作者：Glen Cooney

多人体验

我是竞争性在线多人游戏的忠实粉丝。同他人较量智慧和反应能够带来感官刺激，将体验变得新鲜且有趣。在追求多元化的过程中，我发现其他多人体验也同样有趣，也许桌面游戏还更胜一筹。虽然缺乏电子游戏的“抽动式”玩法，它们通过提供更深入的玩法体验弥补这点不足，这不仅带来竞争性，还带来剧情，这鲜少出现在电子游戏的设计当中。

这些“剧情”棋盘游戏的魅力超越大家围在桌子旁边的物质享受。它们运用的机制能够给玩家带来有趣的冲突和困境，这需要交际手腕及战略技巧，促使玩家建立更稳固的联系。

《权力的游戏》是有趣剧情的典型代表。角色间的相互作用，出乎意料的背叛，为权利而奋战，所有这些都给玩家带来难忘的有趣体验。

Game of Thrones from screenrant.com

桌面平台的故事

虽然Iron Throne之战不是大规模化，但其中存在若干包含有趣设计决策的棋盘游戏，能够带来玩家之间的有趣冲突，而非简单争夺高分。此外，若干这些选择似乎公然违抗冲突电子游戏设计，但依然获得突出表现。也许通过分析这些构思，我们能够将它们的魔法转移到数字领域。

* 《宇宙冲突》——力量的消长

通常在在线多人游戏领域，游戏设计师的目标是确保各种族、阶级或其对应选择保持平衡关系。不应有人获得绝对优势，游戏应围绕技能，而非运气。这一概念可以追溯到多数体育运动的规则，在此所有运动员都遵循相同规则，公平是这些规则的宗旨。

pic from gamasutra.com

诸如《宇宙冲突》之类的游戏挑战这一概念，有意让某些种族变得更强大。当我在游戏初期版本中首次遇到Virus时，我坚信这款游戏没有经过合理测试，这一种族显然缺乏平衡性。但我的看法随游戏《Fantasy Flight》更新版本的出现而发生改变，它们开始给扮演种族角色的难易程度贴上标签，绿色代表最简单，红色代表最困难。

奇怪的是，具备最强大技能的种族最终变成最难扮演的角色。这是因为无论你的外部力量多么强大，同其他玩家结成同盟及达成协议是获得成功的必要条件。若游戏中的所有其他玩家都联合起来对抗你，那么能够在武装冲突中处于支配地位对你来说并没有什么好处。这一“不平衡关系”也会带来有趣的情境，在此扮演“较弱”种族的玩家能够获得些许令人满意的时刻，战胜更加强大的对手。

超越外部力量之外的是若干代表各种技能的纸牌，若运用得当，它们能够扭转时局。“Card Zap”之类的纸牌能够让对手暂时丧失外部力量，或者“Mobeus Tubes”能够让玩家取回丢失的船只，这些能够快速摧毁他人的计划，迫使他们重新思考自己的策略。这一波动性带来戏剧化的扭转局面，能够平衡竞争型和休闲玩家之间的形势。

* 《太空堡垒卡拉狄加》——信任和秘密

合作游戏能够有效将玩家聚集起来，获得有趣享受，尤其是在朋友之间。共享胜果的感觉是电子和桌面游戏的强大推动力量。但如果中间存在破坏者，秘密摧毁其余团队成员会出现什么情况？

这是《太空堡垒卡拉狄加》所呈现的冲突。其中幸存者是Cylon，这是会秘密摧毁人类的人形机器人。虽然人类积极阻止Crises毁坏他们宝贵的资源，但Cylon极力促使这一情况发生，人类的成功很大程度上取决于弄清谁是Cylon。

这一元素基于两个机制。首先是忠实卡。每位都在游戏开始被给予秘密的忠实卡，以判断他们是人类，还是Cylon。只要Cylon始终没有露面，他们就能够像其他人类那样进行相同活动。如果他们选择露面，他们就能够利用忠实卡上的特殊行动（游戏邦注：例如将某人关在禁闭室中），然后开始向人类发送更多威胁。也就是说，隐藏的Cylon将比公开的Cylon带来更多破坏性。

这一机制还结合Crisis Checks机制。在各玩家回合的末尾，会出现Crisis卡片，通常需要进行危机检验以确定其成败。要赢得危机检验，玩家需要提供足够卡片，这样这些卡片的价值总量才能符合或超越危机难度。各危机包含系列支持检验的有效色彩，其他色彩则不利于检验过程。

bsg chief galen tyrol from gamasutra.com

各玩家都有自己的卡片，然后他们会根据自身的角色在各回合中从特定颜色/类型的牌组中抽取卡牌。当玩家向Crisis检验提供卡牌时，他们需要秘密进行，不能透露具体提供的数量。各玩家在递交卡牌或弃权后，就会从命运牌组中获得两张牌，这是各卡牌类型包含两张卡牌的随机牌组。所有危机检验卡牌随后会被重新洗过，然后由有利和不利卡牌共同决定Crisis是否顺利被转移。

这里的技巧在于，弄清谁最可能给牌组带来错误卡牌。清楚各角色获得什么类型的卡牌能够让你获得判断其身份的些许提示。因此多数游戏剧情主要围绕仔细查看所有玩家的行动，判断谁可能是Cylon。

这带来第二个主要游戏元素——信息。虽然多数时候，你都在积极判断其他玩家是否是Cylons，但玩家可以通过若干方式获得其他玩家所没有的信息。例如，“Launch Scout”卡牌能够让玩家在遇到下个Crisis或Destination卡牌时达到高峰阶段，决定将其放在牌组底部，还是顶部。其他技能让你能够查看其他玩家的忠诚卡。当结合游戏的信任情节时，这会带来和能够访问秘密信息的角色进行合作的有趣紧张感，同时对它们保持怀疑态度。

* 《Twilight Imperium》——不稳定的联盟

相对于《太空堡垒卡拉狄加》追求的信任剧情，《Twilight Imperium》添加了更多细微差异。各游戏的目标是，达到10个胜利点，这通过完成各种目标实现。玩家从目标纸牌中选择这些目标，只有若干目标会向所有其他玩家公开呈现，其他目标只能为抽取的玩家所见。这些目标颇为多元化，包括制造特定数量的船只，控制具体星球，获得特定数量的贸易商品等内容。因此这并未围绕玩家为单一零和目标而奋斗，而是更多涉及追逐可能带来直接冲突的各种路线。

treaty fan from gamasutra.com

这带来有趣的动态机制，在此不仅敌人和友人之间的界限被模糊化，同时玩家只能够获得局部信息，就得就自己的潜在友人或敌人做出判断。因此游戏变成主要围绕风险活动，检验众多平行胜利路径，让自身获得成功，同时阻碍他人前进。

人类的力量

这些游戏的戏剧机制核心是，竞争元素之间的紧张感，有点像拉锯战。在《宇宙冲突》中，这主要是玩家游戏力量&交际技能之间的权衡。在《Battlestar Galactica》中，这主要是信任团队&保持怀疑态度之间的权衡。而在《Twilight Imperium》中，这是既有知识和未知因素之间的对抗。这些紧张元素给玩家带来持续的悬疑感觉，将玩家置于关注焦点，而非游戏本身。

但要融入真正由玩家推动的剧情，光有紧张元素远远不够。多数游戏都包含这类元素，例如需要控制空工人数量&创建战斗单元的即时战略游戏，需要定量供给子弹和健康道具的惊悚游戏等。要让玩家成为你剧情的英雄和恶棍，就需要考虑非常具体的元素。

靠玩家推动剧情的支柱

因此若要制作基于玩家的剧情游戏，如下内容值得参考：

* 复杂的相互依赖关系

要创造有趣的剧情，必须要提供富有吸引力的理由，促使玩家共同合作和互动，而非简单地融入喋喋不休的内容，或是将其看作是同boss斗争的额外躯体。要做到这点，你需要让玩家自主引入独特元素，或信息，或特殊技能，或其他类似元素。

就紧张感而言，还需要有其他理由促使玩家不信任或警惕其他玩家。这鼓励玩家互相留意，间接促使玩家更密切地进行合作（也许发展成朋友）。这还可能创造令人难忘的时刻，例如你发现自己曾经最好的朋友总是想要在背后捅你一刀。

这里的技巧是，确保游戏具备适当节奏，能够让玩家处理自己的操作，同时依然能够查看其他玩家。桌面游戏通过将游戏设置成回合机制解决这一问题，这让玩家享有众多停工时间，能够查看其它玩家的操作，设定自己的战略。

就电子游戏而言，相同效果能够通过适当的游戏节奏实现。不妨将类似《军团要塞2》的连续操作同《星际争霸》之类即时战略游戏的间断操作进行比较。在《军团要塞2》中，你需要进行语音聊天和多任务操作，以发现具体发生情况及你所需要进行的操作。但在《星际争霸2》中，由于你自由支配许多非对抗性操作（游戏邦注：扩张、教授和侦察），你有很多时间可以了解你的对手或盟友。

* 不同类型的平衡关系

许多剧情棋盘游戏的共性是，虽然存在竞争元素，但它们并非基于技能因素。虽然熟练玩家会比新手更有经验，但随机性有效平衡游戏空间，让新手玩家能够提前离开，或让更有经验的玩家遭遇挫折。

融入出乎意料的元素是剧情故事叙述的主要特点，因此能够添加刺激感觉。设计师在制作游戏时所面临的挑战是，虽然具有随机性，让玩家控制事情进展能够给予所有玩家平等的成败机会，确保无论玩家的运气如何，游戏都依然富有趣味。

让玩家觉得自己享有控制权，能够在游戏中充分利用他们应得的力量非常重要。在此《宇宙冲突》表现突出，玩家能够查看自己的卡牌，提前计划自己的下几个回合。虽然游戏存在出乎意料的事件，但玩家享有足够的控制权，因此他们知道何时冒险，何时求稳。

不妨将此同《Talisman》进行比较，这款游戏也不涉及随机性元素。玩家对于游戏结果没有控制权，运气更多是通过掷骰子，而非玩家的策略。更糟糕的是，有利因素或不利因素很容易呈递增趋势，导致玩家之间出现明显的不一致。虽然能够带来无忧无虑的娱乐体验，但这不是创造剧情游戏的最佳方式。

* 回合模式

除随机性外，将游戏设置成回合模式，而非持久形式，能够给剧情领域创造许多机会。举个例子，即便玩家在游戏中度过糟糕时光，通常他们依然会想要返回游戏，旨在希望自己的运气在下次能够发生逆转。这还让玩家能够接触到更强大的力量及更显著的成就，且不会造成明显的不平衡性。

竞争性多人游戏已做到这点很多年，但这在大型社交和MMO游戏中较为少见，它们选择持续性模式。虽然玩家享受于在社交游戏中创建自己的自定义城市和世界，或者通过在MMO游戏中获得战利品积累力量，我觉得这破坏游戏当中的剧情元素。

相比节奏更慢的持久性游戏，包含许多起伏元素的游戏（游戏邦注：在此玩家能够在几小时范围里获得突出技能）倾向带来更丰富的情感。这是获得愉快体验，然后建立新友谊&形成选择性组合，和你多半不会再次同其交流的玩家共同完成任务之间的差异。

你也许会说，这些游戏的设计旨在让玩家沉浸其中，促使他们持续返回。但我要说的是，多人游戏也有很多玩家持续返回，即便是在游戏发行10年之后（如《星际争霸》）。也许现在是时候重新查看这些题材的持久性概念，即便它只是带来些许的多元化元素。

丰富生活

有些玩家玩游戏是为了逃避他们紧张和繁忙的现实生活。而其他人玩游戏则是因为他们的生活非常枯燥，想要丰富生活。对于后者而言，谁不想要获得包含敌对家庭、欺骗及隐藏情节的喧嚣剧情？我觉得数字领域缺乏剧情游戏，我觉得我们需要积极改变这一现状。（本文为游戏邦/gamerboom.com编译，拒绝任何不保留版权的转载，如需转载请联系：游戏邦）

Digital Drama – More Lessons from the Tabletop

by Glen Cooney

The Multiplayer Experience

I’m a big fan of competitive, online multiplayer games. The thrill of a competition of wits and reflexes against another human being has a great visceral appeal, and makes the experience fresh and interesting every time. Yet in the interest of diversity, I have found other multiplayer experiences just as engaging, and perhaps more so, in the realm of tabletop gaming. While lacking the twitch-based gameplay of an electronic game, they compensate in other ways by offering a deeper gameplay experience that creates not just competition, but drama, among the players, something I have rarely really seen explored in electronic game design.

The appeal of these “drama” board games goes beyond the creature comfort of live people gathered around a table. The mechanics they employ actually force interesting conflicts and dilemmas among the players, ones that requires as much skill in diplomacy as they do in strategy, and forge stronger, more memorable connections between players.

Consider Game of Thrones, an excellent example of compelling drama. The interplay between characters, the unexpected betrayals, the struggle for power, all of these make for a memorable and engrossing experience for the audience. Is it possible to create a multiplayer game that could create this kind of drama?

Tales of the Tabletop

While perhaps not quite on the scale of the war for the Iron Throne, there are several board games out there with some interesting design decisions that can create compelling conflicts among the players, beyond a simple struggle for the highest score. Moreover, some of these choices seem to fly in the face of conventional electronic game design, yet nonetheless work brilliantly. Perhaps in analyzing these ideas we may yet discover a way to translate their magic into the digital realm.

* Cosmic Encounter – The Rise and Fall of Power

Traditionally in online multiplayer games, the goal of a game designer is to make sure that every race, class, or equivalent choice is kept in balance with one another. No one should have an overwhelming advantage over the other, allowing the game to be focused on skill rather than luck. This concept goes back as far as even the rules of most sports, where everyone plays by the same rules and fairness is the main tenet of those rules.

A game like Cosmic Encounter challenges this notion by deliberately making some races more powerful than others. When I first came across the Virus in an earlier edition of the game, I was convinced this game wasn’t properly playtested and that this race was blatantly imbalanced. Yet my opinion changed in the newer Fantasy Flight edition of the game, where they started labeling races on how difficult they were to play, from green for easiest to red for hardest.

Strangely, the races with the most powerful abilities end up being the hardest ones to play. This is because regardless of how strong your alien power may be, creating alliances and striking deals with other players is essential for your success. Being able to dominate in armed conflicts does you little good if every other player in the game has ganged up against you. This “imbalance” also creates interesting scenarios where players playing one of the “weaker” races can have some fulfilling underdog moments, conquering their more powerful rivals.

Beyond alien powers are a variety of cards with the ability to dramatically turn the tables if used at the right time. Cards like “Card Zap” which can temporarily disable an opponent’s alien power, or “Mobeus Tubes” which can make everyone get their lost ships back can quickly derail someone’s plans and force them to have to rethink their strategy. It is this volatility that makes for dramatic turnarounds and can level the playing field between competitive and casual players.

* Battlestar Galactica – Trust and Secrets

Cooperative games can be a great way to bring people together and to have a good time, especially if its among friends. The sense of shared triumph is a powerful drive for both electronic and tabletop games alike. But what if there was a saboteur in your midst, secretly plotting the destruction of the rest of the team?

This is the conflict that Battlestar Galactica brings to the table. Among your crew of human survivors is a Cylon, a humanoid robot secretly plotting the demise of humanity. While the humans are trying to stop Crises from decimating their precious resources, Cylons are actively trying to make it happen, making a major part of the human’s success hinging on figuring out who is a Cylon.

This element is built upon two mechanics. The first is loyalty cards. Each player is given a secret loyalty card at the start of the game to determine if they are a human or Cylon. So long as a Cylon remains unrevealed, they are able to act and perform the same actions as any other human. If they choose to reveal, they can utilize a special action on their loyalty card (such as locking someone in the brig), and then begin to send even more dangers at the humans. That said, a hidden Cylon can do far more harm than a Cylon in the open.

This mechanic works alongside the mechanic of Crisis Checks. At the end of every player’s turn, a Crisis card is revealed, often requiring a crisis check to determine its success or failure. To win a crisis check, players must contribute enough cards so that the total sum of the value of those cards meets or exceeds the difficulty of the crisis. Each Crisis has a list of valid colors that count in favor of the check, with all other colors counting against.

Each player has their own hand of cards, and draws cards of particular colors/types each turn based on their character. Galen, for instance, draws 1 Politics, 2 Leadership, and 2 Engineering each turn. When a player contributes cards to the Crisis check, they do so in secret, and cannot reveal how much they are contributing. After each player has submitted cards or abstained, two cards are added from the destiny deck, a randomized deck containing two of each card type. All of the crisis check cards are then shuffled, and the cards counting for or against are tallied up to see if the Crisis is averted.

The trick comes down to figuring out who is the most likely person to have thrown in the wrong cards for the check. Knowing what kind of cards each character can get gives you a hint of who it might be, but with the randomess of the destiny deck one can never be certain. Thus much of the drama of the game is in carefully scrutinizing everyone’s actions and determining who might be the Cylon (or Cylons).

Thus comes the second major element of the game – information. While most of the time you will be trying to deduce whether the other players are Cylons or not, there are a few ways players are able to gain access to information no one else have. The “Launch Scout” card, for instance, allows a player to peak at the next Crisis or Destination card and decide whether to put it on the bottom of the deck or keep it on top. Other abilities allow you to see other people’s loyalty cards. When combined with the drama of trust the game evokes, it creates a compelling tension toward working with a character that has access to secret information, while still being suspicious of them.

* Twilight Imperium – Uneasy Alliances

Twilight Imperium adds a bit more nuance to the drama of trust BSG goes for. The goal of every game is to reach 10 victory points, which are earned by completing various objectives. Players select these objectives from objective cards, with some being public for all other players to see, and others are hidden from all but the player that took them. These objectives can vary from producing a certain number of ships, controlling specific planets, obtaining a certain number of trade goods, or many others. Thus often it is less about players contending over a single, zero-sum objective, but are pursuing many various paths that may or may not be in direct conflict with one another.

This creates an interesting dynamic where not only is the line between friend and foe blurred, but players are given only partial information to make decisions on their would-be friends or foes. Thus the game becomes about taking risks and examining many parallel victory paths in order to succeed at your own while thwarting others.

The Power of People

At the heart of each of these game’s dramatic mechanics is tension between competing elements, working like a tug-of-war against each other. For Cosmic Encounter, this is in-game power of a player versus their skill with diplomacy. For Battlestar Galactica, it is trusting your team versus being suspicious. For Twilight Imperium it is knowledge versus the unknown. Each of these elements of tension create a constant sense of suspense for players, and puts the players themselves in the spotlight, rather than the game itself.

But to have true player-driven drama, it is not enough just to have elements of tension. Most any game has them, from RTSes where you must manage how many workers versus fighting units to build, to survival horror games where you must ration your bullets and health items. To make the players the heroes and villains of your drama, very specific elements must be considered.

The Pillars of Player-Driven Drama

Thus if one was to make a player drama game, here is perhaps a few things to consider:

* Complex Interdependence

In order to create a compelling drama, there must be a compelling reason for players to work together and interact with each other, beyond simple chatter or as an extra body to fight a boss. To do this, you need to give players the ability to bring something unique to the table, be that information, or some special ability, or some other like element.

In terms of tension, there must also be a reason to distrust or be wary around other players as well. This encourages players to keep an eye on each other, indirectly making players work more closely together (and perhaps grow closer as friends). It also sets up for a memorable moment when you find out your once great BFF was planning to stab you in the back the whole time.

The trick is making the game have the right kind of pacing to allow players to attend to their own actions while still being able to scrutinize others. Tabletop games solve this by having the game be turn-based, which gives players plenty of downtime to be able to watch what other people are doing and form strategies.

For video games, this same effect can be accomplished through appropriate pacing of the game flow. Compare the non-stop action of something like Team Fortress 2 to the more punctuated action of an RTS game like Starcraft 2. In TF2, you all but need to have voice chat on and multitask to find out what’s going on and what you need to do. For SC2, though, because you have many non-confrontational actions at your disposal (expanding, teching, scouting), there is plenty of time to be able to get a read on your opponent and/or your allies.

* A Different Kind of Balance

One commonality between many drama-oriented board games is that while there is an element of competition, they are not heavily skill-based. While experienced player may have an edge over a novice one, randomness levels the playing field by giving the opportunity for that novice player to pull out ahead, or for the more experienced player to suffer a setback.

Having unexpected things occur is one of the major hallmarks of dramatic storytelling, and thus adds a sense of excitement when they come up. The challenge for a designer comes in making a game that, while random, gives players just the right amount of control what happens, provide equal opportunity for success and failure for everyone, and ensure that regardless of your luck, the game is still interesting.

It’s important for players to feel like they are in control, and that they can put their well-earned power in the game to good use. This is something Cosmic Encounter does very well, as players can look at their cards and plan ahead what their next few turns might look like. While there are unexpected events in the game, the player has enough control so they know when they are making a risky move vs playing safe.

Contrast this to a game like Talisman, which does not handle randomness nearly as well. The player has almost no control over the outcome of the game, with luck being more based on the roll of the dice than a player’s cunning. Worse still is that it is very easy for advantages or disadvantages to snowball and cause massive disparities among players. While perhaps good for lighthearted entertainment, it is not the best approach when creating a dramatic game.

* The Blank Slate

Alongside randomization, having the games be session-based, rather than persistent, opens up a lot of doors in the dramatic realm. For one, even if a player has a terrible time one game, there is always the incentive to come back in the hopes that they’re luck would turn around next time. It also allows players to reach much greater heights of power and success in the game without causing a major imbalance.

Competitive multiplayer games have done this for years, but it is much less common for larger social and MMO games, which instead opt for persistence. While people certainly enjoy creating their own customized cities and worlds in social games, or gradually accumulating in power by gaining loot in an MMO, I feel like this undermines the dramatic element of the game.

Games with a lot of ups and downs, where players can achieve great feats within the span of a couple hours, tend to have much more emotional richness when compared to the much slower pace of persistent games. It is the difference between having a great, memorable time and forging new friendships vs forming a pick-up group to do a routine quest with people you will likely never speak to again.

You could make the argument that those games are designed that way to keep people hooked as long as possible, and to keep them coming back. I would argue that just as many people come back again and again in multiplayer games too, even over a decade after the game’s release (like Starcraft). Perhaps it is time to re-examine the idea of persistence in these genres, if only for a little more variety.

Livening Things Up

Some people play games to escape their stressful and busy lives. Others come to games because their lives are boring and would like to liven things up. For those in the second camp, who wouldn’t want a tumultuous drama of fueding families, deception, and hidden plots? I think we are sorely lacking dramatic games in the digital world, and I think we should seek to change that.（Source：gamasutra）