Now I know I should be finishing up this Design Document, but every time I think about posting the finished product, I reread it and see evidence of a concept I want to discuss. So I figure it's best to push it back a week and address the concept so you the readers can appreciate it too, without calling it out inside the Design Document.
This week I want to talk about creating conflict in games, and not in the sense of actual physical combat, but rather in the sense of why each character within the game chooses to fight. I think the conflict in Dracula's Castle is a good example of this, in the sense that it is simple enough to serve as a straight-forward example. Here the basic conflict is that Dracula is faced with a group of vampire hunters, and it is only a matter of time before they find out he is a vampire. He needs someone to take the fall, or at least serve as a distraction, somebody no one knows or cares about, and Adelbert Zsigsimond is a perfect candidate.
This set up makes for great conflict, now everyone involved has a reason to fight against each other. If the players look at why Dracula took the action that he did from his perspective it adds up, when thinking about how to cover up a serious crime, it's not a huge leap of logic to pin it on a lone drifter. From the vampire hunters perspective Adelbert is now definitely a vampire, even if he isn't the vampire that they are looking for, and are therefore duty bound to kill him. From Adelbert's perspective, he has to fight to escape being made a thrall of Dracula, while fighting the vampire hunters in self defense.
Everybody has very clear cut consequences for failing to succeed in their goal: if Dracula fails to shift the blame to Adelbert, he will die at the hands of the vampire hunters. If the vampire hunters fail then a vampire will prey on the innocents of this village on their watch. Finally if Adelbert fails he'll either die, or worse turn into a vampiric thrall. It really helps when your players know what the stakes are for every given faction, and what they stand to lose if they fail.
A player should not only understand the conflicts between himself and his enemies, but also the internal conflict within himself, enemies should be used as metaphors for the internal struggles within the character and the player. For example the player is understandably angry with Dracula, he made him into a vampire and is clearly the bad guy, but there will always be the nagging feeling that they really can't be mad at him too much, because he''s basically in the same situation the player is in. Those vampire hunters are dangerous,and the more they hound the player, the more the player understands just how badly Dracula wanted to avoid being in such a situation. As the game progresses, it will be readily apparent that the player would be lost without his vampiric powers, and if he is ever prompted to call to mind Dracula's situation, he'll realize that Dracula wouldn't have been able to defeat the Ottoman's without those same powers. How can the player be mad with Dracula for doing essentially what they themselves are doing? Villains shouldn't be the complete opposites of the heroes they face, they should share some common ground so the player can relate with them and create a deeper conflict within himself.
Consider also the so-called good guys among the vampire hunters, they are clearly Adelbert's and by extension the players enemies. They attack the player on sight for the mere fact of being a vampire, regardless of his actions, and that's totally unfair. But what about the undead hordes the players has been scything through? Did the player put any more thought into it outside of, "they're undead, therefore it is okay to kill them?" If not, can you really blame the vampire hunters for attacking you? And doesn't this whole conundrum make the player even more sympathetic to his undead enemies?
This is the nature of conflict, one cannot easily grapple with another opponent without seeing something of himself in his adversary creating tension. The more someone battles against a foe, the more they battle against themselves. This is the proper use of conflict in games, a means to get the player to realize something about himself and not just violence for its own sake. When creating enemies, try not to think so much of how they are different from the character, but in what ways they are the same.
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