Since /v/ is rather useless, and I know you guys have very good knowledge of game mechanics, I thought I'd ask you

Since /v/ is rather useless, and I know you guys have very good knowledge of game mechanics, I thought I'd ask you.

I am currently working on a Roguelike game, with rudimentary3D graphics, where one of the most important systems is a Travelling system.

All I have now is basically a system where

1. Travelling across a cell costs 1 days ration
2. On each day an event may occur, forcing the player to make a choice, or maybe be ambushed, visting a randomly generated area using that cell's environment type.

The cells will be randomly generated, but points of interests will be spaced pretty evenly on the map. Should I have terrain penalties on rations/time needed? How do I make travelling interesting? Combat itself will be realtime, but this travelling is essentially a turn-based game.

Other urls found in this thread:

thealexandrian.net/wordpress/17308/roleplaying-games/hexcrawl
twitter.com/NSFWRedditVideo

>How do I make travelling interesting?
Ever played The Oregon Trail?

>Hunting
>Landmarks
>Diseases
>Supplies / Rest
This looks interesting. I especially like giving the player a hunting option in case they are low on rations. Do you think it would be tedious to distinguish between food and water?

You need to read all the articles about Hexcrawls by The Alexandrian for best practices.

thealexandrian.net/wordpress/17308/roleplaying-games/hexcrawl

Consult the OSR thread for further questions:

>Should I have terrain penalties on rations/time needed?
Depends on the realism you want to archive, ande how user friendly you want your game to be, as well as the target audience
If you want the game to be played in casual rounds between other stuff, when one has nothing else to do / has 5 minutes of time, don't add terrain penalties
If you want the game to have a higher strategic aspect, or want the players to put more time into the game/attract 'more hardcore' players then you should probably include terrain penalties
I personally prefer penalties on the terrain, to force the player into thinking up different paths, dependend on if they want to go fast or if they want to get their safely/without many ressources used up, however you should always give the player the opportunity to decide which path they want to take, not just make 1 path strictly worse then the other for maximum strategic usage (do i go through that dangerous forest for a faster route, or around it, for a safer one for example)

1/2

2/2

>How do I make travelling interesting?
Depends on the amount of traveling done, if its needed.
If a single step in the 'standard roguelike dungeoncrawl' takes 1 cell in your game, you would probably not need much more then randomly pick an event to happen (break a wagon leg - loose rations - meet some handsome stranger - etc. etc.) or to not have an event happen at all.
Looking into Pen and Paper non combat encounters on google or in various threads should supplement you with enough ideas to fill out a couple of games (keep in mind, not every encounter need to be significant, for example i once let my players encounter a fully saddled horse without a rider or anything, they spend at least 2 hours trying to find the meaning of it, before scaring the horse off)
If you only travel sparingly, like 1 travel between each 'roguelike dungeon' or something, I doubt you need to put in any events at all, and can instead focus on the events in the dungeon (use the traveltime for relaxation in this case) - whatever you do tho, the events should always be entertaining/challenging in some way (its for most of the events enough to just present the player with a simple yes/no choice, or some well written text tho)

TL-DR:
>Terrain Penalties?
personal preference
>Interesting travel?
Look up non combat pen and paper encounters on google

Source: Im bored as fuck and make stupid little indie games with lots of bugs for game jams, so I read a lot about it. (but am clearly no expert, and not the knows-everything, all things read here are just a suggestion)

>Since /v/ is rather useless
Yes, they are.
> and I know you guys have very good knowledge of game mechanics
That train left the station ages ago.
>I thought I'd ask you.
Go back.

Thank you for this. I had a simple yes/no thing going on for random events. You travel a lot when you are not in dungeons. At least 5-10 squares to reach the next town or dungeon. I didn't realize I was making the mistake of just making 1 option blatantly worse than the other though. Basically you would have the option to travel safely, but slower, resulting in more safe events but more rations needed, or travel fast and unsafe, resulting in more ambushes but less ration consumed. It's really hard to think about handling starvation though. Not sure what to do if the player runs out of food in the middle of nowhere and can't find anything to hunt. It's a roguelike, so it's permadeath, but I don't want it to feel unfair because you didn't keep an eye on that food counter all the time.

>That train left the station ages ago.
>implying

I play DnD occasionally, does that help? no need to be so sour you know

Set it up so that either

A. You have some sort of emergency escape system where you can return to the last town you visited, but with some sort of cost like losing all of the items you have on hand

B. Spawn in weaker enemies that give food when defeated once the players hunger meter gets low enough

>dont want it to feel unfair
increase hunt/gathering chance when low, just take damage each turn without food, to give the player a couple of turns as an 'oh shit' duration where they can gather/hunt up some stuff, or rush to the nearest village etc.

I'd say it all comes down to implement the chosen mechanics, and then playtest a lot to find the right balance between food decrease / hunting success, so that it becomes a thing one should watch, but not so hard, that its the only thing the player has to focus on 100% of the time

also, simple yes/no for events looks mostly fine, since it seems the player will encounter a lot of them during the average time of one playseason

Everyone worth asking either left or consigned themselves to a ghetto where they're free from the shitposting going on 24/7.

You're better off asking somewhere else, especially being a shit-munching /v/irgin who is probably the cause of all the shitposting going on in the first place.
>I play DnD occasionally, does that help?
Get out! Get out and never return!

rude :(

you could make it so that you have more information of whats at visited tiles, maybe there was a stream, maybe you saw traces of animals, maybe there was fruit or something else that's edible.
the option of trying to gather supplies should also be available there should be some penalty to doing it and it and maybe you don't always find something or sometimes you find a lot

Yes. I think I will have 6-7 different world map tiles and have Hunt/Forage option that you can use once on each tile, until moving back to it, which gives chance of food affected by day/night. Maybe I could have traps you could buy and then place on a tile, that will effectively hunt for you, so you can return to it and maybe get food.

Look at how NEOScavenger does it.

Ignore the grumpy old fag-o-tard. He's just butt-hurt there's new blood shitposters to compete with and he knows he isn't up to it.

>Actually accepting /v/irgins into our ranks
Next thing you know, you bleeding hearts will create a daily /pol/ general.

Christ you fags ruined Veeky Forums!

When the riffraff come in and start spamming wojak, gore, and scat to get rid of threads they don't like, don't come crying to me.

This is the future you chose! Screencap this!