Most people who play Aberration II or visit the threads probably have some understanding of the focus of the mod and what it attempts to acheive. I have outlined in two past threads some of the design elements that are important to me, and these remain apropos.
Nation Design Principles in Aberration II
Aberration II Event Scripting
However, following some nation changes (minors like Wessex and York, for example) and recent thread postings, I feel that it will be helpful to summarize where I see the project going. There are seven key themes I am concerned with in this mod.
1. Remaking a Plausible History
Aberration II is an alternative history mod. It is built from a key set of 'what ifs' and then looks at what could have happened differently. And, of course, once the game gets rolling in 1419, we are trying to capture a set of likely outcomes through the events we design. We will never think of all possibilities, but I am determined to provide an array of options to players so that the field of play is open rather than hedged in by what happened in the real world.
2. Focus on the Multiplayer Experience
With all of the millions of results possible from various 'what ifs' we have deliberately chosen a world in 1419 that is better suited to multiplayer gaming. It isn't that we are not concerned with solo players. I recognise that Aberration II, like all mods, is played almost exclusively solo. In fact, solo players will find a greater number of challenges here than they will in most mods because of the design elements that toughen the ai countries, give away few freebies and make exploration and colonisation that much more difficult. However, if there would be a choice to make that would involve conflict between the interests of the solo player and the multiplayer experience, the multiplayer will win out every time in the design of Aberation II, where balance is a critical element.
3. Balance
Balance is a difficult one to define, and everyone has there own sense of when it exists and when it does not. Some people might say that Diplomacy is a balanced game, while those others might feel that the game is unbalanced toward France, Germany and England and away from Italy and Austria, and the win rates for those countries might support such a claim. Even chess, it has been argued, is unbalanced because whomever goes first has the best chance of winning. Balance is also something that can be found by a group of players regardless of the scenario and game system, because it can be arrived at through careful play and alliances. But we, as designers, can help the process along. Larger countries with more resources (income, tech, manpower, leaders, explorers and favourable events) simply do have a better chance than a country with fewer of those same resources.
I was drawn into Aberration by playing MP with a smaller group and we were looking for scenarios that did not involve big vanilla-type majors like Spain and England, but where the second-tier and third-tier nations were not as vulnerable to the majors as they are in vanilla. Aberration II aims to bridge this gap by offering an array of scenario possibilities because of a greater balance of resources among the selectable nations.
4. No Great Powers, No Blobs
Accordingly, there are no great powers in Aberration II (Spain, England etc) and we are structuring the game such that massive countries do not readily form up as they do in vanilla and other mods. Obviously a player-run nation in solo play will still go beserk, but ai nations will tend to do this less often, and will find it harder to sustain when they do.
5. Majors and Minors
One thing that has been changing from Aberration to Aberration II is a smoothing out of resources among the so-called majors, and a building up of the resources for the so-called minors. The goal is to one day have event/leader/monarch files that are almost as interesting for the smaller nations as for the larger ones. It's a long way off, but we are going that way already with the attention being paid to Languedoc, the French minors, Wales, Wessex and York. Likewise, the manner in which the New World nations are much more colourful and powerful is not merely a fanciful post-colonial attitude on my part, but an attempt to create additional arenas of play for MP groups.
Not all MP groups are large enough such that all the standard European majors can be played, with enough players to create diplomatic balance and the role of the minor states is to be engulfed and absorbed within the first 80 years of the game. Some groups have only five, four or fewer players. Some groups don't want to play resource-rich powers, they want to play lesser nations that still have a chance, not only because they get a few leaders, but becuase their major-status neighbours are neither too big to possibly take on, nor too poorly run by the ai to rate as a challenge.
6. Flavour vrs Function
In the vanilla-type mods the goal is to reproduce history. Tinker with it a little at the edges perhaps, but all of the mod-specific elements (events, leaders, monarchs being the core of these) are grounded in events that happened, not thoses that might have. This is an approach that promotes flavour over function. The AGCEEP largely does not have events that speculate on what might have happened, even if gameplay will be improved by it, such as leaders or events for the Kingdom of Italy. That's the focus of that mod, flavour ( read: history) over function (read: gameplay). Here in Aberration II it is the reverse. We certainly aim to be plausible in our events and the structure of things, but I won't pretend that some things (take the Dichali as a good example) are mostly fantasy, if at least conforming to the broad principles of believable history. But functionally, having the Dichali where they are, and at the strength they are, works well for the game. And if I have had to bend things to make it fit well, that's OK. Where there is a conflict between flavour and function, function will always win in Aberration II.
7. Tell Some Stories
Finally, we are storytellers here. There is a strong element of roleplaying we are trying to invest in the mod, something that most players are drawn to. I want to tell stories here. Or, rather, to give the outline of a story that the player fills in by the choices they make and they way they imagine their nation has gone. The nations I have developed all have themes they are working their way through as the 400 years pass and I try to create two major paths and a number of side themes and little vignettes. I encourage this is other writers as well. Storytelling lies close to the heart of human communication and is what brings a game like this to life.
Nation Design Principles in Aberration II
Aberration II Event Scripting
However, following some nation changes (minors like Wessex and York, for example) and recent thread postings, I feel that it will be helpful to summarize where I see the project going. There are seven key themes I am concerned with in this mod.
1. Remaking a Plausible History
Aberration II is an alternative history mod. It is built from a key set of 'what ifs' and then looks at what could have happened differently. And, of course, once the game gets rolling in 1419, we are trying to capture a set of likely outcomes through the events we design. We will never think of all possibilities, but I am determined to provide an array of options to players so that the field of play is open rather than hedged in by what happened in the real world.
2. Focus on the Multiplayer Experience
With all of the millions of results possible from various 'what ifs' we have deliberately chosen a world in 1419 that is better suited to multiplayer gaming. It isn't that we are not concerned with solo players. I recognise that Aberration II, like all mods, is played almost exclusively solo. In fact, solo players will find a greater number of challenges here than they will in most mods because of the design elements that toughen the ai countries, give away few freebies and make exploration and colonisation that much more difficult. However, if there would be a choice to make that would involve conflict between the interests of the solo player and the multiplayer experience, the multiplayer will win out every time in the design of Aberation II, where balance is a critical element.
3. Balance
Balance is a difficult one to define, and everyone has there own sense of when it exists and when it does not. Some people might say that Diplomacy is a balanced game, while those others might feel that the game is unbalanced toward France, Germany and England and away from Italy and Austria, and the win rates for those countries might support such a claim. Even chess, it has been argued, is unbalanced because whomever goes first has the best chance of winning. Balance is also something that can be found by a group of players regardless of the scenario and game system, because it can be arrived at through careful play and alliances. But we, as designers, can help the process along. Larger countries with more resources (income, tech, manpower, leaders, explorers and favourable events) simply do have a better chance than a country with fewer of those same resources.
I was drawn into Aberration by playing MP with a smaller group and we were looking for scenarios that did not involve big vanilla-type majors like Spain and England, but where the second-tier and third-tier nations were not as vulnerable to the majors as they are in vanilla. Aberration II aims to bridge this gap by offering an array of scenario possibilities because of a greater balance of resources among the selectable nations.
4. No Great Powers, No Blobs
Accordingly, there are no great powers in Aberration II (Spain, England etc) and we are structuring the game such that massive countries do not readily form up as they do in vanilla and other mods. Obviously a player-run nation in solo play will still go beserk, but ai nations will tend to do this less often, and will find it harder to sustain when they do.
5. Majors and Minors
One thing that has been changing from Aberration to Aberration II is a smoothing out of resources among the so-called majors, and a building up of the resources for the so-called minors. The goal is to one day have event/leader/monarch files that are almost as interesting for the smaller nations as for the larger ones. It's a long way off, but we are going that way already with the attention being paid to Languedoc, the French minors, Wales, Wessex and York. Likewise, the manner in which the New World nations are much more colourful and powerful is not merely a fanciful post-colonial attitude on my part, but an attempt to create additional arenas of play for MP groups.
Not all MP groups are large enough such that all the standard European majors can be played, with enough players to create diplomatic balance and the role of the minor states is to be engulfed and absorbed within the first 80 years of the game. Some groups have only five, four or fewer players. Some groups don't want to play resource-rich powers, they want to play lesser nations that still have a chance, not only because they get a few leaders, but becuase their major-status neighbours are neither too big to possibly take on, nor too poorly run by the ai to rate as a challenge.
6. Flavour vrs Function
In the vanilla-type mods the goal is to reproduce history. Tinker with it a little at the edges perhaps, but all of the mod-specific elements (events, leaders, monarchs being the core of these) are grounded in events that happened, not thoses that might have. This is an approach that promotes flavour over function. The AGCEEP largely does not have events that speculate on what might have happened, even if gameplay will be improved by it, such as leaders or events for the Kingdom of Italy. That's the focus of that mod, flavour ( read: history) over function (read: gameplay). Here in Aberration II it is the reverse. We certainly aim to be plausible in our events and the structure of things, but I won't pretend that some things (take the Dichali as a good example) are mostly fantasy, if at least conforming to the broad principles of believable history. But functionally, having the Dichali where they are, and at the strength they are, works well for the game. And if I have had to bend things to make it fit well, that's OK. Where there is a conflict between flavour and function, function will always win in Aberration II.
7. Tell Some Stories
Finally, we are storytellers here. There is a strong element of roleplaying we are trying to invest in the mod, something that most players are drawn to. I want to tell stories here. Or, rather, to give the outline of a story that the player fills in by the choices they make and they way they imagine their nation has gone. The nations I have developed all have themes they are working their way through as the 400 years pass and I try to create two major paths and a number of side themes and little vignettes. I encourage this is other writers as well. Storytelling lies close to the heart of human communication and is what brings a game like this to life.
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Very ambitious as well, but hey, there's a lot of us, we can do it. Both of the past threads are very interesting as well. I'll certainly keep this in mind as I design and playtest my events.
