Translating Fast Hardwood Action Into Digital Decision Making

I originally felt that translating the essence of basketball - with its beautiful fluidity, endlessly dynamic nature, and split second decision making - into an RPG framework was a fool’s errand. The two concepts were just too different. But I felt compelled by my love of mashups and remix culture to give it a shot and try to combine two of my favorite things into a single piece of media, consequences be damned. I’ve gone through a number of iterations of how I wanted the game to work, starting with RPG frameworks like Final Fantasy, Breath of Fire, and the Persona series as my original baseline. But after some consideration, this route didn’t really made me think “Yeah, this is it.” As I thought of ways to mashup the two systems together, all my original iterations seemed like traditional JRPGs with a simple basketball skin on top of it. While some games have seen success doing this, I didn’t want to go down that route. I needed a framework something that approximated the sport better. Luckily, a few months into my research,  I found that a specific sub-type of RPG might be my best bet. Enter the Strategic Role Playing Game (SRPG) - also known as a Tactical Role Playing Game (TRPG). Something just clicked when I put the pieces together. Examples of this type of game would be X-COM, Fire Emblem, and Final Fantasy Tactics.

This sub-genre of role-playing video game mostly refers to games that incorporate elements from strategy video games as an alternative to traditional RPG systems. Similar to standard RPGs, the player typically controls a party of characters and battles a similar number of enemies. However this genre incorporates strategic gameplay such as tactical movement on an grid. Ah-ha! We have movement. I needed movement. Basketball is like ballet when played correctly. A dynamic nature though… How could that concept be added? Well, what if I incorporated a shot clock into the mix? Every kid who grew up playing basketball at one point or another has done the “Countdown.” You know what it is:

He’s got the ball… He backs his man down…

5…

4…

3…

2…

1…

KOBE!

I felt that adding a timer to each round would add the sense of urgency that’s lacking in traditional TRPGs but ever present when your playing basketball in a structured setting.

As a follow up to my last post - a dump of my progress thus far on my new project - I wanted to dive a bit deeper to explain my choices for my current set of game mechanics and choices as I translate the sport of basketball from one medium to completely different one. Let’s dive in.

General Attributes and Translations

In traditional RPGs, there’s two key resources that a player has to manage. Health and Mana. Health is how much damage a character can take before they die, and Mana allows them to use abilities - like casting a fireball or healing a team member. In my framework, I’m looking to implement a similar system with some key differences. Instead of Health, the characters have Stamina. This is a resource that is drained by using abilities and having the enemy team successfully execute moves against you. Movement, ball fakes, passes, and shots all use Stamina. Additionally, the character's stamina will affect how effective their abilities are. Just like in real basketball, a tired player might fumble a pass or start bricking shots if they are tired.

Rather than Mana, the framework replaces that with Hype. The most applicable and well done implementation of this would be NBA Jam where successful shots makes a character go “On Fire” (“He’s heating up!”). In my framework however, hype can be gained from a variety of sources and at different intervals depending on the type of character you're controlling. Certain point guards gain additional hype by making good passes, a crafty Power Forward could sink hook shots, or a center could set a pick. As players combine successful moves, their individual Hype increases and unlocks additional abilities that can improve your chances to score and demoralize opponents. One of the most important aspects of the game is that while there’s 5 opponents on the court, you don’t actually attack enemies. Instead, you try to lower their stamina and increase your team’s overall Hype. More Hype will give you more points at the end of a round.

In terms of turn structure, whereas RPGs have battles, my idea is to distill an entire game into a few different rounds. Each round or turn is unimaginatively called a “Quarter” and there’s four quarters per match. The player plays once on offense per quarter and once on defense. Based on how well you do in quarter, and if your shot goes in, your points are calculated based on that.

Offense

The dynamic nature of being on the offensive end of a basketball court is something that’s hard to quantify and translate into a game. There’s a sense of exhilaration when you execute the right play or make the correct decision. It’s typically followed by a high five between teammates and perhaps an internal “Hell yeah” to yourself. While sports games do this well - where there’s free movement of the players and a clear analogy to live basketball - RPGs tend to be more structure.  Translating this into a game framework, I’ve decided to allow the player to give commands to one player at a time and select an action - be it a pass, fake, or shot - and by doing so, you can link multiple compatible actions together to create plays. For example, executing a pick followed by sending the picker to the lane results in a “pick and roll” combination to register and gives the player additional points in their hype meter. Additionally, all five players are controllable during offense by the player, so creating correct combinations and making the right plays is key. All 5 defenders are AI controlled and will follow a specific defensive formation. Once the “shoot” action is selected, the play ends and the scoring chance is calculated. If it scores, it’s calculates the points, and then it is time for defense. The player gains additional points if the shot is a make. If it’s a miss, there's 3 things that can occur:

• Nothing. The game proceeds as normal and transitions to defense. This happens most frequently.
• Fast Break. Negative for player, and the defense has an advantage.
• Offensive rebound. The player gets the rest of the shot clock to shoot.

Having these three options happen directly after choosing to shoot increases the randomness of matches and creates uncertainty that keeps the players on their toes.

Defense

Let me be blunt: no causal basketball player really likes playing defense. It's more tiring than offense, and can offer little reward if your teammates are poor. For those people who do truthfully enjoy it, it's either because they are either:

1. Offensively disabled (i.e. Tony Allen)
2. A competitive sociopath (i.e. Kobe Bryant or Michael Jordan)

Most players are content with putting in more points than allowing them. Since winning is the ultimate goal, many players only play defense as hard as they have to. I want to avoid the feeling of players not wanting to play defense. To alleviate this, in my game framework, for defense I was originally tossing around the idea of a “Fruit Ninja” type system where the action is predetermined and the player swipes at the ball to steal or block, but I’m not sure if RPG lovers would be into that. I like the dynamic element of it, but it seems a bit too far from the core gameplay on the offensive end. Instead, I’m essentially going with the reverse of offense where the player makes defensive movements to and can choose to steal or block as a character action. There’s also a hybrid approach I’m strongly considering where the the player can move their players around and tap/click repeatedly on the offensive player when they have the ball to increase “pressure” on them to force a turnover. The requirements for a turnover, from an activity perspective, could increase or decrease in intensity based on the ratio of the opposing team’s offense and your team’s defense. No matter the system, doing well on defense prevents the offensive teams from scoring a large number of points, while if you do poorly, they will rack up additional ones off an established baseline. I feel like there will need to be a balance struck in order to make the game not feel 100% contingent on your offensive performance, and also not handcuff the defense’s production to your own. I’ll need to dig deeper on this.

Coaching and Tactics

I’m thinking that a portion of the game could revolve around an offensive and defensive playbook. By implementing and calling certain plays, you can increase you hype and decrease your opponents through successful implementation of the correct actions. For example, if you call out “Horns” and successfully run the play action, you gain points. If you mess fail to do so, your overall hype will fall. On defense, a play will grant certain bonuses to each of your players (Ex: Running a zone defense gives you a bonus to blocks and lowers the opponents success at driving). I’m thinking that the player can set these up at the beginning of the game, and at halftime, to make adjustments.By creating these defined placements and movements for the 5 characters, it adds  player of strategy that elevates the gameplay somewhat. These plays would be an element that a player can hone outside of the match, upgrade, and allow for iteration and different tactics match to match. Variety is the spice of life after all.

That’s it for now! Thanks for reading, and more to come. Perhaps I'll talk about my adventures in learning how to code next...