-world with enough life and exploration to make up for a content-galore by just providing a lifeless-but-huge game world.

In my opinion, adult games don't need complex game mechanics with potentially hard-to-balance systems. I think HuniePop became such a success because it had a simple core mechanic but gave it a meaning by creating some actual meaning around it - not just clear the board, but ind the best combo for the current girl. It could have been even better if it didn't tell you straight-forward the preferences, tho.

This is the type of design I hope to see in the future of games on here. Especially the part on letting the player feel the personality and environment rather then telling the player how they should feel and interpret things. This is a perfect example of what otherwise would be thought of as a tough design mix (racing and sex)

 

[Saki_Sliz]

Table top

*physically facepalms* of course! derp
me and a few friends have each been working on our own table top designs. I was actually exploring a Magic The Gathering like deck for making random dungeons, but the randomness made it terrible no matter what distribution curves I used. had to give it up until I try another time.

Got a question for you though: How would you integrate like slave training in a story? Pretty much all the slave training games, the training is the story.

The concept is pretty simple, stories need 2 main things, a conflict (no matter what I have tried, this is a must to allow people to be interested or find the story satisfying), and some amount of progression (even if you don't solve the main conflict in the first few games).

now, the question is, who do we care about, is this the story of someone (the player) conquering the slave (power fantasy?), or is this the story of the slave? Now I don't want this to sound like I am talking about perspective, because who would want to be the slave? don't answer that... sure you can be the trainer, and the story can be about you, but if the story is more focused on the slave, you can take on a more cartoonish or narrative 3rd person approach, where as we are interested to see how the slave will adapt, where as the focus on the trainer's perspective is more about how will you the trainer adapt.

slave training game is about slowly working a character into becoming I guess a sex slave. This can be as simple as those grope in the right order games, to picking the right dialog options, to a full blown dating sim. But it is usually about getting the slave to be more comfortable or accepting of the advances, but there are a few more edgy "just break the damn bitch" games/stories. regarless, this is the natural progression mechanic of the story, and how you break down the stages of progression controls the pacing of the story.

While most of the time the main conflict or point of interest is you the players want to train the girl, I'm more interested in the girl's internal struggles, and slowly training herself (with some assistance ) which I don't think I have seen done well, so its what I am currently exploring. I am currently working on a dungeon crawling rpg-ish concept, where each level you start from zero and go all the way through the level and the slave progression, before being able to get out and unlock new fetishes, got a basic story/intro and working template art, now I am just coding it.

 

[BigBaboon]

If you're willing to draw it up

Challenge accepted. The results would be published before week`s out.

 

[SwordOLight]

The #1 game mechanic that I hate seeing in an H-game is time slots.

Devs create time slots as a substitute for gameplay. They create the most vapid loops of grinding through menu selections until you find the only one that increases a variable. Then, once you find the loop, you are expected to repeat it a minimum of three times but upwards of dozens.

Why repeat an action multiple times?

Is there a time limit? No.

Any kind of fail state? No.

Is the social interaction tied to deeper secondary gameplay loop like in the Persona games? No.

Then why isn't this a visual novel? It would be better paced and make players more satisfied. Oh, is it because your story and character are trash and if you spent any amount of time with them the players would lose any investment in the sex scenes so you have to lull them into a bored stupor from which the slightest hint of a tit would be exciting.

Any games of this type which is successful is only successful on the merit of art.

I submit as my final piece of evidence the comment section of any game with time-slots which are filled with people seeking to avoid engaging with it by asking for saves, cheats and walkthroughs.

 

[khumak]

My favorite mechanic for progression is something that most games don't really seem to use and that's the idea of discovering secrets about characters which then unlocks additional content with them. The games I know of that do this the best are Long Live the Princess and Time Loop Hunter. I've been wanting to develop something that expands on that sort of idea using MC's reaction to those secrets to delve into a more extreme kink (or not) depending on MC's reaction to tailor the game's experience to the player a bit better.

So for instance you could have a game where MC catches the wife flirting with a guy. If he confronts her about it and makes it clear he won't put up with that then her cheating path gets restricted or shut down entirely. If he either pretends not to notice or tells her he gets off on it then it could lead to NTR/Cuck type stuff. The flipside would work as well where the wife sees hubby flirting with a woman and tells him she was jealous but that it was also a turn on. MC could choose to take advantage of that and open up options for cuckqueen stuff or maybe wife swap, swinger stuff or he could promise to be good and shut down that path.

Or maybe they go out dancing and the wife hits the dance floor with her girlfriend. If MC tells her he thought that was hot, it could lead to her being interested in lesbo stuff. Otherwise she'd be restricted to just MF stuff. Maybe they do set up a lesbo scene later and one of them brings up the idea of a threesome. Depending on MC's reaction that could open up options for MFF later.

 

[Kinderalpha]

The #1 game mechanic that I hate seeing in an H-game is time slots.

Devs create time slots as a substitute for gameplay. They create the most vapid loops of grinding through menu selections until you find the only one that increases a variable. Then, once you find the loop, you are expected to repeat it a minimum of three times but upwards of dozens.

Why repeat an action multiple times?

Is there a time limit? No.

Any kind of fail state? No.

Is the social interaction tied to deeper secondary gameplay loop like in the Persona games? No.

Then why isn't this a visual novel? It would be better paced and make players more satisfied. Oh, is it because your story and character are trash and if you spent any amount of time with them the players would lose any investment in the sex scenes so you have to lull them into a bored stupor from which the slightest hint of a tit would be exciting.

Any games of this type which is successful is only successful on the merit of art.

I submit as my final piece of evidence the comment section of any game with time-slots which are filled with people seeking to avoid engaging with it by asking for saves, cheats and walkthroughs.

I think this is a problem that arises from developers trying to push the boundaries of what a visual novel is. That's why I always suggest those who are trying to actually work gameplay into their game outside of story delivery need to use something other than a visual novel format. This has been growing in popularity though and I think we'll see this trend fade away.

 

[BigBaboon]

Say - a player character (PC) is described with standard RPG attributes: Strength, Dexterity, Constitution, Intelligence, Wisdom, Charisma, Background, Alighment (Good-Neutral-Evil, Lawful-Neutral-Chaotic), Equipment (Armor, weapon, clothes, jewelry etc) Current effects (Wounded, Deseased, Cursed, Blessed etc).
Any given NPC is attracted or repelling to some attributes or actions of player and this dictates demeanor of NPC toward player character.
Examples:
Fantasy setting, NPC - noble lady N likes Handsome type (High Strength, HIgh Charisma attributes) from far lands (Equipment items with tag "Exotic") with ruthless modus operandi (Evil aligment).
Modern setting, NPC - college girl M likes Intellectual types (High Intelligence and Wisdom attributes) with "Victim" tag (needs help cause wound or desease) with "Wild protector" modus operandi (DRUID!! , in modern setting: Eco-activist).
So if PC attributes and actions coincide with NPC preferences - NPC demeanor is favorable. Otherwise - player needs to level his character accordingly to NPC preferences.
For full NPC interactions tables -

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[Twistty]

Sort of off topic - but on topic as well.

A House In The Rift - Ren'py
That game has a combat scene, random events, etc.
Basically a bit of all that you need for most games.
Unren-ing the game and looking at the code - is inspiring.
(But a bitch to mod - lol -

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is a must -

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page)
ZanithOne - is one of the more talented game coders I have seen lately.

Fun game as well - worth checking out.

 

[Kirh]

My favorite mechanic for progression is something that most games don't really seem to use and that's the idea of discovering secrets about characters which then unlocks additional content with them. The games I know of that do this the best are Long Live the Princess and Time Loop Hunter. I've been wanting to develop something that expands on that sort of idea using MC's reaction to those secrets to delve into a more extreme kink (or not) depending on MC's reaction to tailor the game's experience to the player a bit better.

So for instance you could have a game where MC catches the wife flirting with a guy. If he confronts her about it and makes it clear he won't put up with that then her cheating path gets restricted or shut down entirely. If he either pretends not to notice or tells her he gets off on it then it could lead to NTR/Cuck type stuff. The flipside would work as well where the wife sees hubby flirting with a woman and tells him she was jealous but that it was also a turn on. MC could choose to take advantage of that and open up options for cuckqueen stuff or maybe wife swap, swinger stuff or he could promise to be good and shut down that path.

Or maybe they go out dancing and the wife hits the dance floor with her girlfriend. If MC tells her he thought that was hot, it could lead to her being interested in lesbo stuff. Otherwise she'd be restricted to just MF stuff. Maybe they do set up a lesbo scene later and one of them brings up the idea of a threesome. Depending on MC's reaction that could open up options for MFF later.

The problem with that approach is that what most developers try to do is offer content to the players, by restricting the content in this way you have a good chance that a lot of scenes will be "wasted" by not being seen by every player. That's why pretty much all modern games have no optional content anymore whereas it was pretty common back in the days to have secret areas, secret bosses, etc.

Imagine you have 3 players, one who likes lesbian stuff, one who likes NTR, one who likes swinger stuff, they will all be left unsatisfied with your game because they will only see 1/3 of the content of your game. If instead you make a full lesbian game, the players who aren't into that won't play it, so they won't leave a negative or average review and the one who likes it will be happy and much more likely to support you.

 

[khumak]

The problem with that approach is that what most developers try to do is offer content to the players, by restricting the content in this way you have a good chance that a lot of scenes will be "wasted" by not being seen by every player. That's why pretty much all modern games have no optional content anymore whereas it was pretty common back in the days to have secret areas, secret bosses, etc.

Imagine you have 3 players, one who likes lesbian stuff, one who likes NTR, one who likes swinger stuff, they will all be left unsatisfied with your game because they will only see 1/3 of the content of your game. If instead you make a full lesbian game, the players who aren't into that won't play it, so they won't leave a negative or average review and the one who likes it will be happy and much more likely to support you.

Oh I agree that a dev needs to stay focused. You can't make your game about everything. You have to pick what you really want to develop and ideally focus on stuff that actually goes well together. I'm just saying I like the idea of being able to have the game kind of adjust itself a bit to the player's preference. I've only done modding so far so I guess I'll find out for myself whether my idea will work when I try to actually do it. I need to upgrade my potato of a computer first though.

 

[Synx]

Oh I agree that a dev needs to stay focused. You can't make your game about everything. You have to pick what you really want to develop and ideally focus on stuff that actually goes well together. I'm just saying I like the idea of being able to have the game kind of adjust itself a bit to the player's preference. I've only done modding so far so I guess I'll find out for myself whether my idea will work when I try to actually do it. I need to upgrade my potato of a computer first though.

Even adapting a bit to your players preferences isnt the best idea. Some aspects are easy enough and allow people to opt in our out of it without really effecting the game (like an incest patch which just changes the char names), but for most other fetishes you will have supporters and opponents to that fetish. Your best bet is just to stick what you want. And let's be honest the people asking for a certain fetish are most likely not the same people that will support you financially.

Besides all that time you are using to please the players with 'side upgrades', is time spend not continuing your game actual story.

 

[BigBaboon]

Heh.. Probably Carmack had to make Doomguy immortal to adapt Doom`93 to gamers preferences.

 

[BigBaboon]

Sorry - I've injured my hand rather badly. So more to game mechanic: either of you play Rail 30 pen&paper game?
(

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). It`s free and open source.
Let`s make some mods to it.
For slave-trainer template:
We rename top station to "Masochism", right station to "Discipline", down station to "Submission". Left station is which need to be connected to other "stations".
Next - we rename each square in 6x6 grid with topic name. It can be from "NPC/PC past/future", "Ex-boyfriend" to "Movies", "Reading" etc.
Next - we create sequence of 6 variants of answer-reply sequences for every square cool:a lot of work - 216 sequences).
So player need to "build" way to one or more "stations", each connected station = player get token which is relevant to specific station.
Player can spend token to move NPC demeanor to be more kinky in this particular activity and open new activities with this NPC.
And last - we limit number of turns that player can`t reach all "stations" in single run and create different map layout for different NPCs.

 

[sakosux]

This is a really interesting thread. As someone new to the site (not adult games), it's nice to see not every thread devolves into vitriol. (Sorry, being quarantined allowed me to spend too much time on the site )

Now for game mechanics.1st I think I have to define what I have been thought at Uni on what a game mechanic actually is vs story telling tools, examples;
1. A combat system
2. Managing companions
3. Weakness and strengths of enemies

Examples of story telling mechanics;
1. Dialogue system
2. Quest system and rewards tied to it
3. NPC schedules.

This helps differentiate between what you want the player to enjoy and engage the most vs what should be natural and help you tell a story. I think VNs and adult games have a hard time distancing the two.
I would love to see more games incorporate mechanics that SHOW the world around the story that allows the player to explore it or even gain advantages from it. Summertime Saga does this to an extent, as well as Melody(if I remember correctly).
However often it's only used to make players grind to reach the next stage of a girls path or to extend playtime just for the sake of it.
Also on the topic of branching stories:
It's been really bothering me as well, how many games have 'false' choices, that lead to nowhere or straight to "bad" ending. I think it's a fundamental job of a writer / game dev to only include choices that actually lead to atleast an extra scene or a developed ending (think Mass Effect 2 or The Witcher 3).
I think that's enough ranting for now