Chapter 504 - 318: Playing a Role-Playing Game in a Fantasy World is Super Immersive (Part 2)

Chapter 504: Chapter 318: Playing a Role-Playing Game in a Fantasy World is Super Immersive (Part 2)

"What do you mean?" Dean suddenly had a very bad feeling.

Ben then pulled out another two books. "This one is for me, and this one is about the monsters."

At this point, even Craig couldn’t keep it together.

"Are you telling me we need three whole books of rules to play this game?"

"More or less. These are the core rulebooks. You can play with just these three. As for the more detailed rules, you don’t need to worry about them for now."

"There are *more* rules?"

Craig and Dean exchanged a look. They quickly reached a consensus: this game was probably never going to be popular.

Although they didn’t design games themselves, their gut feeling as players told them that the more complex the rules and the steeper the learning curve, the less popular a game would be.

Next, Ben "briefly" introduced the rules of the tabletop game to his two Little White Mice. ℯℯ𝘭.

He explained for about half an hour.

"And that’s the gist of it. Now that you know the basics, we can start playing."

Dean and Craig’s heads were spinning.

They took a moment to organize their thoughts.

"So, you’re the Underground City Lord. You decide what we encounter in the entire Dungeon, as well as all the specific little rules."

Ben nodded. "That’s the idea. But I can’t change absolutely everything. There’s a script!"

"And we’re the players. We have to design our own characters—race, class, attributes, backstory—and then go on an adventure in your Dungeon."

"Perfectly correct!"

"And inside the Dungeon, we can find treasure, fight monsters, solve puzzles, encounter unexpected events, and meet other characters... which you also play."

"Couldn’t be more right!"

"And in the course of the adventure, our characters can level up, improve their attributes, get equipment, grow stronger, and eventually clear the entire Dungeon or reach the end of the story."

"You’ve understood everything. You’re simply the best players."

Fearing Craig and Dean would get fed up and refuse to play, Ben adopted an encouraging tone worthy of a kindergarten teacher.

In truth, he knew the game’s rules were a bit complex. He hadn’t intended to make it this complicated at first.

But as he got deeper into the design, he discovered many aspects simply couldn’t be simplified.

To preserve the game’s playability, he chose to leave the rules this complex.

But after figuring out what this tabletop game was all about, Dean and Craig started to change their initial opinion.

It was actually more interesting than they had imagined, and not nearly as boring.

"The rules might be a bit complicated, but you’ll pick it up quickly once you start playing."

Ben assembled the first map using a set of pre-made model terrain tiles.

The two-man Adventurer party of Dean and Craig began their first adventure, stumbling along the way.

Two hours later, the sky grew dim.

"The towering Ogre before you swings its greatclub, dealing 13 points of damage! Adventurer Dean, unable to withstand such a devastating blow, collapses to the ground, never to rise again..."

Ben narrated the battle with great enthusiasm.

To be a good Underground City Lord, he had even learned a bit of voice acting, just to enhance the players’ sense of immersion.

"We’re already wiped out?" Dean said, unable to believe it.

"Yes, your party is wiped. This adventure ends here."

"But we only just reached the entrance to the Dungeon!" Craig cried. "Is there, by any chance, a way for me to spend One Gold Coin on a Resurrection Technique Scroll for my character? It’d be great if I could pick up some Legendary Equipment, too."

Craig chose to solve the problem in the most Craig-like way.

"Absolutely not!"

Ben immediately refused. "This isn’t a pay-for-stats game."

As a designer who prioritized gameplay over profit, Ben hated pay-for-stats games like *Path of Conquest*.

He believed that game had set a bad precedent.

Ever since that game came out, a flood of copycats had appeared. Instead of focusing on how to make a game fun, they were more concerned with how to get players to open their wallets.

This was a completely different mindset from people like him, who believed that if you made a good game, people would naturally buy it.

"Fair enough," Craig shrugged.

"So, what do you guys think of the gameplay?" Ben asked eagerly. He had let his uncle and the others at the toy store play it before, and the reviews had been extremely polarized.

Those who liked it thought it was the future of tabletop games and would surely create a whole new genre.

And those who disliked it felt like playing it was torture and couldn’t understand where the fun was at all.

As for Ben himself, he thought it was already very good, but still not good enough. It didn’t meet his personal standards, so he had delayed for a long time and still hadn’t officially launched it.

Craig gave his opinion first. "It’s pretty fun, if the player can get immersed in it. But it’s very tiring to play. How long did it take us just to get to the Dungeon entrance?"

"That’s true. To clear an entire Dungeon, you might need to play several times, maybe even dozens, to finish the whole adventure. But a long journey is part of an adventure’s charm, isn’t it? Plus, there are saves. As long as the Underground City Lord agrees, you can restart from a save point after your party wipes."

The frustration of a party wipe after months of playing would be too crushing, so Ben had added this quality-of-life feature.

"Also, it’s such a pain having to write down all my attributes in a notebook."

Craig pointed out another inconvenience, but he immediately proposed a solution.

"My family has a type of small Mechanical Armor—it’s a practice piece all family members have to make when they learn to craft them. They’re only about ten centimeters tall and have almost no combat ability, but they can perform simple movements. They should also be able to be fitted with an Illusion Technique to display attributes. It would make things much more convenient."

Ben immediately wrote it down. "That’s an excellent suggestion. Thanks so much. Having you playtest this was definitely the right decision."

He never knew such a thing as small Mechanical Armor even existed.

"Are they expensive?"

"Uh, they shouldn’t be expensive, I think? I’m not really sure," Craig replied. "They’re not for sale, and nobody would buy them anyway. They’re just student projects, really simple. Anyone just starting out with making Mechanical Armor could do it."

"Then they shouldn’t be expensive."

Ben was very pleased. This was great news.

To make this tabletop adventure more immersive, he had gone to great lengths to design monster miniatures, prop models, and terrain tiles that could form various scenes. Adding player character figures that could move and display their own stats would be absolutely perfect.

"Um... I have a suggestion."

Dean said timidly.

"Speak freely." Ben was in a great mood.

"Well, the game is fun to play, but I feel like it’s missing a sense of randomness—that feeling of surprise when you think, ’Whoa, I can’t believe that just happened!’"

"I know, but I’ve never been sure how to solve that problem," Ben sighed.

The game’s foundation was a series of complex calculations. If your stats weren’t high enough, they just weren’t. It’s true, that didn’t feel very "adventurous."

"I mean, what if you added a bit of randomness? For example, that door I wanted to open just now. You said my strength wasn’t high enough, so I couldn’t open it. But if there was some randomness in the process, maybe the door was poorly made and I could have forced it open. I’m just giving an example."

"That would put too much of a burden on the Underground City Lord."

"Or how about this," Dean said, a spark of inspiration hitting him. "We leave it to luck. To dice. What do you think about using dice?"

"Dice?"

"For example, my strength was 9, and I needed 12 to open the door. We could roll a die to decide the outcome. If the roll is higher than a certain number, let’s say 5, I succeed. The larger the difference in strength, the lower the chance of success on the roll."

Dean’s ideas came pouring out like a fountain.

"I used to use a die to pick answers on multiple-choice tests when I was stuck. So what if everything in the game was decided by dice? The damage a Skill does, whether you succeed at persuasion, the amount of health restored by healing, even your base attributes! You could have all kinds of dice, too, with different numbers of faces..."

As he was speaking, Dean noticed Ben staring at him and asked a little nervously, "Is my idea too weird?"

"No, no. You’re an absolute genius."

Ben grabbed Dean in a hug, so excited he almost kissed him.