Dragon's Tale - a Massively Multiplayer Online RPG/Casino

[teppy]

Some of you may know me as lead designer of A Tale in the Desert http://www.atitd.com. I think that game designers all have far more ideas than they can possibly implement, and over the years I've had my share. When I get an idea, I write it down in a file on my computer, and I periodically peruse the list.

One idea has been on that list for almost 10 years, and it's one that kept grabbing me: What if there were a truly different kind of casino that existed as a persistent world? A world where everything that you see, everything that you can touch, was in fact some sort of game. No traditional slot machines, card games, dice, but an RPG where your character advances by success at games of chance.

Bitcoins rekindled that idea, and since learning of them, I've been brainstorming such a world. In September I started coding Dragon's Tale, an MMORPG set in China, which uses Bitcoins exclusively. The game is built on eGenesis System I, the same client/server that powers A Tale in the Desert.

Earlier this week I had a few Bitcoin veterans in for an early look, and based on their feedback, I think I'm ready to open it up for another preview. I'd like to invite all of you to join me for a play session of Dragon's Tale:

    Saturday, October 9, 2:00PM EDT (GMT-0400), for about 90 minutes

You'll need the ATITD client, which can be downloaded from http://www.atitd.com
Native clients are available for Windows, OSX, and Linux. You'll also need a few Bitcoins to participate.
(If you're on a slower connection, you may want to download just the "launcher", which will pull files as needed.)

I'd be glad to answer any questions about Dragon's Tale here, and look forward to meeting everyone!

[BioMike]

Sounds interesting.

Do you have some screenshots of what to expect?

And the requirement of the bitcoins, are they for playing in a way you could lose them? Can you win more bitcoins?

[kiba]

I never got the chance to try it out despite the invitation to test it. Will do soon.

[teppy]

Here's a couple screenshots - they're not "carefully" done - just ones that I grabbed from my client.

http://www.egenesis.com/Frame0020.png
http://www.egenesis.com/Frame0021.png

In these, the character Di is playing "Zodiac Fire" - pulling the lever on the table launches a set of 5 fireworks shells on the far side of town. The goal is to match 3 or more shells from a launch.

In the distance you can see plants, a lion statue (right of the road), a side-path - all of these have unique games to interact with.
Here's one more screenshot showing the palace - that's the most traditional game - the windows open and it becomes a giant slot machine:

http://www.egenesis.com/Frame0021.png

The games do all take, and pay, real Bitcoins, and deposits and withdrawals are instant. I need to add code to allow the first 50(?) BTC to credit with 0 confirmations and additional ones with 1 or 2 confirms, and to prohibit withdrawals until all deposited BTC are confirmed. But for now everything is instant.

I didn't build in any free-play preview mode, and I'm undecided on whether it's worth doing so. It's a non-trivial amount of work to go from a single currency game to a multi-currency one, where "fake Bitcoins" would be a second currency. IOW, am I better off spending time on that, or on creating more games.

There's a very robust banking system behind the scenes. For instance, the house will never take a combination of bets where it can't pay theoretical maximums on all outstanding bets.

[Beelzebuddy]

And the requirement of the bitcoins, are they for playing in a way you could lose them? Can you win more bitcoins?

It's an mmo AND a casino.  A casimmo.  Two things which are, by definition, money sinks.  That's like asking "If I chug a gallon of Drano, then jump off a five story building, will I survive?"

Yeah sure, temporarily maybe.

[theymos]

I played the demo. It's an interesting casino game. The odds are certainly against you, but it's possible to make a profit. There's one 2-player game (so far), and if you're good at it you could clean everyone out.

I saw two slot machines, a unique multi-player/community game, a coin-flip doubler type of game, and a two-player bluffing game. Also, nearly every plant in the game is a gambling device with different odds. There are tons of opportunities to gamble.

[teppy]

Yeah, the Bitcoins are live, so you can actually win or lose. Bets are small - most are 1 BTC minimum, and returns are around 95% in most cases, though there are some bad bets which are as low as 89% return, and some good ones that can be close to 100%.

I did a play session that introduced A Tale in the Desert players to Dragon's Tale and to Bitcoins. About 10 people showed up and maybe 6-7 of them came with more than 1 Bitcoin. (I required a balance of at least 1 to get in to the session.)

Overall the house earned 49 BTC in about 90 minutes, and people were playing pretty much constantly from my casual observation. So you can work the math out for average cost per player per hour. I noticed this one guy was up 15 BTC, withdrew them and left 

[BioMike]

So every ehh... "slot?" is balanced differently?

How do you prevent major flooding of area with people where one "plant" has a high win chance?
That people go to lucky "slots" and leave the unlucky "slots" untouched?

BTW, you will need to change the art a bit more to make it more "Chinese"-themed. I mean, palm trees? I'd expect more bamboo
Now it looks more atitd at night with some Chinese thingies.

[mizerydearia]

Come to freenode #dragonstale if you would like to have textual intercourse regarding teh Saturday, October 9, 2:00PM EDT (GMT-0400), 90 minute play session

[teppy]

Yeah, I've used ATITD art in a lot of places while my artist creates the real stuff. You'll see this change over time - for instance, the Zodiac Fire launcher is new as of yesterday, the Bitcoin models now all look like Bitcoins instead of that medallion with swords, and the artwork for the Palace Garden game (you may not have seen this yet) is much improved.

Each species of plant has different rules, not each particular plant. The payoff math on plants was actually non-intuitive (to me!): My first though was to set the initial jackpot amount to some number, say, 5, and set the cost to play at 1, and then payoff 10% of the time, and when you don't win, add 1 BTC to the jackpot for that particular plant. When playtesting that I seemed to be doing *really* well. A simulation revealed that the rules above have an expected return (far) above 100%.

Most of the content is coded where I can create variants with different payoffs to give a different feel. Try playing Palace Garden and then try Lucky Garden (west of town) and Hidden Garden (north of town in the VIP area; I need a better name for that area.) To get into the VIP area, complete the "Won at 5 different games" achievement.

[FreeMoney]

The payoff math on plants was actually non-intuitive (to me!): My first though was to set the initial jackpot amount to some number, say, 5, and set the cost to play at 1, and then payoff 10% of the time, and when you don't win, add 1 BTC to the jackpot for that particular plant. When playtesting that I seemed to be doing *really* well. A simulation revealed that the rules above have an expected return (far) above 100%.

You should be able to see that if you charge 1BTC and put the whole thing in the pot you can never profit and will just lose the seed money over and over.

If you like I'd be willing to check the math on games you make and maybe even suggest some new structures.

You can make a progressive that will be +EV for the player sometimes but also +EV for you overall by growing the pot slowly enough. Maybe that's what you discovered already.

[jimbobway]

I suggest downloading the client sooner than later since it is 245 MB.

[jimbobway]

I downloaded the client but don't know how to get to the casino or use bitcoins.

[teppy]

I'll be in both #bitcoin and #dragonstale on Freenode IRC to help with any tech problems.

Teppy

[Solego]

Not a bad idea, but while you've changed the format in how many of the games of chance are played, it's still essentially the same rules as many standard gambling games. The firework game, for example, is slots with a different skin.  You thought way outside of the box with a lot of ATITD's games, Seven Blades for example, it stands to reason that if you really put your mind to it you could create some gambling games for this that would be very unique.

All that being said, be sure to check and triple check the legality. Online gambling I believe is illegal in the US in general, if the servers are hosted here, or at the very least in many states.  Second Life used to have casinos and gambling allowed, but were forced to shut it down because they were coming underpretty heavy scrutiny for it. And Second Life used an in game currency that was, in plain writing, "Not worth any actual monitary value, but could be bought and sold by Linden Labs for actual money at their sole discression."  So basically it was the same concept as using bitcoins, which alone are not a currency, but are freely exchanged for currency.  The reason I mention it is you don't want to invest a great deal of time and effort into it to one day have someone knock on your door and tell you to shut your servers down.  If it's legal, great I'll be one of the first ones in to throw a few bitcoins to the gods of chance, but better it's mentioned now than after the game is finished, polished, and ready for release.

[mizerydearia]

Yay, another demo later today.  Come to #dragonstale if you're interested in participating.

[teppy]

I've consulted with 3 lawyers and read the relevant statutes myself. Federal law deals entirely with extending credit for purposes of wagering, and the transmission of that credit over wires, or of checks over wires for purposes of wagering, etc. Online gambling itself appears to break no federal law:

  http://www.gambling-law-us.com/Federal-Laws/UIGEA%20Text.htm

An interesting part of the law is that the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System can make new regulations as to what is considered a "designated payment system." Wouldn't it be wild if they made such a regulation about Bitcoin?!? All three lawyers agreed that they don't just do that sort of thing by surprise and then a minute later start arresting people.

Pennsylvania law prevents some forms of gambling when done at establishments, or when the wager is based on the results of a political contest, or "pool selling" (though that also seems to be establishment based.) It also prohibits the manufacture of physical items used in gambling. Playing cards are specifically allowed to be manufactured, though it's interesting that dice are not specifically allowed. IOW, Pennsylvania law is pretty specific. That said...

Dragon's Tale is certainly "closer" to violating Pennsylvania law, though other MMOs would be equally close, if they contain any chance elements. Pennsylvania law, unlike most states, does not apply a "predominantly elements of chance" clause (which is often used to outlaw poker games at the state level.)

That said, if it's determined that Dragon's Tale does violate Pennsylvania law, it's an easy matter to relocate the servers to another state.

[teppy]

Not a bad idea, but while you've changed the format in how many of the games of chance are played, it's still essentially the same rules as many standard gambling games. The firework game, for example, is slots with a different skin.  You thought way outside of the box with a lot of ATITD's games, Seven Blades for example, it stands to reason that if you really put your mind to it you could create some gambling games for this that would be very unique.

Actually, Sevenblade is Liar's Poker, re-skinned.

But you're right - there are a limited number of pure games of chance, unless you introduce decision making or skill-based PvP.

There will be games with both decision making and PvP, but there's a nasty little game design secret that tells me that these will account for a tiny fraction of the games played in Dragon's Tale. The reasons are related:

Skill-based PvP games are fun for the people that tend to win, and frustrating for the people that tend to lose. This was overwhelmingly obvious in Tales 1 and 2: We had an entire Discipline (1/7th of the game) that revolved around 2-player abstract games. It was a hugely popular discipline at first, but those people that tended to lose most of the time would get frustrated and quit the game, leaving a smaller, smarter population of Conflict Disciples. Then the less-smart half of those that remained would get frustrated and leave, etc., until we ended up with about a half dozen total geniuses. (Two of them were in fact Math PhDs.)

Decision-Making games have a related problem: In order to set rates of return, I need to be sure I know the optimal play strategy. If I just sort of "wing it", then it's a matter of time before someone discovers a strategy with a 100%+ return and writes a macro to bankrupt the casino.

An alternative approach is to have dynamic payback rates (which is the method that I've decided to use.) A daemon will watch overall player returns and adjust either the cost to play, or the payoff table. With this method, it's possible for the smartest players to play with 100%+ return, but still have the house profit overall. Returns for typical players will then tend to be quite a bit lower than all the other games in Dragon's Tale, because smart players will play very heavily. (Or even write macros to play for them, quickly and perfectly.)

So I think that both types of games will have very few players, and that fun & easy games of pure chance will dominate. But we'll see - I like doing experiments

[Solego]

Is good to see you've covered your bases legally, and it does sound like you've got quite a few ideas for the games themselves. I agree games of pure chance will likely dominate over the skill based ones for the reasons you described.  Funny you bring up the Conflict skill tree, though. I was talking about that a little bit ago with one of my guild leaders and he never understood why it was done away with, nor did I.  I quite miss several of the games from that discipline, even if I did lose more often than not.

[FreeMoney]

Oh man, it would be so cool to have a skill that you level in that gets you a better chance to jump in line or something at games, for example the ones that are currently profitable from progressive jackpots etc. Or if they can be played simultaneously then skill to play them faster.