Thoughts on Gaiden Chapters

I just woke up and had this random question so I’ll probably rant a bit, but here we go.

As a recap, Gaiden chapters were introduced in Thracia as a way of giving skilled players extra content. They’ve since appeared in FE6, FE7, FE11, and FE12 before being replaced by Paralogues in more recent entries. But I’m not here to talk about Paralogues (Although you can if you’d like). My main focus is more on implementing Gaiden chapters in fan games.

Pros and Cons

Pros

Extra content (More story, new maps, sometimes even new characters)
Rewards skilled players

Cons

Harder to balance around (More experience and extra items makes it tougher to know the strength of the player. If it’s too hard, players who miss Gaidens may be punished heavily. If it’s too easy, players who go to Gaiden chapters may snowball and destroy the game’s balance.)

Obtuse entry requirements (EX: You need certain characters alive or certain events to occur, but it’s not clear. There’s a 20 turn limit in the previous chapter, but the game doesn’t tell you until after you fail. Looking at YOU FE6… )

Personally I think Gaiden chapters are a great way to add more to your game, but implementing them well can be a challenge. One of my ideas to fix potential balancing issues is to make Gaidens actual side stories that just give further context to the game.

Using a pre-existing game, during Chapter 4 of New Mystery, Ogma must defend Yumina and Yubello while the rest of the army makes their way north to save them. Ignoring the fact that there is already a Chapter 3x, what if you played as this small group of characters fleeing for their lives in a Gaiden Chapter? It would be a good chance to level up these characters without making your main army too powerful.

Obviously this isn’t the best example since the game wasn’t built around this idea, but it could totally work for a fan game! (On further thought, this could also work for “Noble Lady of Caelin” in FE7 to give you a chance to level up Lyn’s Legion before Hector/Eliwood arrive)

With that out of the way, what do you think of Gaiden Chapters? Do you even have Gaidens in your fan game? If so, how did you implement them?

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That is kinda an example of the “if you don’t do gaiden, then they are bad” already, because these units are straight up not designed to work when lynmode is skipped.

I think they’re saying that, in the context of Lyn Mode not existing, it would be an automatic Gaiden like 5x in FE8, giving you an opportunity to play as those characters and get them experience as they fought to escape the castle after it was sacked and had to hold their own until help arrived.


I think Gaidens are great, especially for the reasons mentioned of giving units that have been unavailable from the party time to gain EXP to get caught back up or to expand story content or offer additional insight.

In terms of balancing, while I know that there are a limited number available, wouldn’t it be possible to use something like event IDs to track if Gaidens had been taken and to load a different set of enemies or adjust their levels to be stronger if that was the case?

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Why not call it by a whole chapternumber if it is supposed to be automatic? I am pretty sure 5x is only called 5x because they already had the numbering finished by the time that chapter was programmed in.

It all comes down to how they’re implemented. You listed out a lot of the bad sides of gaidens, namely obtuse requirements and balance issues, both of which I agree with being potential challenges.

I think gaidens add a lot of flair to a game, and when well implemented, they can be memorable and a fun incentive to play well.

My view with gaiden objectives is that they should be fairly obvious and reward players for doing things they will intuitively do anyway, such as having certain units recruited and alive, visiting a specific village, saving all of the villages, etc.

It’s when the gaiden requirements force you to play worse to achieve them (such as FE11’s infamous dead unit gaidens), or make you do something ridiculous or unlikely (like 19xx in FE7 w/ Nils’ level 7 requirement being met in Lyn mode) that they are problematic and box out players from seeing the content, because you’re asking them to do something that they probably needed to look up in a guide to figure out.

For balance, there’s a couple of ways around this. I dislike making gaidens give 0 EXP, which I’ve seen done in a few places. I also dislike when the game heavily cuts your deployment because then it funnels EXP into only a few units, versus spreading it out.

This works in Thracia with its based fatigue mechanic, but in other contexts it falls flat. I personally think the problem is overstated, and so long as there isn’t such an absurd amount of EXP to gain in the gaiden, it won’t impact balance too much. I know Stan made an ASM hack that allows units to autolevel to an average level of your own units, which can also help w/ this issue if you think that solution is needed for it.

I’d personally rather make the game slightly easier for players who completed a gaiden, vs. trying to overcompensate for players who didn’t, because the latter group is likely to be in a worse position anyway if you make requirements reasonable and they still miss it (ie missing units, not fast enough for a village, etc.)

Gaidens are at their best when they’re fairly experimental and novel, expand on lore and characters (something I love about 19xx FE7), and feel rewarding to the player who unlocked it.

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Because the point is that it’s a side event or concurrent to something going on in the main chapter numbering and/or might not even feature the main character during its contents. For example, what if 5x in FE8 was Orson, Forde, and Kyle trying to rescue Ephraim and he wasn’t even in the chapter at all? Would you still want to number it as Chapter 6, even though to that point Eirika has been the main focal character?

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Yeah I agree using “Ch#x” works if you’re doing forced switch party stuff in the midst of another campaign.

I think the worst implementation of the gaiden chapters is when they’re supposedly “optional”, but skipping them will either leave you at a massive disadvantage or lock you out of the ending (Or both!). That’s not optional, that’s practically f*cking mandatory.

Glares agressively at FE6

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Yes, or you could use Stan’s average level hack where setting an enemy to lvl 31 will make them the average level of your party.

Mfw this isn’t a FE2 post.

I think gaidens are a nice excuse to have more out their chapter ideas and to take a break from the plot.

Due to most players wanting to maximise exp and rewards, pretty much every gaiden feels ‘compulsory’ even when given the option to skip. Personally, I would balance around the players having played the gaiden rather than skipped it, but regardless a single gaiden chapter likely will not change exp of the whole party too much.

I also think obtuse gaiden requirements suck. They should be fairly obvious.

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I do not like gaiden.
The reason is that most players want to go gaiden.
That means it doesn’t have to be a gaiden.
I don’t think there’s a reason why you have to be a gaiden instead of a normal chapter.

However, there is an advantage to gaiden.
By setting gaiden conditions, you can rush the player or add restrictions.
For example, if the gaiden is triggered if the chapter is cleared within 10 turns, players will rush to clear the chapter.
Also, if defeating a boss with a certain person will get you to the gaiden, players will try their best to achieve that limit.

However, I think this can be substituted with things like gold, items, or trophies (badge) instead of gaiden.
Therefore, I don’t think it’s necessary to make a gaiden.

// Trophies (badge) are a common method used in Steam and consumer console games.
// Trophies are sent to the player when certain conditions are met.
// But this is the best gift that won’t break the game, because it doesn’t affect the game in any way.
// Sending a powerful weapon to the player would break the game, so send the player a title instead.
// If you have enough room in your item section, you can try to implement trophies.
// The honor can be given a number to stimulate the player’s desire to complete it.
// In fan games, it’s already implemented in TLP and other games.

If you still want to make a gaiden.
You need to carefully explain the conditions under which you can go to the gaiden in the event or shinan(guide).
If you don’t, no one will notice the existence of the gaiden and it will be ignored.
In the case of fan games, there is no strategy guide site, so you need to explain it carefully.

I also think we need to bail out players who don’t go to gaiden.
Not everyone will go to gaiden, so we should not have extreme disparity for players who did not go to gaiden.

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I don’t make gaiden chapters because I don’t want the player skipping or missing my chapters. Why make a 15 chapter game with 5 gaidens when you could instead make 20 chapters?

If you have a nearly complete game or one with many chapters, then sure, by all means add some gaiden chapters.

What’s the difference between paralogue & gaiden?

The difference is that paralogue is what IS officially calls gaidens (since Awakening, I think).

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Personally when it comes to requirements for Gaidens, I dont really have a problem with turn based ones that arent too strict. If you are making reasonable sized maps with objectives that arent rout, it isnt too much to ask of the player to play fairly efficiently.

I do think though that gameplay wise gaidens shouldnt be necessary for extra main game content like in fe6.

Just give me gaidens that have small extra rewards that maybe flesh out a character or twos background or relationship and call it a day. Maybe similar to modern paralogues in that regard.

When translating FE7, the translator probably didn’t come up with a good translation for gaiden.

外伝(gaiden)
This is a word that uses Japanese as it is.

Gaidens are cool, I think they’re unecessary, and I much prefer route splits (which still allow you to have separate chapters with unique things to unlock on them.)

I think that’s the most entertaining thing, is letting players have an option between two separate things that you have to decide on.

…Kinda makes me want to see a chapter where you’re given the choice to attack from the rear of a castle or from the main entrance with two separate chapter maps and rewards for each. Shoot, I might just have to design a map for that.

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Paralogue, as far as I’m aware, is just the official term whereas using the Japanese word “gaiden” is fan lingo. The established convention before calling them paralogues was “Ch. [number]x”, but paralogues aren’t always numbered, since you can play them at various times. Using FE13 as an example, if you unlock the paralogue where you recruit Donnel after chapter 2, you can’t just call it chapter 2x because the player might wait until chapter 3 or later to play it. It’s more elegant to just call it a paralogue than to give it a weird variable chapter title that changes its number and position in lists depending on when the player played it.

As for side quest chapters in general? I’ll sometimes follow FE8’s lead and call a chapter “[number]x” when it goes to the viewpoint of another character, is a flashback, or is otherwise disconnected from the main story. I originally wanted to make optional side chapters where experience isn’t earned, but the player has the opportunity to find some rare weapons/treasure/etc in the chapter, but that still gives the player too much of an advantage over someone who skipped it. And since no one’s going to just skip a side quest, it would essentially just become a mandatory chapter where you can’t earn experience for some reason. Not fun.

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I think Gaiden requirements should be hard but do able if you know what you’re doing, for example if you keep one of your playable characters alive up until a certain chapter pertaining to them then you could be given the option of a Gaiden chapter

A terrible spin on this is keeping NPCs alive, this is not good game design, having to keep NPCs from killing themselves is difficult in an unfair way that can frustrate the player.

basically
Requirements that the player can fulfill if they put in the effort good

Requirements based on luck and variables out of the players control bad

also allude to the requirement before it can be failed (for example if a gaiden chapter pertaining to a character with a requirement of them being alive then maybe have dialogue where the character talks about an event that could connect them with future events so the player knows to keep them around)