Levels Of Difficulty In A Campaign Game

Welcome, Commander. 
Some time ago I was asked a very interesting and complex design question by a Rogue Angels fan. The person asked: "What methods are you using to track difficulty progression in your campaign?

In today's post I want to dive deeper into this question and try to answer it to the best of my ability.
I hope you will find the information useful and perhaps inspiring, if you are creating your own design :)

Where to find difficulty?

Difficulty can come in many shapes and forms, all depending on the type of game, player composition, and of course rules. Rogue Angels is a cooperative sci-fi adventure legacy crawler, which already gives an indication of how to implement objectives and opposition. 

1. Full cooperation: Players talk, think, and work together, meaning they share a larger pool of resources, both cognitively and in terms of in-game resources. 
2. Sci-fi: Adversaries and conditions can be diverse and not necessarily rooted in realism. 
3. Adventure: Objectives and opposition can come from many sources, but should be routed in narrative and context, and preferably affected by choices along the way. 
4. Legacy: Mostly relates to incremental increase in both player buffs and opposition. 
5. Crawler: Opposition can come from exploration, conditions, physical adversaries. 

With the big factors of our objectives and oppositions listed, we now have a framework in where to find our range of objectives and oppositions.

Potential objectives:

1. Eliminate (remove something from the board).
2. Reach (get to a certain point).
3. Collect (pick something up).
4. Avoid (avoid being eliminated by opposition, avoid being detected etc.).
5. -Solve- (this only apply if you can present gamers with in-game puzzles. I have a few of these hidden in Rogue Angels.

Most other objectives are derived from or a combination of these initial five objectives (i.e. "search" = reach several points, perhaps with random outcomes, "escort" = reach + avoid, "infiltrate" = reach + avoid, etc.).

Potential opposition:

1. Time (when context provides a ticking clock for the heroes).
2. Distance (on map).
3. Enemies (has to be eliminated).
4. Objects (has to be moved or dealt with).
5. Environment (can hamper the heroes).
6. Fear (context for player expectations).

Opposition 1 and 6 are primarily based on gameplay and story, where 2-5 are physical manifestations. When the story is written well, it can provide proper contexts for all of them. 

Mechanical difficulty and Currency

With the elements mentioned above, we are ready to weave objectives and adversaries into our narrative. However, before we can take the next step, we also need to understand the mechanical side of the game's difficulty and what type of currency the players have at their disposal. 
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In Rogue Angels players have 2 actions per turn, so this is the most fundamental and common currency, and the most valuable denominator against which everything else is measured. 

For perspective, here are the 3 types of actions a player can perform on their turn:

• Play 1 action card.
• Gain 2 focus (each character has a different max).
• Rest (moving all cards in cooldown track 1 slot to the left).

With these actions in mind, we can list the other built-in currencies:

• Focus (used for rerolling dice, or perhaps activate certain abilities).
• Shield (used to block damage, or perhaps activate certain abilities).
• Personality tokens (boosting current actions).

​What can players buy for these currencies?  
Some of the currencies above can be exchanged. Like 1 action = 2 focus, 1 personality token may be worth 1 shield for you and 1 for an ally etc. But we also need to look at what players may be offered on action cards. 

• How many squares can a player move on an average move card? 
• How much damage can a player deal on an average interact card? 
• How many interact tokens can a player draw on an average interact card? 

In practice each character is given several actions cards. I therefore use an average to try and determine what 1 action could provide a player (e.g., 1 action = move 3 squares, or deal 3 damage, or draw 2 interact tokens). The basic action cards (basic move and basic interact) were created to be a bit below the power curve. But since they could always be played (because they are zero), it provides a good base line. 

Granted, you are not really going step by step to begin with, as you are developing many things all at once. But once you start the more structured breakdown of your quests and missions, it is time to digest these elements. 

Constructing difficulty

Once you have a grip on your action currency, you can present players with objectives on which the players must spend their currency to achieve success. Followed by adversaries, whose main goal it is to reduce the available currency. 

These are the steps I take when constructing missions and difficulty: 

1. Establish mission objectives (important to provide context and perhaps invoke fear/speculations).
2. Create map layout (currency of moving). 
3. Draft object presence (currency of interaction).
4. Draft enemy presence (currency of dealing damage). 
5. Calculate average action effect (e.g., get to room X = 6 squares = 2 actions, kill 2 enemies with X HP = 1½-2 actions, hack 1 console = 2 actions etc.).
6. Calculate turns needed (actions needed divided by 2, plus a few turns for each extra player, to move and catch up with other players).

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In practice each character in Rogue Angels has their own strength and weaknesses, so you will never get the exact difficulty for each mission. On some missions, specific characters will shine, and on others they will be dragging the team down. But this is exactly as it should be, as the average calculation usually lands very close to the desired result in experience, and because it enforces team play and table talk.  

Final adjustment

It almost goes without saying that I am going through point 1-6 several times while play testing, trying to adjust factors and elements to provide the optimal experience. This is to be expected with such complex games. 

However, it is also worth noting that I sometimes design missions with some forced behavior (e.g., when context provides fear of certain outcomes). Which means adjusting enemies, objects, turn limit etc. based on my interest in players burning more quickly or slowly through their currencies like focus, tokens and personality tokens.

Individual difficulty level
This post is not about the damage card mechanic, which I have talked about in another post. This setting is aimed at providing the right amount of difficulty for individuals, where campaign difficulty is aimed at the team effort.

Stat creep

A common challenge for designers of campaign games is stat creep. When you keep giving players more and more stuff, cooler abilities, ​and heavier weapons, they tend to get overpowered. Not to mention the complexity increases as more options are introduced. 

A few ways I try to combat this:

• Players are allowed a maximum of 9 action cards on a mission (with two of them being basic interact and basic move). 
• Personality tokens and upgrades are synced in slow progression, providing an ever-changing character, but no insane jumps in power. 
• New weapons and equipment are diversified in action types and outcomes instead of just being boosted version of previous weapons.

In practice I only have to consider slight upgrades to all characters over the course of the missions (which I track in my spreadsheet). With that in mind and a good understanding of the currencies I can usually adjust any of the six potential oppositions accordingly throughout missions.

- My approach will hopefully provide a thrilling campaign with a sense of accomplishment for the players, lots of agency and choices, and plenty of "get to the choppa"-moments ;)

Thank you for yet again for staying with me - I hope this gave both inspiration and insights into Rogue Angels :)
Now I would like to hear what you think about campaign difficulty? Which games do this right? What have you experienced? 

- You can of course check out the difficulty yourself by trying Rogue Angels on Tabletop Simulator. 

May you have a wonderful day :)
Best regards Emil