Today, I want to expose a little bit of the research and thought process that the team of Untold Dawn goes through to decide on some of the features that we make, and at the same time spark discussion and seek the feedback of the community on one of the big, game-defining ideas that we’re working through.
First of all, I would invite those interested to take a look at this video for an introduction of some of the concepts that I will be discussing in this forum thread:
A Historical Background
Roguelikes, named after the 1980 game “Rogue,” were influential in the development of early MUDs and Interactive Fiction. Some MUDs, particularly those focusing on permadeath and challenging gameplay (such as hack & slashes), drew inspiration from roguelike elements. In turn, modern roguelites have been influenced by the concepts and mechanics found in both roguelikes and MUDs, creating a cyclical relationship between these genres.
While MUDs were groundbreaking in their early days and paved the way for many of the multiplayer gaming concepts we see today, they have largely remained niche and have not seen the same level of innovation and mainstream success as roguelikes and roguelites (with some exceptions).
Roguelikes and roguelites have continuously iterated on their core mechanics, introducing new gameplay elements, meta-progression systems, and other features that keep the genre fresh and engaging. MUDs, on the other hand, have often stuck to their original formulas and have been slower to adopt new ideas.
However, there’s many common threads and tropes found in both genres.
Both roguelikes/roguelites and RPI MUDs with permadeath feature the concept of permanent character death, where the player loses their character permanently upon death and must start over.
However, in roguelikes and roguelites, the game world is usually reset upon character death, while RPI MUDs typically feature persistent worlds that continue to exist and evolve even when individual characters die.
While one of the core elements of roguelikes and roguelites is the fact that the world is randomly generated (which in MUDs, save for a few exceptions such as some areas, is not), we want to focus today on perma-death and one of the most innovative features that have come to roguelites that we have not seen in RPI MUDs.
Death
Perma-death is a trope that is important for RPI MUDs. It makes every action have a stake and a risk, and to make stories (and the characters that take part in them) not stagnate.
While we do not want death to unbearably difficult to avoid, we believe that having characters die is a part of the gameplay loop.
However, dying is scary and it can be a tough feeling; losing your character can be painful. You invested days, months or even years into them. The same applies for storing a character and moving on; many of us have experienced or seen people that have had characters for several years, probably are not having engaging stories anymore, and struggling to take the decision to store because they know starting means losing all their progress.
Of course, there is nothing wrong with sticking with a single character.
At the same time, it is not possible without parting with the very notion of perma-death to not have a character be gone and their progress to be mostly lost upon death.
In most games, you just move on and continue; you might get some vague consolation prize. In Sindome, you get UE carry-over. In games like Harshlands and Armageddon, you might’ve gained enough RPP or Karma for different notions. However, in neither of these is the concept of progression a planned feature core to the mechanic.
So, what do we think could happen?
Meta-Progression
Based on this rationale and the concepts of literature and videos such as the one I presented above, I have been considering a system of meta-progression.
A few key features of this system would entail:
- Progression comes mainly through different ways to play the way (different ways to allocate attributes, skills, and gain story hooks). While I do think that players that have been playing enough time might unlock features that give them a shortcut to have more points allocated on attributes and skills (although up for debate), for the most part the novelty would come from having different ways to play characters.
- The system should be focused on luck to unlock different ways to play the game. You never know what you might unlock next. This makes you have a consolation prize and also something thrilling to look forward to after the tough pill of losing a character.
- The more you have played, the more elaborate the concepts might be, giving you tools to get story hooks. There’s no limit here. You could spawn with a wallet with money and a backstory, or the owner of a small, but bankrupted, company with some assets. It’s basically a storytelling avenue.
- The system should not be your backstory; you should be the owner of your story, but give you different ways to tell it. There’s many games that implement such a system; think traits in CK3, or in Cataclysm DDA, or even traits and flaws in Project Zomboid. If you’ve seen someone go through a Let’s Play of them, the backstory they develop is theirs and these traits simply support them.
So, the concept:
Origin Stories
This is still in brainstorming stage (hence why I am posting it here for feedback), but the rough idea is:
Players do not get to allocate points on attributes or skills in chargen. They go through a choice OR series of choices which lead them to a character that fits their concept.
You start as someone with very average stats, no skills, and no defining coded backstory or things. This is the vanilla start, which is always going to be available to you. It’s a tabula rasa, letting you write what ever backstory you have.
The default options will let you have a spread of decent concepts where you have someone slightly strong, or slightly smart, or slightly fast, but in general you are a random person in the colony that got sent there.
After certain conditions are met, you will be able to unlock new options for your origin. These could be new childhood focuses, or traits that affect your gameplay. These will define your attributes, skills and starting condition for future runs.
For the most part, you will be unlocking a character that is roughly on the same power level as a new character. Although I do think at some point, you should be unlocking origin stories that let you short-cut some of the intial grind (which is a concept explored in the video above).
THis is not restricted exclusively to just attributes & skills. You might have items such as passports, currency wallets, or even groups at the start. You could begin the game with a security record.
For instance, you play your first character a couple of months, and you’ve unlocked Military Training, which makes you appear with a security record that shows that you finished military school. You begin with a barren wallet, unlike a vanilla character, but you have training in weapon and +2 constitution. This could likely work with a Pros & Cons system, where origin stories have a points system, so you basically combine these to end with your final result.
As you can see, this idea is still in the drawing board, but I personally see merit in it as long as we find a way to not limit stories and instead enhance them. I’d love to hear what the community thinks about this.
I also think that there should be a variety of conditions that need to be met to unlock these. You can’t just go and kill your characters to unlock new things. Maybe you need to have played them some time – or we could implement some commendation system where players get a vote per month on who they have enjoyed roleplaying with.
I’d love to hear thoughts on this!