Previously we talked about the history of the WGRPG tournaments, and the challenges of making them competitive. Today, we’ll go over our Scenario and Penalty Card system, as well as the impact they had on the Last Dream: World Unknown tournament.
This blog post is part of a series on the WGRPG Tournaments.
The 2020 Tournament
The Last Dream: World Unknown competition took place during the WGRPG 2020 tournament, and featured two new major mechanics: Scenarios, and Penalty Cards. Each mechanic was motivated by an observation, although we also got a bit lucky with the decision to use Scenarios.
Scenarios
Rather than playing the entire game of Last Dream: World Unknown, we chose to break the game up into five scenarios that showcased the main plot points and mechanical evolution of the RPG. (Note that there are minor spoilers in this table.)
The motivating observation here was that, if Player A was ahead of Player B by 1 hour going into the final 5 hours of the game, then Player B was pretty much required to use risky strategies in an attempt to catch up, while Player A could switch to safe strategies and maintain a comfortable lead. We got lucky here too: LD:WU is such a loooooong game that we were basically required to break it up (and skip parts of it) or risk playing for 30+ hours.
Scenario 1 is simple: you just start a New Game and play until you get the ship. Nothing carries over from one Scenario to the next – not your classes, experience, nor items. Instead, it’s best to think of Scenarios 2 through 5 like you’re using someone else’s save files, and starting from where they left off. So you’ll be at some level higher than 1, with some equipment, and the plot will be completed up to that point.
In order to win the competition, you gain points for your placement in each Scenario. We used an inverted placement point system, which ensured that the winner had a good performance across all Scenarios.
Penalty Cards
Historically well-ranked players were still given basic restrictions, like being forced to play on Legendary. New to this tournament, however, was the introduction of dynamic “penalty cards”.
The penalty cards are a “downward pressure mechanism” – players finishing a Scenario in 3rd, 2nd, or 1st place receive harsh handicaps that make it harder to maintain the lead. Unlike rubber banding (i.e., Mario Kart), there is no mechanism to boost players who are consistently finishing last – so a truly proficient player can potentially overcome the penalty while a player who hasn’t practiced much will never win.
Enough talk, let’s look at some of the cards! There were 32 in total; here’s a sampling:
Each card has a name, some flavor art (credited to the game it appeared in at the bottom of the card), and text describing what that card does. Finally, the “Tiers” of the card are listed in the top-right. A Tier 1+2 card like “Hangers On” could be used on a (historically) high-ranked player, but a Tier 1+2+3+4 card like “Where It All Began” could be used on any player who placed high enough (Tier 4 was technically meaningless). The goal was to ensure that a good card wouldn’t be “wasted” on a lower-ranked player via clever metagaming.
As you can see, cards ranged in effect and power. Of the ones listed above, “Consigned to Oblivion” is easily the most damaging, while “Recovering Gambler” could really slow down the grind for money in Scenarios 2, 3, and 4. Using “Arc of History” to selectively ban, say, the White Mage could be devastating in later Scenarios. Try to consider how you would play through the Scenarios with each of these cards applied to you!
Tournament Results
So how effective were the cards at shaking up the competition results? Let’s compare the results for World Unknown (the first tournament that used the cards) with the results for Last Dream (2015) and Dragon Quest 3. The following table shows the rankings of WGRPG core members, as well as anonymized competitor names for friends and family. Note that Chris was sick for the Dragon Quest 3 tournament, so he did not actually compete.
The cards certainly achieved their primary goal: Mandrew and Seth were pushed down in the rankings, while Chris (and several lower-ranked competitors) ranked high. They introduced a new problem, however, which becomes clear if you look at the individual Scenario rankings for World Unknown:
Some of the recording for the later Scenarios is a bit spotty, but the pattern is clear: although Seth and Mandrew jumped around in placements (which was good), Chris and Competitor C absolutely dominated the first two placements. Our card system made it too easy for a lower-ranked player to sweep the competition! In fact, since Chris and Competitor C played on “Normal” (while Mandrew and Seth played on “Legendary”), we found that our “best” cards didn’t really do much to slow Chris down. Normal was just too easy!
Onwards to the Future!
Balancing issues aside, we’re quite pleased with how the Scenarios and the Cards work together to balance the playing field. In our final blog post in this series, we’ll cover our selection for the RPG Competition coming up in 2023, as well as some improvements we made to the Penalty Cards. Can you guess which RPG we chose? Put your guess in the comments!
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