If a story tracks the number of wounds/injuries the MC has, would you - as the reader - prefer if this negatively impacted skill checks? Keep in mind you will most likely do poorer for any following skill checks after you have been injured.
0 voters
The option to have injuries affect stat and skill checks would make for a more difficult game but at the same time would mean the reader would have to take better stock of their skills and what all the stats mean in the context of the story. I think it would be a great idea to include it. 
I should also mention that in my game I will be having difficulties. Not quite a difficulty setting, but variables of easy, medium, and hard. There is also an Exhaustion variable which is caused by having too many injuries. So far the Exhaustion variable only prevents the player from upgrading their skills, but I might expand that in the future.
I just don’t want players to become frustrated as they become increasingly injured that their success rate will keep diminishing.
Well that seems to be balancing more your project as a game rather than a story, I’m not saying that it is bad, just another way of doing things.
Giving realism through injuries can be nice, but if you are not a kind of hardcore player it may be daunting too, it depends the audience you want to aim at.
If you want to push it more to the story side you can make a fail to be a pass but with complications/consequences, just saying, not that I know it can be done in your game just like that.
Yeah, it’s hard to balance.
I’ve got some ideas of how to maybe balance it (injuries would only affect skill checks that involve physical activity or something), but including injury modifiers isn’t something I can easily implement a toggle ON and OFF sort of thing. Or if there is, I haven’t thought of it yet.
I’d say make things simple (arm injury, leg injury, etc.) and make it so that more than 1 of the same injury doesn’t stack. This stops the problem from snowballing.
I did actually consider something like that!
I would say the location of the injury should matter in what check it affects (I know I’m way slower in solving logical problems if I have a headache, and that’s not even counting actual concussion, but a leg injury would most likely affect mostly movement or so, unless you’re lifting something heavy, for example) or otherwise it doesn’t seem very pragmatic to keep track of where the injury is.
That’s exactly what I was considering when thinking about how to balance the injury mechanic. The question then becomes, if I decide to go this route, how to I measure that?
A numeric variable? I’m hesitant to do so because I already have injuries as a numeric variable on their own. A boolean? Maybe.
I only saw stats like that used in games with Zombies, survivals and the like. In a game where the story is more important…it feel like it would cripple it. I personally hate those lol don’t go to the next scene, cose you are too busy worrying about your wound and need to find band-Aid, so you can patch up…so you can roll the dice…so you don’t die 
It’s a detective story.
So it could go either way.
The code would look something like this, depending on if I include this in or not.
Without Injury modifier.
*if (observation + accuracy) > (easy)
With Injury modifier.
*if (observation + accuracy) > (easy + injury)
Thankfully I do have a situation (two in fact, depending on your choices) in the Prologue where the combat system will be tested. If the audience doesn’t like it, I’ll remove it. If they like it, I’ll keep it. I don’t want to write my entire story and have it be negatively received or something like that.
And I can always make tweaks to make it as balanced as possible down the line.
While that sort of a mechanic appeals to me, I’m hard-pressed to say I’d prefer it because I don’t think most games need or would even benefit from that kind of system.
So I guess my main question to any author considering implementing one is, “Why?” Why do you want to add this mechanic? What specific part of the game experience is improved by having wounds negatively affect skill checks?
The reason why I would want to implement something like this is because it sounds like fun to me. Other reasons could be it’s more realistic and the fact that I do have a complimentary health variable. I want the Injury variable to be more than simple ‘the variable that increases as health decreases’.
YMMV based on who’s playing. Some people will enjoy it, some people won’t.
(Your poll didn’t work) But I prefer complex troops, I love tactical anything. Side note: it turns into a beast to code.
I think it depends on your audience. If you’re targeting readers who also play tactical games, you should go for more complex troops. If your game is primarily a tactical game. I personally prefer story over combat, and would probably shy away from such a game because of the complex troops—it would be frustrating for me.
Here, let me fix it for you:
0 voters
While “researching” other CoG games, I noticed there were two ways authors are keeping track of the player character’s personalities with their stats: Boolean and Variable. Yes, I know that a Boolean is a variable. It was just easier to conceptualize it this way for me.
Boolean Personalities. Essentially personality traits that are limited, like true or false Booleans. This is where players can specifically select ways that their character can behave. It can be found in Tin Star and Freak: Amidst the Neon Lights.
Variable Personalities. The more familiar way many works in progress projects are developed. These are the standard opposed pairs, percentage, and numeric counted ways that a personality is measured. Think about works like The Wayhaven Chronicles or The One Chosen.
They have their own sets of advantages and disadvantages. Some projects mixed together the two in spectacular fashion. I’d like to know what the folks at home would prefer and if they have a reason for that preference.
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Yes. Option to add images and sounds is fine, and by the end of the day, it still depends on the one creating the game. I just hope that the accessibility aspect won’t be overlooked, and everyone would be able to get the same enjoyment out of it.
This is a great question indeed. The problem is: how complicated it is to toggle on/off every time a skill check is involved?
I’m not against any of the former ways you show, but maybe for me it is a little more complex than that. Humans are complicated, human interaction and relations are more, cause as far as I know, it’s all subjective, maybe, I’m not much of an expert to be honest.
Let’s suppose you build up 80% relation with “x” character, and then you do something bad for whatever reason “y”. Lowering any % to the relation would equate to never have reached a 80% relation with that character.
Combining the two maybe on a more realistic way, would be to let that 80% but toggle another variable, so you can check that your relation with that character was >=80, but you screwed up once on “y”, and that would make it act another way different than a straight “never reached 80%”.
Example:
You cheated on your girlfriend (80% relationship) to save someone from death. Just lowering that 80% would account for that? I mean, some people are more open and forgiving than others and could easily understand and let that go, other would straight out cut the relation forever, I don’t know how you can balance that on a % value. So yeah, for me it is more complex.
It all depends on how you build your game, how much complex you want it to be, if there is really a need for it. Either way it can work without “flaws”. And as always, it only adds to the replayability of the game, and maybe not much to the first impression, though I guess it can be felt as more “deep” and “complex” relation, it could be hard, or even impossible to know until you play another branch of it.