Core Mechanics to consider during design

Nirrum powergames real life

I, on the other hand, only powergame tabletop game NPCs

The largest part of making a game of any kind is understanding your core mechanics. As a game designer you have the exclusive power to decide what action leads to what reaction, but what does it mean to design when your constituents have mechanics that you didn't design? This post's title is actually quite deceiving, it's about getting ready for the core mechanics that you don't know about during design.

The big oof: Uncontrolled mechanical agency

In the 1990's, a game came out called Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time. Many people played this game and wanted to emulate its tone. The sense of recontextualization when you revisted an area after going backward and forward in time was fantastically well conveyed. All of the temples you had to visit as an adult had been present the entire time a child, you could see their entrances but not get to them. The dungeons were large labyrinths leading you on a path of puzzle-solving and discovery. Many people will point out other games that did much of what this game did better, but this one in particular highlights the dissonance between game design and game mastering. In the game, a lot of the puzzles were dependent on being able to keep your character, officially named "link" within the confines of a room or setting. Tall walls, ledges too high to climb, locked doors, item-dependent puzzles.  The design of these individual rooms or places is easy, sometimes formulaic. Many DMs will try to emulate the design of this game, trying to capture its essence, its ability to convey tone.

But link never had the "knock" spell. 

With the toolsets offered to players in most tabletop games, there are few contexts that can actively constrain them to a path. Being short on time is the last remaining bastion for many Maestros when their Patients suddenly have the ability to fly, walk through walls, teleport, magically unlock doors, light fires, or bring in a few hundred soldiers with pickaxes. I assure you the water temple loses its potency when someone just burrows into the side. Time and economy break many tabletop RPGs. Adventurers, by nature of being actively out looking for trouble both simultaneously come into vasts amounts of economic advantage while always remaining short on time.

Formulaic efficiency

When designing an area that is supposed to be constrained by any measure, you should always ask questions about those constraints.

• What is the intent of the area? Why is there a block puzzle to get inside this castle? Who in their right mind sets up water-level puzzles... at all? What ass expects me to fool around with these levers when I could just...break down the door? There are answers to all of those questions, but they're special context, and almost always trying to get people to prove their "worthiness." In most cases, the way to get in to the castle is through the door. No puzzles needed, you might offend the southern nobles with that. The cave complex was made naturally, and only used by the trolls for its convenience. Having obstructions where they don't belong can really screw with a narrative.

• What are these constraints made to defeat? Most houses have a door with a lock. The lock, as any lockpicker will tell you is mostly security theatre as most houses nowadays have easily picked locks and more conveniently, an abundance of windows. It is the more common, low-skilled burglar that a lock defeats and your average neighbourhood cat or rat colony that a door truly is built for. Walls mostly just block the wind. In castles, these walls defeat footmen but are ill-equipped to stop, say, dragons. A fort or fortress built with a dragon in mind might not be able to handle a wizard, and very very very few things that can handle all of these things can handle a poorly-thought-out macguffin.
• Would the person who built this place have access to the spells, materials, and time needed to make this place as impenetrable as they'd like? 'cause there's no way your local baron has access to anti-teleportation runes. Your average magical lock isn't spectacularly resistant to disenchantment, and few people have the means to make them (usually). Instead, people make walls thick and designs obscure. They hide and guard their treasure and have most of their power in liquid assets -alliances and the like- so that they cannot be stolen. But time and economy strike again. An adventurer with a few gold in their pocket for some rations at the nearest inn and a pick can Undermine eheh the most sturdy of castles.
• What happens when people break out of these constraints? If the area was not built with the expectation that people would dare tunnel through its walls, then surprise, nothing really is going to happen, unless going through the trials as they were intended was the only way to reach the goal. Will they run out of time? Will they be discovered? Will absolutely nothing negative happen? Consider these things when you build each area.

A lot of the time your charges will be able to break through the intended drama with some ability or clever plan or some advanced machination. To say "you cannot try" is to fail, and while you needn't be ashamed of failure, you must always try to learn from it. To tell them and know beforehand why it fails or succeeds is a success.

Damage, Movement, and The hands of a murderer

The most common things to consider when designing an area specifically to challenge people is to look at their damage output, how fast they can move and what you can do to slow that advance. My brother took my loose DM style and tested it to the limit. Xundrin Ry'lendar was a drow assassin, built in 5e with the sole purpose of doing as much damage as he could. At peak build, his average first turn damage was Nine hundred and Ninety Nine. For comparison, the Tarrasque has 676hp. A Warship only has 500. Turns out there are higher damage builds too. He was stealthy enough that he'd be able to reliably get his most potent abilities off silently, and this trivialized a lot of drama and combat constraints that I would have wanted to place in front of the party. What I realized when dealing with Xundrin was that, as mentioned in previous posts, it didn't matter. His damage didn't really matter when he was faced with an open room and more than 30ft between him and his target. Or against more than six people. Building places to allow others to shine in spite of this gross abuse of multiclassing wasn't terribly hard, and this was proved well enough when he retired the character in the next module, a bright desert town filled with wizards.

The next post is going to look more at Puzzle design

 Taparmish'u'lo Mishlia
- Nirrum