I'm working on an RPG at the moment (I seem to be saying that a lot, lately), and I am at the stage where the core rules are down and it's primarily the options that need to be filled out.
In this game the options are things like spells, feats, class abilities (like feats), equipment and so on.
The idea of the game is that the each class has a considerable scope for customisation. This is through skill, feats and talent selections. Another aim of the game is to remove anything that doesn't need to be strictly plied in concrete, and leave it to the GM and Player's to play out through role-play.
So, the question I have is; how much is too much variety? Should the core rule book have 100' of options allowing hyper specialisation, or should it remain broad and general and provide maybe a handful or so options (about 40 abilities to choose ten or so from) from a list?
I think keeping things smaller maintains flavour and atmosphere, whilst providing more and more option provides scope and opportunity.
Is there some happy medium? Any ideas? Is there a stage where there are too many options?
Help, as always, is gratefully received.
The best answer I can give is to look back at what I consider to be the mistakes of second edition.
Early second edition was great but then they came out with Skills and Powers. It was a great idea to allow for better customization however it went IMO a little too far.
Prime example, an elf could trade away his detect secret door abilty or a dwarf could trade away his stone cunning. A cleric could trade away his abilty to use all magic items AND most of his spheres but still be a cleric.
The most blatant abuse of this was a player that traded away all his spheres of influence(ie domains) except healing, traded away a few other things and in escence became an armored spellcasting wizard with no chance of spell failure and a d8 for hd plus being able to heal. in short he gutted the class and created an amalgamation of wizard and cleric all the benny's, no negatives.
I could go on and on about the skills and powers abuses but if what you want is a idea about when customization is too much then look to that system as a prime example.
again IMO!
It really depends on your game; if everyone is a farmer who beat their farm implement into weapons; more than one is probably to much.
in a high fantasy game with moderate magic; 3 or 4 is probably good; more would be very exceptional
in a very magical world where magic is the rule and handles everything; having 3 or 4 might be normal and heroes have a lot more.
So; really; you need a clear idea of the scope of your world and how it works. The basic thing about balance here is as long as you give the same number of special stuff to your bad guys then it all works out; the more customization though; the more GM time it takes to prepare.
Feats are so primary to the game that I give a few extras; there are a lot of non combat feats that are just nice and make characters a bit more special that they wouldnt ordinarily pick; so I give a freebie of one of those at 1, 6, 11th levels; but that is just me; I like a high fantasy game where players play heroes; not farmers.
It really depends on your game; if everyone is a farmer who beat their farm implement into weapons; more than one is probably to much.
in a high fantasy game with moderate magic; 3 or 4 is probably good; more would be very exceptional
in a very magical world where magic is the rule and handles everything; having 3 or 4 might be normal and heroes have a lot more.
So; really; you need a clear idea of the scope of your world and how it works. The basic thing about balance here is as long as you give the same number of special stuff to your bad guys then it all works out; the more customization though; the more GM time it takes to prepare.
Feats are so primary to the game that I give a few extras; there are a lot of non combat feats that are just nice and make characters a bit more special that they wouldnt ordinarily pick; so I give a freebie of one of those at 1, 6, 11th levels; but that is just me; I like a high fantasy game where players play heroes; not farmers.
What about heroic farmers?
I've got the number per person all ready worked out. It's around 3-4 for starting characters. 2 are determined by class, the others are selected from a list.
What I'm wondering is how many options there should be for the characters to choose from. How many is too many? How many is too few?
My view is a bit different in that it is taken from the view of game play.
Game play is the experience of the people involved within the game (both players and GM if one is used).
In each situation a person comes across they should have 2 to 3 interesting choices on how to act.
The main types of situations that you need to consider are;
Combat (this can be broken down into many types of 'sub-combats' like interior, exterior, mounted, aerial, naval, Mecha, duels, etc).
Personal Interactions (this can be negotiations, demands, bargains, performances, etc).
Challenges (this can be 'traps', researching, clue hunting, 'safe cracking or door breaching', obstacle courses, chases, etc).
Most stories will have a mixture of those three 'modes' of play and each player needs to have something 'interesting' to do in each of those modes of play.
My view is a bit different in that it is taken from the view of game play.
Game play is the experience of the people involved within the game (both players and GM if one is used).
In each situation a person comes across they should have 2 to 3 interesting choices on how to act.
The main types of situations that you need to consider are;
Combat (this can be broken down into many types of 'sub-combats' like interior, exterior, mounted, aerial, naval, Mecha, duels, etc).
Personal Interactions (this can be negotiations, demands, bargains, performances, etc).
Challenges (this can be 'traps', researching, clue hunting, 'safe cracking or door breaching', obstacle courses, chases, etc).
Most stories will have a mixture of those three 'modes' of play and each player needs to have something 'interesting' to do in each of those modes of play.
I share that view. In designing I always try to aim for a play experience in which the game play itself dictates the authenticity of the setting. Hence the needing to recreating a number of rules that seemed at odds with the game play.
What I would want to know though, is within each of those different areas of play, how many options should players for customising their character.
For instance, in the domain of combat the Warrior is strongest class. He or she has the most options in terms of his or her abilities. However, the player of this character selects the Warriors abilities from a list of many available. What I'm wondering is how big this list should be.
Looking at Dnd, for example, and the complete range of options of and splat books. Are there too many options in terms of feats (say)? If so, how many was too many? Presumably there weren't enough in the PH alone, or the other books wouldn't be necessary.
When do customisation options become overbearing?
People generally break things down into groups of objects.
Three is a great number for people to work with.
Five different choices is possible for a person to work with and understand.
Usually beyond five it becomes more 'noise' then usable information.
For example, if you look at Pathfinder and the APG together.
For the Sorcerer there are now nearly 20 different bloodlines. Ask someone to name all the bloodlines and they'll start to have troubles beyond five or six.
If you prompt someone then they can probably call up to maybe a dozen but they'll start to get more and more sketchy on the differences and details of each of the bloodlines.
Sure they are different but for most gameplay, is the difference enough that a player would actually in the course of say five years of constant play actually see 'in play' those twenty bloodlines?
Most people will truncate their list of options down to the best few that they can readily see as having benefit.
This then leads into 'book creep' as the only way to 'bump' a choice out of people's five or six natural selection choices is to provide something that is 'noticeably' better.
There are hundreds of feats in Pathfinder for a warrior but time and again the choice will usually come back to 'Power Attack' as it is simply good and straight forward choice that works in a variety of situations.
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Honestly the best way to find out is to play test. You can work the theoretical all you want but until you get down to brass tacks and start trying you won't really know.
As for my opinion I think a free form game is great. Some of the best times I've had have been with systems where the game mechanics were more of a structure and it was up to the people playing to define and add to it more. One great example of this is the Dresden Files RPG. They give you a structure but you're free to add to it all you want. It works really well.