SLARPG Deep Dive #1: Let's talk about Charms! (Patreon)

As development continues on SLARPG, I find myself working more and more on parts of the game I'd rather not share. For instance, lately I've been working on the second settlement in the game, which the party finds on their adventure after leaving Greenridge. While I could share screenshots of this settlement and the cool new NPCs that inhabit it, I think it'd be much more fun for players to discover it on their own. The game will probably be less interesting if y'all know about every single character and area before the game is even out. I want there to be lots of surprises! (Which is also why the villains are still under wraps after all this time)

So instead of relying on screenshots of new characters and areas all the time, I'm going to try out something different: Deep Dives! These will be more text-driven updates where I talk about the thought processes behind different aspects of SLARPG. The design, the art, the writing, all that good stuff. Hopefully y'all find this interesting!

Today, let's talk about Charms!

In SLARPG's predecessor, equipment worked pretty much how you'd expect. You find or buy some new armor, it gives you stat boosts. However, I always wanted there to be an element of choice, with many pieces of equipment altering multiple stats at once, offering their own strengths and disadvantages. Did you want to go with a strength boost at the cost of speed? Or would you rather boost your magic at the cost of your defense? In practice, I'm not sure players paid much attention to all this (especially because the game wasn't balanced well enough for many strategic decisions to really matter). But there was the seed of a good idea there

In SLARPG, things like weapons, body armor, and headgear tend to function more traditionally, simply granting you stats. But the other two types of equipment function very differently! Spellbooks (which I've talked about before, and will surely talk about more at a later date) grant Melody and friends sets of new combat skills so long as they're equipped. Charms, on the other hand, grant a wide range of useful passive abilities!

Let's look at some examples of Charms so you can see what I mean:

• Lucky Coin - Doubles the amount of gold the party earns from battles
• Ice Pendant - Absorbs all ice damage, converting that damage into healing
• Bewitched Bandage - Boosts the effects of all healing items and spells on the wearer by 50%
• Asteroid Belt - +20 Magic Power (this is a lot)
• Dual Wield Charm - Sacrifices your ability to equip a Spellbook in exchange for the ability to wield two weapons at once
• Powerhouse Pin - Allows the wearer to preserve their Star Power at the end of a fight, rather than it resetting at the start of every battle

(Note that these are all, naturally, subject to change as the game continues to be balanced.)

The general idea of the Charm system is inspired by some of my favorite JRPGs - primarily the Relics in Final Fantasy VI and the Badges in Paper Mario. I love the idea of equipment like this that grants all sorts of dramatic buffs and force the player to make difficult choices about what they do and don't want to equip. It makes accessories much more interesting than just another slot for armor that can give you +5 Defense

In theory, most of the Charms found throughout the game should be useful throughout your whole adventure, and most (if not all) Charms can be equipped to any party member. But each party member can only equip one at a time! You'll have to decide which ones you want the most and who works best with what. It's not just about comparing two numbers. Sure, a few give straightforward stat boosts, but choosing that stat boost means turning down something like increased gold or dual wielding

Charms, in conjunction with Spellbooks, form SLARPG's primary party customization system. The game lacks skill trees--it's probably too short for those to feel meaningful--and the party members and their classes are static (aside from choosing Melody's specialization). So instead, your equipment does the heavy lifting here

The advantage this has is that it's easy to customize your party on the fly and experiment with different combinations of abilities! Instead of having to train in a new subclass or grind out additional branches of a skill tree, you can just swap out your Spellbooks and Charms in the equipment menu. For instance, if you wanted Allison to be more of a spellcaster than she is by default, you could give her a magic-heavy Spellbook and a magic-boosting Charm. And poof! Allison's basically a Red Mage now. And after a couple battles, if you find yourself not gelling with that, you can swap it out for something else

Personally, I can't wait to see what broken loadouts people come up with to speedrun the game, and I hope people have lots of fun experimenting with both Charms and Spellbooks.

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As an addendum: You may notice that a couple of the Charms in the screenshot above are pins, not unlike the pins in The World Ends with You or the aforementioned Badges in Paper Mario. For a bit, I was actually considering making EVERY Charm a pin. I also briefly toyed with making all of them literal phone charms, which I thought would've been very cute. In the end, I decided it would be more fun if there was more variety.