Broken Roads - turn-based Australian post-apocalyptic RPG with "unique morality system"

[Lurker47]

At least the UI doesn't look like Apple.

 

[Craig Ritchie]

I have some questions about the morality system in the game:

First of all how do the alignments work, are they mutually exclusive? in the sense that leaning to one alignment steers you away from the other ones, or do you have a certain degree of alignment in each one of them, seperatly from each other?

Also how do these alignments influence the gameplay exactly? do they give you new dialogue options depending on what ideologies you lean more to? do they affect the story in any way? and what type of effects do moral traits have ?

Thanks for your patience - after PAX a few of us some time off, and I'm just getting back into things now. I'm actually writing a full dev blog about the Moral Compass at the moment and will get that up later today, and link it here. In brief:

Yes, they are in a way exclusive, but only because your alignment is what is covered by your World View, which is what we are calling the golden arc that determines which actions, dialogue options etc which your character can take:

So, if you look above, you can see your exact location on the moral compass shown by the white dot. There is a golden area on each side of it, and thus you could take certain decisions at the edge of the utilitarian and nihilist quadrants, and everything within the existentialist quadrant. Because in this instance the white dot is in the outer bound of the existentialist quadrant, this character is able to have a high level existentialist moral trait ('Condemned To Be Free'). By being further out towards the edge of the compass, the golden arc is a little narrower than some other characters' might be. What this does is allow some characters to be broadminded and others to be narrowminded - that is, if you want to have a lot of options available to you, you sacrifice the high-level traits but allow a wider World View. Conversely, if you want to focus on a particular philosophy, your World View (golden arc) narrows.

In terms of how these affect gameplay, the most easy to show is that during dialogue, certain options which would fit into one of the above quadrants become available at different points in a conversation. Not every choice is going to be a moral one or have any philosophical significance, and we are also having dialogue options with skill checks, dialogue options dependent on past decisions, and so on. But where your character's philosophical leaning is at any one point can affect which quests become available, and how you resolve the different challenges in the game. We are also working on combat influences, where different philosophical leanings allow certain skills and abilities and even weapon choices (you have to be a pretty mean bastard to use a nail grenade for instance, whereas only certain type of people might allow someone who begs for mercy to go free, and those people might give you specific rewards, information you could otherwise have gained and so on).

As I mentioned, all this information and more is in the dev blog I plan to post later today. I'll share the link when it's up.

 

[Craig Ritchie]

Well, I took a pretty loose meaning of "today" in my last post, due to how much has happened with Drop Bear Bytes over the last week. I'm back on this blog now and will share when done.

Any other questions you'd like answered, please post here.

 

[Infinitron]

Well, I took a pretty loose meaning of "today" in my last post, due to how much has happened with Drop Bear Bytes over the last week.

What happened?

 

[Craig Ritchie]

New hires, publisher interest, sorting out a dedicated studio location in Melbourne - general administrative/operations stuff more so than dev and design work - that have taken up a lot of time. All good things.

 

[barghwata]

Thanks for your patience .............

Haha i completely forgot about this but better late then ever, i appreciate you taking the time to answer my questions in detail.

Not every choice is going to be a moral one or have any philosophical significance

I am hoping this is true; moral systems are fun and all and can help offer a great roleplaying experience but not if they're too restrictrive or force the player to follow one ideology without allowing some room for change and flexibility, but regardless the game looks really interesting and i am looking forward to seeing how this moral system works in practice, keep up the good work.

 

[Craig Ritchie]

Here it is:
https://www.brokenroadsgame.com/dev-blog/moral-compass-overview

 

[Jedi Exile]

Drop Bear Bytes - I like it. Hope you will make a better game than Double Bear did!

 

[Infinitron]

Here it is:
https://www.brokenroadsgame.com/dev-blog/moral-compass-overview

MORAL COMPASS OVERVIEW
Before we dive into this, I have to preface that were only beginning alpha development now, so anything in this blog can change. We’ve got at minimum of 18 months or so until launch, a lot of testing, refining and designing still to do, and so please understand that by then a lot of things could be different to how they are right now!

For the purposes of this blog we’ve added in examples of where decision points may be found on the moral compass - ll the smaller dots would not be in the actual game, but rather represent dialogue options or adventuring choices which may come up during play. Each decision is tracked, with a full history of your philosophical influences (“You chose to leave a stranger to die in the outback…”) as well as a percentage breakdown of where your choices were made in the different philosophical quadrants throughout your adventure.

For the purposes of this blog we’ve added in examples of where decision points may be found on the moral compass - ll the smaller dots would not be in the actual game, but rather represent dialogue options or adventuring choices which may come up during play. Each decision is tracked, with a full history of your philosophical influences (“You chose to leave a stranger to die in the outback…”) as well as a percentage breakdown of where your choices were made in the different philosophical quadrants throughout your adventure.

Introduction

The Moral Compass is an attempt to add more depth to the computer role-playing experience. Morality systems have largely ranged from a simple selection from a list of world views that is barely ever referenced again, to more deeply developed examples like what we see in Fable and Star Wars Knights of the old Republic.

Still, I felt that there was much more to explore here, in particular what it would be like if your character was actually of the world view you were role-playing. More specifically, I wanted to look at enforcing some kind of consistency of character so that your alignment was not quite so arbitrary – the easiest example would be how many role-playing games let you be noble in one quest and evil immediately after.

While obviously fun and allowing a lot of player freedom, it can also feel a little bit cheap and too easy to game when you can basically dictate which parts and which rewards you take on a whim.

The Moral Compass in Broken Roads was born of a combination of seeing this in many games, and a feeling I had for quite some time that games had so much potential to explore philosophy, and I worked at designing something to combine the two.

How it works

At character creation, you will be asked a series of questions that present moral quandaries or describe situations where there is no clear right or wrong solution. How you answer these will determine your starting position on the Moral Compass.

The compass itself is divided into four quadrants, which for now are utilitarian, existentialist, nihilist, and Machiavellian. Even these may change, but the intent here is not to have directly opposing moral positions and have things quite simply ‘you are good or bad if you are here or there’, but to present a range of attitudes towards being in the world.

As you go through the game, certain choices, dialogue options, quest or adventuring decisions and the like can have a moral component - of course they don’t all, as a lot of conversations just conversation - or relates to a particular world view. These options are all located somewhere on the moral compass. Your character’s philosophical leaning is marked by a white dot, and there is a golden arc extending around that point, which is their World View.

Your range of possible options that you can choose from is determined by your World View. If you make a decision on the fringes of your World View, your philosophical leaning will shift slightly towards that direction. You may also find that the dot which marks your current position moves more towards the centre of the compass, widening the golden arc. Alternatively, if you make choices very close to your current philosophical leaning, the white dot will move more towards the outside of the compass, and your World View will narrow. This is intended to simulate broad mindedness and narrowmindedness, as you have a character who is either open to a wide range of ideas but not necessarily focused on any particular system of thought, right through to somebody who is incredibly focused and possibly rigid in their ways of thinking.

While being broadminded opens up more options for you, it does prevent you from benefiting from particular moral traits and attitudes that are dedicated individual may be able to enjoy.

Moral traits

Moral traits in Broken Roads behave like unlockable skills or talents which you can have active when they are within your worldview. If you look at the moral compass you’ll see an inner darker ring, and an outer light to ring, which marks the difference between higher-level and lower-level moral traits. Higher-level and lower-level here simply refer to if you’re focused enough to have your philosophical leaning such that you are in the lighter area of the circle.

Moral traits generally provide bonuses and penalties that range from simply unlocking more dialogue options, through to allowing the use of certain weapons, or temporarily providing extra talent points or buffs to your base attributes. Here as well we don’t want things to be too easy: many traits bring with them some kind of detriment as well, ranging from combat penalties to outright preventing choices from certain moral quadrants while active.

Limiting player choice

One of the things we are conscious of and have been working to balance from the beginning is ensuring that it all stays fun. There is a lot of work to be done to ensure that a mechanic that limits player choice does not feel restrictive and actually ends up feeling hindrance. How we solve this really will just come out of the next six months or so of testing internally. Perhaps we find that were able to balance this with a slightly wider golden arc and players don’t feel restricted in fact enjoy the forced role-playing that this adds, or perhaps we find that we should give players the option that their World View perhaps determines only their available moral traits and certain bonuses/penalties, but still allow all dialogue/quest options even if they are outside of the golden arc. And hey, perhaps the system is already close to working just fine as designed (because that’s how game dev always works you know). Watch this space – we will be posting updates as we go.

- Craig Ritchie, Game Director

 

[just]

are there any asexual companions?

 

[Craig Ritchie]

Could be. Could be.

 

[Abu Antar]

 

[d1nolore]

I don't see any Abbos. Australians still pretending they don't exist? They would be perfect for post-apocalyptic Australia.

 

[Bohrain]

I don't see any Abbos. Australians still pretending they don't exist? They would be perfect for post-apocalyptic Australia.

They probably took a collective nap on the road when the apocalypse happened. Tragic, truly.

 

[HeatEXTEND]

aptitude for narrative design, not for personal/political views they may hold

Writers are not robots, at least not if they're any good.

 

[Razzoriel]

Hi Craig. We do not know each other, but you can see me as a man in a similar position. We both dedicated a chunk of our lives to develop a product we either grew up liking or being our bread-winner. Indie developers like us should pay close attention to what is going on in the industry, since our margin for errors are much narrower, and we lack the funds to correct any wrongdoings.

I see you commiting the same mistake multimillion dollar companies are making, in employing people that have a clear and brazen political profile that does not match the majority of the consumers, and only serves to alienate them. Our era of political neutrality is over. Neutrality led us to where we are now, politics being first, product last. Your graphic artist already marked your game with this agenda, confering a degree of fiction to sexes that is akin to those same political-driven people in rich companies. There is still time to change. People may still buy your game and still play it, and it may be fun, but its a stain that will ever be present, and will grow bigger and bigger on your next projects, with its repeated mantra of demanding you to get ever more woke.

All this being said, I wish you good luck and will definately purchase your title, as I did with other (good) RPGs made by other companies.

 

[Craig Ritchie]

Hey - glad the game is getting attention again. Thanks for the comments. I fully understand your concerns and all I can ask is you trust me and my vision for Broken Roads, which ultimately will not go the route you have described, and will not be a soapbox for any particular political ideologies.

 

[Abu Antar]

Here are some skill and talent trees.

 

[toro]

Here are some skill and talent trees.

Skills were a mistake.

 

[Bohrain]

I'd rather get Fallout style perks that have primary stat, skill and level restrictions than Bioware-ish talent trees. I feel like talent trees end up offering less build variety.

 

[Lurker47]

I'd rather get Fallout style perks that have primary stat, skill and level restrictions than Bioware-ish talent trees. I feel like talent trees end up offering less build variety.

What about BOTH

I have some questions about the morality system in the game:

First of all how do the alignments work, are they mutually exclusive? in the sense that leaning to one alignment steers you away from the other ones, or do you have a certain degree of alignment in each one of them, seperatly from each other?

Also how do these alignments influence the gameplay exactly? do they give you new dialogue options depending on what ideologies you lean more to? do they affect the story in any way? and what type of effects do moral traits have ?

Thanks for your patience - after PAX a few of us some time off, and I'm just getting back into things now. I'm actually writing a full dev blog about the Moral Compass at the moment and will get that up later today, and link it here. In brief:

Yes, they are in a way exclusive, but only because your alignment is what is covered by your World View, which is what we are calling the golden arc that determines which actions, dialogue options etc which your character can take:

So, if you look above, you can see your exact location on the moral compass shown by the white dot. There is a golden area on each side of it, and thus you could take certain decisions at the edge of the utilitarian and nihilist quadrants, and everything within the existentialist quadrant. Because in this instance the white dot is in the outer bound of the existentialist quadrant, this character is able to have a high level existentialist moral trait ('Condemned To Be Free'). By being further out towards the edge of the compass, the golden arc is a little narrower than some other characters' might be. What this does is allow some characters to be broadminded and others to be narrowminded - that is, if you want to have a lot of options available to you, you sacrifice the high-level traits but allow a wider World View. Conversely, if you want to focus on a particular philosophy, your World View (golden arc) narrows.

In terms of how these affect gameplay, the most easy to show is that during dialogue, certain options which would fit into one of the above quadrants become available at different points in a conversation. Not every choice is going to be a moral one or have any philosophical significance, and we are also having dialogue options with skill checks, dialogue options dependent on past decisions, and so on. But where your character's philosophical leaning is at any one point can affect which quests become available, and how you resolve the different challenges in the game. We are also working on combat influences, where different philosophical leanings allow certain skills and abilities and even weapon choices (you have to be a pretty mean bastard to use a nail grenade for instance, whereas only certain type of people might allow someone who begs for mercy to go free, and those people might give you specific rewards, information you could otherwise have gained and so on).

As I mentioned, all this information and more is in the dev blog I plan to post later today. I'll share the link when it's up.

These positions seem a little arbitrary. Nihilism being the opposite of utilitarianism is weird. Bit of a red flag.

 

[Craig Ritchie]

I'd rather get Fallout style perks that have primary stat, skill and level restrictions than Bioware-ish talent trees. I feel like talent trees end up offering less build variety.

What's likely not clear yet in the screenshot is that is pretty much how it is - the talents have primary stat, skill and level requirements to start them off, and earlier levels of the same talent as pre-reqs.
The actual skills (Speech, Science, Medicine etc) have a numerical value as well, which you increase at each level up.

 

[J_C]

Hey - lead dev on Broken Roads here. Quite the thread we have. Happy to answer any questions you have (seriously).

Quick one about the track this thread has taken over the last few posts: I'm the game director. I'm creative lead. Our narrative team were hired for their writing skills and not their political views. Broken Roads is not going to be a political soapbox, which it seems you guys may be fearing based on two of the writers' Twitter profiles. There are numerous other people involved in the narrative as well.

I have final say over all content in the game and it's fun first. We're creating an Australian post-apocalyptic world, and these experienced and talented wrtiers are on board because of their aptitude for narrative design, not for personal/political views they may hold.

Nice to have you here on the Codex. Don't mind the ball busting in the thread. If the game turns out good, nobody will care about the political views of your writers. Good luck.

 

[Junmarko]

"Trans: She/Her", "Ex-MMA Fighter".

 

[Black]

The title would be better suited for a modern Polish rpg.