Cliff/Platform: If your
particular game of Arpeggio takes place in a somewhat Mario-esque universe, probably the most
common field obstacle will be some change in elevation, handled by a character's Platform stat. A
higher area, be it a cliff, rooftop, or physics-defying floating platform, will have a height
value, and if a character's Platform stat equals or exceeds this value, then the character is
able to jump high enough to land up there. Character Platform stats range from 1 to 9, but it is
possible for an area of higher elevation to have a height value greater than 9; after all, even
the best jumper is probably unable to reach escape velocity in a single bound. The exception to
this would be a flying character, who, with a Platform of 9, could reasonably fly up anywhere,
though arriving at the top of a mountain may take significant time. Flying characters with less
than a 9 in Platform are worse at flying, meaning that while they can keep themselves off the
ground, their wings will get tired (or an equivalent limitation invoked) if they attempt to fly
to heights greater than the value of their Platform stat. Variations in the Platform stats of a
group of player characters provide the most obvious fuel for field puzzles: if one or more
characters can reach a higher portion of ground that one or more of the other characters cannot,
then the characters who can reach must, once up higher, perform some other field task to create
some kind of stairway, elevator, etc. that will allow the remaining character(s) to join them.
Similarly to the flying thing, some characters specifically note that they use their Platform
stat by climbing walls, and logically these characters would be unable to reach a free-floating
Platform; characters capable of teleportation have an easier time, but again, if their Platform
stats are less than 9, they will be unable to teleport beyond certain distances.
Long Fall: If a character wants to
descend to a lower level of elevation but is faced with a sharp drop-off instead of a nice,
smooth pathway, then the character can choose simply to jump off the cliff. A minute difference
in elevation should be ignored, but if a character jumps off a cliff (balcony, floating platform,
etc.) of considerable height, then the character will take damage from the Long Fall. The damage
taken will be equal to the character's Weight stat +10, minus the character's Platform stat and
Defense Power (since it is physical damage). Once again, flying characters get a bit of an
exception here, generally not taking Long Fall damage even if the height of the fall is greater
than their Platform stats, and teleporters can go similarly unharmed, while wall-climbers can
climb down from any height (climbing up being more exhausting) but obviously can't do so from a
free-floating platform. Umbrella-type
weapons have the unique field effect of preventing a character from taking Long Fall damage
when equipped (the idea, obviously, being that the character uses the umbrella to slowly drift
down). Originally, the Weight stat was not added to the damage from a Long Fall (with 10-Platform
being hegel5000's idea), but I decided to add it to explain why, for
example, a giant airship crashing into the ground would actually destroy itself rather than just
taking Long Fall damage. Again, the formula is (Weight + 10) - (Platform + Defense
Power).
Gap/Pit: A horizontal usage of the
Platform stat instead of a vertical one, in this case the player wants to jump over a certain,
harmful area and land on another spot at the same elevation as their current position. So,
basically, the length of the gap instead of the height of the cliff will have a numerical value
that the character's Platform stat must meet or exceed in order for the character to be able to
successfully cross the pit. Yet again, flying characters get a break here, since they're staying
at the same height and could therefore cross any distance, but if this feels too exploitative,
the Maestro could still have their wings get tired or whatever. On the other hand, characters who
normally use their Platform stats by climbing walls are out of luck if there are no walls around
the pit. The Maestro may allow players to attempt to cross the pit even if they do not have
enough Platform stat, in which case the character should take some amount of damage and be flung
back to their starting position. Damage should be determined during game planning, but a general
range would be something like 1-3 physical damage from a spike pit, 1-10 Fire Element damage from
lava, and perhaps total death from a bottomless pit, requiring the typical revival by another
player character. Water could be used as a hazard that would deal Water Element damage, but
alternately the players could be allowed to swim through it, or sink to the bottom and explore it
if they have some means of breathing.
Heavy Object: It could be a rock,
a car, whatever; the point is, the players want
it to be in a different spot than where it begins, for one reason or another. The solution is to
move the object with Strength; some objects may have a weight of more than 9, in which case it
would take more than one character to push the object. It might be blocking their way, sitting
right in the only entrance to a spot that has proven unreachable with their other field stats, or
they might need to move it on top of a weight-sensitive panel, or through some other sci-fi-esque
sensing field; on the other hand, the players might have to stack multiple objects on top of each
other to form a makeshift ladder or stairway, or to barricade an entrance that enemies are trying
to use.
Locked Door: There are two ways to
attempt to deal with a locked door: break it down with Strength, or pick the lock with Hand-Eye.
If one of the player characters has maxed out Strength or Hand-Eye, then there should be very few
buildings to which the players cannot gain access; however, there may be some, and while multiple
characters can charge at a door with their Strength at the same time, it is spatially impossible
for multiple characters to combine their Hand-Eye stats to pick a difficult lock.
Manipulation: While allowing the
players to constantly rely on manipulating enemies with Charisma would result in the neglecting
of Arpeggio's battle system, the necessary manipulation of an NPC or enemy into performing a
desired field task for the players is still an entertaining and clever field obstacle. Unless
repeated exposure has trained the players to remember to attempt manipulation, it will likely be
difficult for them to think of, particularly if they begin by killing the desired manipulatee in
battle before attempting the field task that the now dead character needs to perform for them. In
cases such as this, the players would be required to revive the enemy and then manipulate it (for
this reason it is recommended that at least one party member know a revival move such as
PK VimUp). On the other hand, if the players have
high Charisma and start to constantly manipulate enemies in order to avoid battles, the Maestro
may employ excuses as to why the manipulation failed to work, such as the enemy having direct
orders from a superior officer whose Charisma is equal to or greater than the player's.
Piggyback: A character can carry
another character if the carrier's Strength is equal to or greater than the Weight of the
character to be carried. This is especially useful if a strong player character can fly, because
it allows them to carry the other players (if one by one) over things that their own Platform
stats cannot overcome. However, for non-flying characters, carrying someone means that the
carried person's Weight is subtracted from the carrier's Platform when the carrier tries to make
jumps, so carrying people past hazards is less effective if your Platform stat is limited to
jumping. Enemies normally cannot be carried because they will initiate battle mode if touched,
but they are given Weight stats in case it becomes relevant.
Pickpocket: This uses Hand-Eye to do
the actual work and Charisma to avoid being noticed. The numbers here will probably be rather
fuzzy, but a more dedicated Maestro than I might be able to make interesting use of them.
Trivia Questions: Think of the
Thwomps or door guys in Paper Mario. The players encounter a character (likely robotic or
something, and stationary) who cannot be pushed with Strength, manipulated with Charisma, climbed
over with Platform, etc., who demands that the characters answer several trivia questions in
order to earn their right to pass. This is the most entertaining way of using the Knowledge field
stat. If one character has high knowledge compared to the other players, then the Maestro could
feed that character the answers to the questions in another window—this works particularly well
if the high-knowledge character has some sort of communication impediment, and has to then
perform some intensive role playing to illustrate the answer to the other players, who can give
it to the door guard directly. On the other hand, the Maestro could offer hints to each player
based on their differing Knowledge stats.
Unique: Obviously, if the
players chose to craft Unique field abilities for their characters, then these should be
incorporated into the game's field puzzles, preferably rather often but in different ways each
time. As noted in the description of the Unique field stat, think of them as the field abilities
of the partners in the Paper Mario games: each ability allows Mario to reach certain spots that
no other ability, whether his or another partner's, does. This should be emphasized to the
players when they are coming up with their Unique abilities; the Unique abilities should not fall
under the jurisdiction of one of the other field stats, or of the Unique abilities of the other
players. For example, Goombario's and Goombella's field Tattle would probably fall under the
Knowledge stat, any partner who can fly would have a Platform of 9 and the namable Yoshi's
horizontal jump would fall under Platform (although carrying Mario would fall under "Piggyback"
above), and Ms. Mowz's item-detection thing would probably fall under Clever, but the rest of the
partner abilities are probably specific enough to be used as Unique abilities (check some of the
exampleenemysheetsfor, um,
examples). For examples of how to use the
same ability in different ways: in Game 1, I was
going to use Levity's singing ability to unlock various things—opening a magical snowglobe,
convincing a toneless AI to create stairs for the party, awakening the sacred Beanstar—and Mister
Dragon's breath had two inherent uses in the ability to set it on fire or the option to use it to
provide breathable air to the other players; fire breath, in addition to burning things down,
could light up a dark area like Watt's ability.
Partial Solutions: The Clever
field stat is a tricky one to use in field puzzles, because if a player decides to max out the
stat, then it would stand to reason that this would warrant the Maestro simply explaining the
puzzle to the character to represent the character cleverly figuring out the puzzle, which
renders the puzzle rather pointless. Thus, Clever is better used to give the player hints but not
full answers, or to give the player the answers to the simpler puzzles that are part of a chain
of puzzles of varying difficulty. Other field occurrences that do not constitute puzzles could
also be relevant, for example, thinking to look underneath a desk or a rock to find a hidden
item—this is a rather easier use of Clever. Sometimes, giving the players the basic answer to a
puzzle will not fully tell them how to solve it—for example, they might need to pool their
Strength to move a heavy object, whereas all that the Clever stat revealed was that the object
needed to be moved.
Noir: Clever can also be used for
mystery-solving tasks such as making a logical connection between two events, determining that a
particular key goes in a particular lock (as opposed to having known this already with
Knowledge), noticing that a character seems to be lying or hiding some information, noticing part
of a hidden object protruding from somewhere, or rattling off a summation.
Stats: If one of the players
has a particularly high Knowledge stat, then the Maestro could choose not to reveal the effects
of items or the stats of enemies to anyone but that player, necessitating that that player reveal
the information to the other players. It could also be more general knowledge about what kind of
world the players find themselves in or how to use special objects other than battle items and
basic field obstacles. Again, this can be made rather more interesting if the high-knowledge
character is mute or the like.
Wind Tunnel: If a character is
required to carry their own weight through something along the lines of powerful wind, this could
be handled using either the Strength stat or the character's Weight, or both. The wind could have
a power value that Strength must meet or exceed, or else characters whose Weight is less than the
value could be the ones blown back; you could even say that only characters whose own Strength
meets or exceeds their Weight are allowed through. Either way, this could create a situation like
the one described in the "Cliff/Platform" suggestion where some characters are able to push
through the wind tunnel and some are not, so the successful ones must create some new pathway for
the others.
Pressure Switch: The most
common use of the Weight stat is to feature a switch or panel on the ground that will activate
when a certain Weight value is placed on it; a single character who weighs less than the
necessary value will be unable to activate the switch all alone, but multiple characters can
stand on the switch and pool their Weights, and heavy objects such as those that must be pushed
with Strength will be given a Weight stat and can be used to trigger the switch as well.
Arm Wrestling: Or, more commonly,
two characters pushing their full body weight against each other, either in proximity to a cliff
or door, or as a stalling technique, etc. This would be one character's Strength versus the other
character's. If the difference is large, one character will quickly be pushed back; if it's
small, this will take longer; if the two Strengths are equal, then the two characters will remain
pushing indefinitely until one gives in or some external force acts on one of them. (A situation
like this arose in Game 1, with Mister Dragon trying to
pull Princess Peach out of Bowser's clutches, and Levity was able to use her Unique singing
ability to distract Bowser enough to give Mister Dragon the advantage.)
Intricate Object: The Hand-Eye
stat would be used to build, rebuild, or carefully take apart an intricate object—perhaps the
most suspenseful example would be defusing a bomb. It may be necessary to combine this with
Knowledge and Clever for it to work if the object is sufficiently complicated.
Ice: Or some other slippery
surface. Characters use the Platform stat to prevent themselves from slipping and falling on it.
Falling does not do any damage, but characters with very low Platform stats will be unable to
keep their balance enough to cross the surface; the numbers involved here might be fuzzy
sometimes and exact other times. If a character is wearing a
Penguin Suit, then they will not slip on ice at all,
though the Platform stat is not itself altered, and this only works on literal ice.
Wall Kick: If all characters are
allowed to wall kick, what this amounts to is a spot with two close parallel walls being scalable
by any character regardless of Platform stat value (the lower the stat, the larger number of wall
kicks must be executed, but the character will reach the top nonetheless). Therefore this would
basically just be a fancy staircase. To make it more interesting, wall kicking could be a Unique
ability, or a given wall kick region could be assigned a Platform stat value independent of its
height value, or a variable chance of success could be implemented, which should probably be
proportional to the Platform stat. Alternately, a single kick off of a lone wall could be used to
double a character's Platform value to reach a hovering item, enemy, or platform.
Footstool Jump: Apparently this
is what they call it in Super
Smash Bros.; I thought it had some other name. It means jumping off of another character's
head, Mario-style. In Arpeggio, this can be used as a method to pool two characters' Platform
stats: one character jumps up, and at the height of their jump, a teammate jumps onto their head,
then immediately pushes off again, resulting in the head-jumping character reaching a total
height equal to both participants' Platform stats added together. The character who wants to
bounce off of their teammate must have at least as much Platform as the teammate in order to
reach the teammate's head at the height of the jump, which means that the character with the
lower Platform stat should be the bouncee, and the one with the higher stat the bouncer. Similar
to a wall kick but more interactive.
Fastball Special: This time
named after the
TV
Tropes entry; if one character has enough Strength to pick up a teammate, then they may be
able to throw the teammate as well. The distance that the teammate can be thrown is determined by
the thrower's Strength minus the teammate's Weight. The thrower can even use their Platform stat
to jump before throwing, adding the Platform stat to the height of the throw. So, for example, a
character with a Strength of 7 and a Platform of 3 could pick up a teammate with a Weight of 2,
jump into the air, and throw the teammate upward to a height of (7 - 2) + 3 = 8. For horizontal
distance, though, if the thrower jumped horizontally over a hazardous pit and then threw the
teammate the rest of the way across, the thrower would still fall into the pit, so combining
Strength with Platform would be more painful in that case. Nevertheless, by utilizing strategies
like these, a team of players could build their player characters so that they could reach high
or far places without having very high Platform stats.
Peer Pressure: In order to
manipulate a character whose Charisma stat is 9, a team of characters can pool their Charisma
stats, and if the added total exceeds 9, they could be successful. Manipulation of any kind
should involve actual role playing; a character with 9 Charisma may be able to say "Hey you, do
this" to a character with 1 Charisma and get good results, but if a player wants to have a
character with 9 Charisma, they should be required to put in some effort toward making the
character's personality and dialogue actually be charismatic. In the case of multiple characters
pooling their stats to manipulate a single target, this should be more difficult than one-on-one,
and the team of characters should have to come up with some convincingly persuasive dialogue,
perhaps even sounding like a group of gossiping cheerleaders or whatever. Notably, a "character"
that lacks a full character sheet due to being designed to be surpassed in this manner instead of
through battling may have a Charisma stat of higher than 9—I did something like this with a
talking tree in Game 2.
Updraft: Whether naturally or
artificially, a strong, continuous wind is blowing upward, presumably toward a higher surface
that is too high to reach merely by jumping. In this case, the Maestro could say that only
characters with a Weight stat below a certain value will be able to ride the wind upward, or
alternately it could only work for characters who have an Umbrella-type weapon equipped. Be
creative.
Hammer Block: This is distinctly
uncreative, but you can always use something like the big yellow blocks from Paper Mario that can
only be broken with the Hammer. Ultimately, most obstacles can only be bypassed in one particular
way, but just plopping down an object that can only be destroyed by one specific attack can harm
immersion. On the other hand, if the obstacle is a reference to something that the Maestro and
the players like, then they may be more willing to suspend their disbelief. A halfway meeting
point might be an obstacle that can only be destroyed or otherwise bypassed using, say, any kind
of sword, or any kind of
lance. Hammers are considered
Axe-type weapons, but maybe other axes would
work on those blocks, too. You could even say that only weapons of a certain Weapon Level could
destroy each type of block, which would still end up working like Paper Mario but sounds like
less of a cop-out.
