Character Creation in Blasphemess
The themes of Blasphemess include "meaningful choices." How then do I illustrate that from the very start, with character creation?
The themes of Blasphemess include "meaningful choices." How then do I illustrate that from the very start of play, with character creation?
With many games I've encountered, your introduction to the game includes adjusting trivial increments of stat point allocations. What does it mean when you assign points to attributes like strength or charm? How will that change the game for your character? Is adding one more point going to hit a threshold that is vital later on down the road, or will it be a meaningless 1-percent efficiency gain?
It's hard to dive into a game and understand the implications of each choice you make, especially with an obfuscating layer of mechanics getting in the way. You simply have to play it out, learn, and then potentially re-roll a character with your newly acquired understanding.
My intuition is that character creation can be improved upon. Understanding their choices is possible, though not necessarily knowing the game mechanics right away. Basically, players can still make meaningful choices without needing to fully understand the ramifications right away.
If they know already or discover their character through the creation process, they will learn the game better through the lens of that character.
Let's focus on a concrete example.
Step-By-Step Character Creation Example
As a new player for Blasphemess, your first action is to create the character you want to play on the portal. You choose a name, and come up with some optional description of that character that will be visible to other players. After that, the character is created and exists on the Blasphemess portal.
Existing on the portal means in-lore that the character is somewhere in the multiverse, doing whatever it is that their player wants. To get into the game properly, the character needs to be "migrated" between portal to "cluster."
Thus, the player chooses to "migrate" that character to a gameplay server, otherwise known as a "cluster." Clusters are independent areas within the Blasphemess game with specific settings and lore and characters, and more information about them can be read at the following link:
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More information about how gameplay clusters work
To migrate onto a cluster, you go through a series of questions, similar to a storylet implementation. The questions are specific to the game's cluster, so different migrations may have different questions.
For the sake of this example, let's assume a player is migrating their character "Alice" to the "Prototype Island" cluster. The first question that comes up on the portal for them is "Is your character experienced with combat?" with choices "Yes, a veteran of violence," "Partially, a novice with fighting," "No, not skilled in combat," and "No, they're a pacifist."
Based on the choice the player makes, later questions will branch out and differ. The character will also get different skills and items and other mechanical additions that pair the fiction of the character to the gameplay.
One such question could be for experienced fighters, as it asks, "Is your character willing to confirm kills on severely wounded enemies?" Answering yes to the question, or even "on occasion" leads to gaining the 'Confirm Kill' skill on that character. It might imply a level of ruthlessness, or a spot of mercy for the enemy – the interpretation is up to the player to decide and play out, but the question prompts them to consider it.
Another question that comes up could be "What is your character's nature?" with choices ranging from "Divine" to "Formerly Divine" to "Demonic" to "Angelic" to "Transcended" to "Mortal" and so on. Each of the nature choices would have brief detail texts accompanying them to explain what it means to have that nature. A powerful transcended character may have more abilities at hand than a baseline mortal. Whereas a formerly divine character might have a history of loss that weighs on them.
A simple question after that is, "What did your character pack in to this conflict zone?" The choice the player makes will decide what kind of items are initially loaded into their inventory. Perhaps they chose a balanced loadout, or a medic's stockpile of aid supplies, or a fighter's assortment of weapons and equipment.
The Migration Questions System
Some games have you push points around, or choose from a preset list of classes, or compose a number of skills and abilities together to form a character. Instead of all that, the migration questions can let you discover or refine the feel of a character just before gameplay.
Much like storylets, the power of the migration questions system lies in the writing and agency.
For my current iteration of the prototype, players do choose from a list of "roles" that come with pre-packaged skill sets and item loadouts. Roles like Artists, Medics, Mages, Fighters, Logisticians, and Scouts.
This basic abstraction makes it easier for me to develop and get the prototype out the door sooner. Yet, for future clusters, there is no constraint that truly stops me from re-using the system for more detailed migrations.
On the technical side, this is because the portal accepts simple UI element representations. The cluster backend sends the questions and parses the choices on its own. Multiple clusters can be running with different question series, and the portal will gladly swap between each set depending on where the player wants to migrate their character to next.
Meaningful Choice
Ultimately, the goal of Blasphemess is similar to many TTRPGs' goal. Player agency and telling compelling stories.
I want players to be able to create just about anything character-wise in the setting, and feel like they are not unduly constrained by the systems. There are common player profiles I can already anticipate. For instance, pacifist characters are a really popular choice, as are logistics support players, as are skilled killers, and more!
Blasphemess should allow meaningful choices on the regular, which is a two-part word. Choices are obvious, players choose where to go, what to do, and who their character is, and how that character will respond to events.
The meaningful part is trickier to pin down, though. Characters should feel different from one another based on choices the player makes. A loyal bodyguard character will be different from a peaceful trader happily supplying all sides of the conflict. Likewise, the demonic hunter laying traps and tracking single enemies down is different from the redeemed angelic necromancer tending to corpses on the battlefield.
To get those feelings in place, meaningful choices in character creation should generally be based around qualitative changes. I view character skills as often "efficiency gains" where you can perform the same actions, but those actions cost less to do or get bigger numbers for their effect. Instead of that, qualitative changes give you new options to act upon.
As always with this Blasphemess project, I look forward to more playtesting to see how these ideas fare. The systems are in place, and I have high hopes for migration questions granting a better player experience when starting the game.
