02-06-2023, 01:05 AM
Section 13 - Understanding Scale
In Section 9, there was a brief mention of scale, where it is applied to the general size of a setting. However, it is just one factor in scale. Scale is generally speaking the size and complexity of a roleplaying session. To figure out how scale works, let's look into the workings of an RPG most people are familiar with: Pokemon.
RPGs are generally pretty large in scale for video games in general, and Pokemon one of them. If you wanna run a full-on Pokemon journey, complete with a region and all, then you'll need to work the following out.
Base Idea - The story focuses on trainers setting out on a journey in a new region. Along the way, you take on the region's Pokemon League, where you must collect 8 gym badges.
Setting - A region is generally a huge setting, continental or insular. There is usually a Pokemon League consisting of eight gyms, all situated in eight different towns/cities. There are some variable amount of towns/cities and a Victory Road that leads to the location of the final confrontation between trainers and the Elite Four. Within each town or city, you will need to set up Pokemon Center locations (I highly recommend doing it like Gen VI onward where the Center and Mart are merged into one) and, if you feel like shaking things up, places where you can get items or side quests.
Characters - NPCs are gonna be strewn about. For trainers, you're gonna have to work out the classes (ex. Lass, Beauty, Hex Maniac) and Pokemon, though generally you don't have to worry about more than that. Gym leaders, rivals, evil team members (focusing more on the admins and leader), the professor, Elite Four members, the champion, and whatever this guy is supposed to be generally requires more thought put into their character. For example, let's say I put Magneta (my Electric-type gym leader) and Polyedit2000's Aka Moro (lets say she's a Ground-type for her odd Egyptian connections and her generally laid-back nature (at least that's from what I can remember; I'll ask Poly later)) as gym leaders. I'll have to take care to consider Magneta's charismatic, enthusiastic character and Aka Moro's laid back character separately without getting the two of them mixed up, and don't even get me started on their teams.
Encounters - Pokemon that already exist, fanmade pokemon, you name 'em, you stick them into the region. Though here, you'll have to carefully plan out the mons for each route the trainer goes in.
Plot - I think this is about the easiest of the bunch if you have a general outline here. You know, get the eight gym badges, take on the Elite Four, go up against -insert evil team here-, whatever.
Mechanics - Let's see... Pokemon moves as skills, Pokemon abilities (ex. Mold Breaker), type matchups, learnsets for fanmade Pokemon, base stats for fanmade Pokemon, damage calculation that's best worked out in Pokemon Showdown's damage calculator for faster battles... And don't forget the workings of individual items and moves. Yeah, wrap your head around that as the cherry on top.
This is how big and complex an roleplaying campaign based around a standard Pokemon journey is. Sound confusing? Chances are an RP session as grand as a DnD campaign is a little much for you to run. You'll wanna go with something smaller. What do you do? Well, let's go over the five factors of scale.
---
Base Idea - The base idea of your RP. Generally depending on how simple or how complex the idea is, the other items below may be greatly affected by how the base idea works out.
Setting - Detailed in full in Section 9, but I'll put up the Sparknotes version of it up. The setting always involves the time and place of an RP and usually also features a general feel for the world and the overarching mechanics of the world around the RP.
Characters - Characters are the people you stick into a setting. In the GM's case (as this was mainly written as advisory material to GMs), the characters would be the NPCs you wish for players to interact with.
Interactions/Encounters - Interactions and encounters are what it says on the tin. They are elements you want the player to interact with, be it random encounters with mobs or discoveries of loot, or even a selection for players to make.
Plot - The overarching story of the session. At the very least it would evolve a main goal and a means to try and achieve said goal.
Mechanics - The game feel and inner workings of the session. Usually these are best made clear for players when they come up, or at the very least be easily accessible regardless of how hard it'd be to master. Puzzles are typically harder to come up with than "gameplay" mechanics.
While I can't say this applies to everyone, these are the general ideas for what would factor into scale. While I can't fully describe the workings of scale at the time, I can give you a Sparknotes version of it.
---
A small-scale RP generally works off a simple base idea. It will have a basic setting and a basic goal in mind, with some simple mechanics and interactions to work out. An example of this would be Polyedit2000's Slime the Dice deal in the Kink Talk section of this forum: https://bastianfanworks.dreamchaos.net/f...hp?tid=112
A mid-scale RP balances out the simplicity of an idea with interesting if admittedly complex mechanics, or makes a seemingly complex idea simple. For example, in my escape room RP, the players had to solve some small puzzles before unlocking the cell: https://bastianfanworks.dreamchaos.net/f....php?tid=9
A large-scale RP is pretty complex, but can be made simpler if you have a grand scheme of things set out for players. Basically a large-scale RP is complex but not as complex as an RPG or a DnD campaign. In Polyedit2000's School of Thot RP (still waiting on the reboot, bro), we have a noticeable setting complete with its own set of rules, a penalty system, a set of classes with their own creative ways to involve kink in the school environment, and yet the objective is simply getting five As. It would've featured clubs, which is a feature I'm pretty disappointed that Poly didn't follow through with: https://bastianfanworks.dreamchaos.net/f...php?tid=63
Lastly, a full-scale campaign is an RPG or a DnD campaign complete with all the complexities of either of those entities! Polyedit2000's Village of Vile Liege deals are a perfect example of this, as the idea was meant to be a sort of Fantasy RPG setting with five isles/continents (Ventasia, Savag, Gyp, Synthon, and I'm pretty sure he called the Dark Lord's island "Elysium"), a wide array of monsters, a general video game feel (Iirc, Ventasia was like Levels 1-25 and Savag was around Levels 28-50), a cast of characters that liven up the setting, and much more. I sucked at being a player in that campaign, admittedly.
These are just general rules of thumb for scales and are to be taken with a pinch of salt. Now allow me to provide some advice for how to make it easier to work out an RP of a certain scale.
---
Advice
---
Now how should players handle scale? Well, the most important thing for a player to do is to take things slowly. You can write a paragraph like some guys expect you to do it, but ease the GM in with your decision. Don't do too many things at once.
The next important thing is to try not to go off the rails too much. Remember that a GM likely planned out an RP session if the idea appears to be of a larger scale. You can go on an off-beat path, but remember to keep the goal set out by the GM in mind.
Lastly, when need be, ask questions about something you're unsure of. As long as your questions aren't targeted toward something obvious (I mean you're not a braindead idiot like Aqua), a GM will be more than happy to answer it.
I didn't have too much to say for players; this was mainly made as advice toward GMs. Once again, feel free to put down anything I've missed.
In Section 9, there was a brief mention of scale, where it is applied to the general size of a setting. However, it is just one factor in scale. Scale is generally speaking the size and complexity of a roleplaying session. To figure out how scale works, let's look into the workings of an RPG most people are familiar with: Pokemon.
RPGs are generally pretty large in scale for video games in general, and Pokemon one of them. If you wanna run a full-on Pokemon journey, complete with a region and all, then you'll need to work the following out.
Base Idea - The story focuses on trainers setting out on a journey in a new region. Along the way, you take on the region's Pokemon League, where you must collect 8 gym badges.
Setting - A region is generally a huge setting, continental or insular. There is usually a Pokemon League consisting of eight gyms, all situated in eight different towns/cities. There are some variable amount of towns/cities and a Victory Road that leads to the location of the final confrontation between trainers and the Elite Four. Within each town or city, you will need to set up Pokemon Center locations (I highly recommend doing it like Gen VI onward where the Center and Mart are merged into one) and, if you feel like shaking things up, places where you can get items or side quests.
Characters - NPCs are gonna be strewn about. For trainers, you're gonna have to work out the classes (ex. Lass, Beauty, Hex Maniac) and Pokemon, though generally you don't have to worry about more than that. Gym leaders, rivals, evil team members (focusing more on the admins and leader), the professor, Elite Four members, the champion, and whatever this guy is supposed to be generally requires more thought put into their character. For example, let's say I put Magneta (my Electric-type gym leader) and Polyedit2000's Aka Moro (lets say she's a Ground-type for her odd Egyptian connections and her generally laid-back nature (at least that's from what I can remember; I'll ask Poly later)) as gym leaders. I'll have to take care to consider Magneta's charismatic, enthusiastic character and Aka Moro's laid back character separately without getting the two of them mixed up, and don't even get me started on their teams.
Encounters - Pokemon that already exist, fanmade pokemon, you name 'em, you stick them into the region. Though here, you'll have to carefully plan out the mons for each route the trainer goes in.
Plot - I think this is about the easiest of the bunch if you have a general outline here. You know, get the eight gym badges, take on the Elite Four, go up against -insert evil team here-, whatever.
Mechanics - Let's see... Pokemon moves as skills, Pokemon abilities (ex. Mold Breaker), type matchups, learnsets for fanmade Pokemon, base stats for fanmade Pokemon, damage calculation that's best worked out in Pokemon Showdown's damage calculator for faster battles... And don't forget the workings of individual items and moves. Yeah, wrap your head around that as the cherry on top.
This is how big and complex an roleplaying campaign based around a standard Pokemon journey is. Sound confusing? Chances are an RP session as grand as a DnD campaign is a little much for you to run. You'll wanna go with something smaller. What do you do? Well, let's go over the five factors of scale.
---
Base Idea - The base idea of your RP. Generally depending on how simple or how complex the idea is, the other items below may be greatly affected by how the base idea works out.
Setting - Detailed in full in Section 9, but I'll put up the Sparknotes version of it up. The setting always involves the time and place of an RP and usually also features a general feel for the world and the overarching mechanics of the world around the RP.
Characters - Characters are the people you stick into a setting. In the GM's case (as this was mainly written as advisory material to GMs), the characters would be the NPCs you wish for players to interact with.
Interactions/Encounters - Interactions and encounters are what it says on the tin. They are elements you want the player to interact with, be it random encounters with mobs or discoveries of loot, or even a selection for players to make.
Plot - The overarching story of the session. At the very least it would evolve a main goal and a means to try and achieve said goal.
Mechanics - The game feel and inner workings of the session. Usually these are best made clear for players when they come up, or at the very least be easily accessible regardless of how hard it'd be to master. Puzzles are typically harder to come up with than "gameplay" mechanics.
While I can't say this applies to everyone, these are the general ideas for what would factor into scale. While I can't fully describe the workings of scale at the time, I can give you a Sparknotes version of it.
---
A small-scale RP generally works off a simple base idea. It will have a basic setting and a basic goal in mind, with some simple mechanics and interactions to work out. An example of this would be Polyedit2000's Slime the Dice deal in the Kink Talk section of this forum: https://bastianfanworks.dreamchaos.net/f...hp?tid=112
A mid-scale RP balances out the simplicity of an idea with interesting if admittedly complex mechanics, or makes a seemingly complex idea simple. For example, in my escape room RP, the players had to solve some small puzzles before unlocking the cell: https://bastianfanworks.dreamchaos.net/f....php?tid=9
A large-scale RP is pretty complex, but can be made simpler if you have a grand scheme of things set out for players. Basically a large-scale RP is complex but not as complex as an RPG or a DnD campaign. In Polyedit2000's School of Thot RP (still waiting on the reboot, bro), we have a noticeable setting complete with its own set of rules, a penalty system, a set of classes with their own creative ways to involve kink in the school environment, and yet the objective is simply getting five As. It would've featured clubs, which is a feature I'm pretty disappointed that Poly didn't follow through with: https://bastianfanworks.dreamchaos.net/f...php?tid=63
Lastly, a full-scale campaign is an RPG or a DnD campaign complete with all the complexities of either of those entities! Polyedit2000's Village of Vile Liege deals are a perfect example of this, as the idea was meant to be a sort of Fantasy RPG setting with five isles/continents (Ventasia, Savag, Gyp, Synthon, and I'm pretty sure he called the Dark Lord's island "Elysium"), a wide array of monsters, a general video game feel (Iirc, Ventasia was like Levels 1-25 and Savag was around Levels 28-50), a cast of characters that liven up the setting, and much more. I sucked at being a player in that campaign, admittedly.
These are just general rules of thumb for scales and are to be taken with a pinch of salt. Now allow me to provide some advice for how to make it easier to work out an RP of a certain scale.
---
Advice
- Start out simple. Sometimes, you need a little buildup before you can really let your creative juices flow.
- Create an outline for what you wanna put out. Simpler RPs just need a basic idea, but larger ones need a clear idea for how you want things to go, and an outline can really help you out there.
- Sometimes basing an RP session on an existing entity you're familiar with (let's say, My Hero Academia for instance) will make larger-scale RPs easier to set up and play out.
- When it comes to determining the capability of a feat, generally roleplaying guides (like the ones made for DnD) are a go-to reference for what a player must use, like a certain stat for instance, and hit a certain number for success. Custom content is best considered through personal interpretation on what it takes to perform a feat. Statistics used in a VS-debating environment are generally ill-advised and are only to be used if (A) you know a feat is performed by a pre-existing character, or (B) as a general rule of thumb for settings in an existing world (like My Hero Academia or Pokemon)
- Generally it is easiest for you to get an RP session of any scale through if you have a spark of inspiration around a certain idea.
- Don't be a dick like this dude: https://youtu.be/ukYf-qzGoaI?t=686 That was a joke I wanted to say.
- Most importantly, take your time when planning something out.
---
Now how should players handle scale? Well, the most important thing for a player to do is to take things slowly. You can write a paragraph like some guys expect you to do it, but ease the GM in with your decision. Don't do too many things at once.
The next important thing is to try not to go off the rails too much. Remember that a GM likely planned out an RP session if the idea appears to be of a larger scale. You can go on an off-beat path, but remember to keep the goal set out by the GM in mind.
Lastly, when need be, ask questions about something you're unsure of. As long as your questions aren't targeted toward something obvious (I mean you're not a braindead idiot like Aqua), a GM will be more than happy to answer it.
I didn't have too much to say for players; this was mainly made as advice toward GMs. Once again, feel free to put down anything I've missed.