Badges, Medals and Mementos
Here’s a system I’ve always really enjoyed: Badges.
In most traditional RPGs you get a set of equipment that may or may not have added effects. So you end up replacing low level equipment as you progress with the game. Did an old weapon have a really cool secondary effect? Too bad, you can’t use it now. With Badges, you get to choose those added effects every time, and most badges stay useful the whole game!
Badges allow for so many fun strategies. Do you want a build that’s defensive, offensive, one based around being at low HP? The sky’s the limit! And since you can change it any time, you don’t have to commit to a “build” for the whole playthrough. And with the BP system, you can balance it fairly well! You can make simpler effects cost less while broken ones cost a ton, and even make some utility or challenge equipment pieces cost 0.
With that said, I have some issues with the way it’s implemented in Paper Mario, and TTYD. The first one is a smaller complaint: The level up system.
When you level up you get the choice to level up HP, FP (Flower Points, the thing that allows you to use skills) and BP (Badge Points, the thing that allows you to use more Badges). My problem is twofold: BP is much more fun than a simple stat increase and it is more useful, as you get HP Plus and FP plus medals that allow you to level up those stats anyways, so BP becomes the best and most fun option, rendering the choice not actually one.
The second one is more important: the game doesn’t encourage strategies. Sure, you could make a really sick strategy of managing HP and FP to do some massive overkill damage. But why would you do that? You can just use the Attack up Badges and call it a day. It’s not a matter of difficulty, it is a matter that there aren’t that many interesting options. The only true well-defined strategy is danger/peril/low-hp, which is the best by far. The system is great, and it’s just fun to mess around with even if it’s not “optimal” to do so, but I wish it encouraged you to mess around with it a bit more.
So, that’s something I wanted to solve.
The first one was easy: every level up you get MP (Memento points) and can choose whether to upgrade Health, Love or Time, which are just base stats. Not only does this make the choice less clear-cut as to which one is better, I can make the game a bit harder since players will always get stronger stat-wise AND equipment-wise.
The second one is much more complex. For this, I took inspiration from many sources. Bug Fables, Paper Mario Dark Star, The Binding of Isaac, Friggin’ shonen anime and more. So I will explain the design philosophy I have figured out.
There are two types of mementos: what I call “General” and “Core”.
General mementos are ones that do a very simple thing that’s always kinda nice: Heals some Health every couple of turns, increases defense a bit, gives a new skill, increases Time gained each turn, etc.
Core mementos, on the other hand, are ones that basically require you to base your strategy around them or they will not provide much use: Increase attack, but only at low HP; increase defense every even turn, but decreases it every odd turn; gives more moves per turn, but only if your partner has fallen; etc. These are very strong, come in groups (The “Danger” mementos, the “inter” Mementos, the “Lonely” mementos) to really encourage you to use them, but they come with a drawback, a condition, a risk.
You might even think this distinction is “obvious”, but I invite you to go though Paper Mario’s badge list and consider which ones could be considered “core” (and which of those are actually good). I don’t see many, personally. That’s something that Bug Fables and Paper Mods get: they give you more “core” strategies to play around, like status effect builds, “do nothing” strats and such. It also help that they are harder (specially the mods) so strategy is often mandatory.
Something else I think is crucial: make the mementos synergize. Don’t just make a “Danger” strat, and a “Lonely” strat. Make it so you can try and do a “Lonely-Danger” strat too!
A Memento that requires you to have Low Time to activate? Now if only there was a Memento that increased your attack by making it cost Time... A memento that increases your defense every other turn? If only there was a memento that increased your defense when you used the “Wait” command so that you could negate the stat drop...
Of course, not every memento or strat goes well with every other one, but by designing a series of mementos this way I hope to give not only a lot of choices, but make them easy enough to start with so the player gets wacky with it.
Maybe at some other point I will show more individual mementos, but I think this post is already very long.
Oh, yeah. The little pick-up quote when you pick up any item? That comes from Isaac. I think it adds that little touch of personality (and maybe lore???) to each memento without having to flood the item description.
And why are they called mementos? First one is because I wanted a name that started with M, so it was similar to Medals. The second reason is plot related! If you want to find out, you can play the game here!
