Looking for PnP GM to help with CRPG

[Wysardry]

I, and a few others, are in the early stages of planning a computer role playing game with a skills based advancement system (similar to GURPS and the Elder Scrolls games).

I'm not sure if this is the right forum to ask, but we will soon be at the point where we need the help of someone experienced with running and writing material for traditional RPGs.

If anyone is interested, I'll post more details. If there's a more suitable place to post this request, please let me know (I couldn't find any active community sites that cover RPGs and CRPGs, but this is an indie project).

[daMoose_Neo]

Details. Lots and lots of details. Thats how you'll get the most effective response.

What is the backstory of this world?
Who are the current major players in the world stage?
What is it the players are to do? Are they bound to one path? Is it totally open? Is it somewhere in between?
How are 'adventures' or 'quests' to be handled? Solo? Party?
What is important? Story? EXP? Gold? Equipment? How are the players rewarded and/or discourgaed from one or the other?

What would you say are the capabilities of the computer system?
How much control could a contributor expect? Could a grand adventure be transcribed properly or would it be chopped up as a "get the prize, get past the chump AI with 3 lines"?

[Wysardry]

I did not include many details because I was unsure whether I would be wasting everybody's time by doing so. If CRPGs are/were completely off-topic or unpopular here I wouldn't be doing anyone any favours by posting stacks of information on one that isn't even past the initial planning stage yet.

We also haven't decided on all of the details you mentioned yet. The backstory is particularly vague at this point, but we do know it will contain alternate history, fantasy and mythological elements.

Most people seem to have a preference for a single player game in a fantasy setting with one or more polytheistic religions, perhaps with a monotheistic religion to add an element of conflict.

A relatively primitive level of technology appears to be preferred - definitely pre-industrial. Widespread use of gunpowder is frowned upon, but including magic is favoured by most.

The plan is to allow players as much choice as possible. They may decide to follow the main storyline, or set off to explore the lands and people around them.

The player(s) would not be bound to a single path and would have a great deal of freedom when creating and advancing their character. Although we hope to include several possible endings, I doubt it would be practical for the game to completely open-ended.

Most of our discussions so far have been based on including a single player character, although we don't want to rule out the possibility of including multiplayer options. However, even if more than one player could join the same game, each would only be in charge of a single character.

I would say that both the story and character advancement are most important. The reward for progressing one would be an increase in the options available to increase the other. If the player ignored both, their options would be much more restricted.

Exploration and gaining knowledge are included in my definition of "progressing the story".


I have purchased a license for a commercial 3D game engine (the one that powered Tribes 2), so the visual and audio feedback would be very good. NPC combat AI would be on a par with most FPS games.

The license also gives me access to the source code, so in theory it could be modified to give as much control as a computer program is capable of providing. Of course, in practice it would be limited by time, the skills of the coders and the specification of the end user's system.

We are aiming for a level of complexity similar to that of Daggerfall, but with a much smaller map area and more detail.

Key Features

[*]Skills based character creation and development[*]Custom character options[*]Non-linear plot[*]Consistent world[*]Reactive NPCs[*]Guilds, temples and orders[*]Reputations and factions[*]Replayability[/list:u]

[daMoose_Neo]

Understandable on the not sure part, but for the most part I've found Forge to be an excellent resource. We (as a group) don't deal with the complexities and technicalities behind the "Computer" part of that title, but as for the RPG part, even CRPGs need to have a basic system behind all the graphics and special effects.
If you need furthur assistance in the actual design of the system that will be running this, ie how D&D powers the CRPG Temple of Elemental Evil, drop by the indie design forum and start throwing up notes and questions. Like I said, the more details, the better the response you'll get.

[Wysardry]

I know of quite a few resources to refer to and communities to ask at if I have any technical problems, so I don't foresee any insurmountable problems arising with the programming. Functions to provide graphics, sound, physics and player movement are already provided as part of the game engine, so I'm less concerned about those areas and may not need to edit any of the related code.

I don't place a great deal of importance on the graphics in any game, partly because the first ones I played had little or none to speak of. Daggerfall, which runs at 320 by 200 resolution, is still my favourite PC CRPG even though I now own the sequel, Morrowind. The underlying game is more important to me.

I'm hoping we can go back to the roots of CRPGs, and create a game closer to traditional RPGs than is usual these days.

Basically, I'd like to create a computer run substitute (not replacement) solo adventure for those who cannot get together with a human GM.

I don't know how many there are, but there must be other people like myself that want to play a traditional RPG but don't have the opportunity for whatever reason. There are more players than GMs, so arranging a solo adventure (one player and one GM, not a "pick a path" book) is difficult or impractical for many.

Many of those new to CRPGs have only experienced games with very diluted role playing elements, as the current trend is to over-simplify the gameplay and/or put most of the emphasis on presentation.

Although I have read several books and more than a few articles aimed at GMs, I don't have any experience of running an RPG, so I will definitely have questions, though I will probably post in the "RPG Theory" forum first.

[daMoose_Neo]

Tip: To be able to produce a program to do something, you have to be able to do it yourself. Learn to GM ^_^ The Theory posts are more for ponderings on "What can we do with RPGs, where can we take them, what functions are/could brake down and how are they to be fixed?"

There are, at any time, around a half a dozen (or more!) playtest drafts or requests floating about the board. Grab a copy of the games, familiarize yourself with them, and grab a couple buddies (even over an IM or chat service) and run one, to get that GM feel under you.

A couple good, fairly easy starting places:
- Dungeons/Dummies- My own, a light hearted, easy to run system, little stress on a "GM" persona (I spent all of 5 minutes GM'ing the game!), very little paperwork or number crunching. High emphasis on characters and character acting.
- Capes - a superheroes game ala TonyLB. Little bit more to it than D/D, but from what I've seen of the Actual Play posts it moves swiftly and easily as well, and is also easily played online. Same as D/D, little number crunching, more emphasis on story and characters.

Check out the Indie Design forums to snatch copies of these in their current forms and if you do have a chance, throw up an Actual Play thread about the experiance. That'll help you get feedback on GM'ing techniques, get you better aquainted with the forums and how everyone works and thinks, and that'll help whomever it is that wrote the game you used, providing us with very valuable user feedback!

[Doug Ruff]

Hi Wysardry, welcome to The Forge!

I'm going to ask you some more questions, as it may help us to know how best to help you.

Firstly, about something you said:

I'm hoping we can go back to the roots of CRPGs, and create a game closer to traditional RPGs than is usual these days.

What do you consider to be the "roots of CRPGs", and what is it about them that appeals particularly?

Also, you've purchased a licence for a 3D game engine, what is it you expect the engine to handle? Is it just for visuals, or will you use the physics engine to determine whether (and where) the blows land?

Because the biggest difference between the Elder Scrolls games and "older" CRPG (such as Bard's Tale) is that the physics engine replaces a lot of the "pen and paper" rules.

Compare with "Baldur's Gate" type games where the the graphics engine has relatively little impact on combat resolution.

[Wysardry]

daMoose_Neo: Finding time to learn more about being a GM and practicing with others would be difficult with all the other tasks I would and do need to do.

I thought the "RPG Theory" forum might be more suitable for my earlier questions, which would likely be along the same lines as your examples, but for CRPGs.

I will most likely read through most of the existing threads to get a better feel of things, but I already have to learn how to use several software tools, keep a small forum ticking over and come up with a storyline framework.

If I spot something aimed at one or two players which uses a skills based system I might be able to organise a couple of short games with friends, but even if I do I will need to do other things inbetween.


Doug Ruff: CRPGs evolved from traditional RPGs, but they didn't make the transition in one piece due to software and hardware limitations of the time. Some of the features were included in text CRPGs, whilst others appeared in text adventures instead.

I consider the roots of CRPGs to be in that transition process just before the genre split. In other words, traditional RPGs.

I used to enjoy text adventures and the early CRPGs, but I often switched between the two game types as each had something that the other lacked. I want to put the two halves back together.

Text adventures, particularly those from Level 9 and Infocom, had very detailed worlds filled with items you could manipulate to help progress the storyline. Many parsers allowed you to type quite complex commands such as, "Put everything except the dagger into the big red box, close it and then run west".

Including graphics generally meant reducing the detail and/or number of locations. There was usually little point in playing them more than once though, as there was only one main character who remained basically the same throughout the game.

CRPGs concentrated more on combat, strategy and character advancement. Straight combat became monotonous after a while, but some games allowed the player to use the environment against opponents.

Dropping doors on opponents, luring them into traps or hiding behind furniture whilst using ranged weapons was much more fun. Interaction with objects was generally quite limited, so only a very simple interface was provided.


The game engine would handle the graphics, 3D sound, NPC AI, collision detection, physics, weather and almost everything else the player would see, hear or interact with. However, character skills and attributes would also play their part.

For example, the engine might control the visual and audio aspects associated with swordfighting, but the character's skills and attributes would determine how accurate and fast the swing is. Compared with an action game, there would be additional rules checking code run between the point where the player initiated an attack and the physics, graphics and audio routines being processed.

I'm reasonably sure that's how Daggerfall (Elder Scrolls II) handles things, even if Morrowind does not. Either way, that's how I would prefer it to work.

[daMoose_Neo]

I could also list the variable hats I had to learn to don when taking on Twilight and myriad of other projects Neo Productions is working on, but it is a long list. Suffice to say, I know what you're feeling, in spades.

I will also say, nothing beats real play.
Final Twilight is my card, and a very enjoyable one at that. Personally, I'm to the point I hate the current set and some of the expansion because I've played it so much. This is a good thing to a point. I know the game inside and out, I know quirks and bugs that need to be addressed, both in the expansion before print and some things that can be balanced by this set for those already released.
To help get it as balanced as I did, I played an ungodly amout of Magic (which I know very well) as well as several other games (which I don't know) to understand what it is I wanted and didn't want from Twilight.
For the upcoming Imps game, I'm trying to do the same.
Right now, I'm running small adventures of it solo, organizing online games of it, playing in a friends D&D campaign, digging up old RPG games and MUDs I used to play or know of, reading AP threads here and other such.

Basically, you can't write a cookbook if you can't cook. Doesn't matter if you can run the metal press to make the pans, the butter churn for butter or milk the cows for milk and cream. I know its difficult, very difficult, and life has to fit in there too but you need to find the time to run anything you can. It can be done, and keeping your sanity in tact as well :D I know, I've been there, as have many here I imagine.

As to forums of choice: I still say Design is the more appropriate place for doing that.

[Doug Ruff]

Wysardry,

Design is the right place, if you want to design your own "RPG engine" to fit behind the "physics engine you've already licensed.

However, there's something else you may want to consider, and this thread would be a good place to discuss it.

You've already bought a licence to handle the physics, what about licensing the RPG element of the game as well? Why reinvent this particular wheel?

Also, a lot of the flexibility you are looking for isn't delivered by the RPG system itself, it's a question of intelligent "level" design and interaction with NPCs and plot. Are you looking for a "story" writer as well?

[daMoose_Neo]

Are you looking for a "story" writer as well?

If I might say, I read it to mean that in the initial post, hence so many questions. Normal duty of GMs, aside from watching the rules, are to cook up overall stories, NPCs, plot the dungeons/castles/woodlands for the players.

btw, good suggestion Doug...if you wanted to make a splash, WotC's d20 lisence is a freebie, you get the ability to draw on an existing gamer base, a tried and true system, a larger pool of available GMs who are familiar with it. If you went onto some of the d20 forums out there and said "Hey, I've got a cool new CRPG system going on, uses d20, and I need GMs!" You'd have a decent turnout, better than if you said "Hey, I have a CRPG and I need GMs!"

d20 fans are rabidly loyal...(least the few I know and game with)

[Wysardry]

I have read most of the AD&D (version 2) Dungeon Master's Guide and Player Handbook, a number of the adventures available in PDF format from the official site and the GURPS Celtic Myths book. I have also ordered the GURPS Basic Set from Amazon which I hope to find time to play at least once.

Of the systems I've read about on the 'net, I prefer the way GURPS handles skills, but I doubt I would use them as-is.

I might not know enough to write a cookbook, but I could probably manage to make a toasted sandwich without burning it. I figured that if I had some cordon bleu chefs to advise me, I wouldn't need to know quite so much myself.


There are two reasons why I might post in RPG Theory in the early stages.

First of all, the details of many of the RPG aspects are unclear at present, so my questions might not be specific to this project. For example, I might ask for examples of CRPGs that closely resemble traditional RPGs, and what features make them that way or I might ask for a clearer definition of the term "shared imagination space" (which I've seen mentioned here a few times).

Secondly, I would need to spend a lot of time organising the material we have so far, so that I can include enough background info so people have at least a vague idea of the progress so far. We don't even have a working title yet.


I hadn't considered licensing a rules system, partly because I imagined the cost to be prohibitive and partly because we would probably still need to modify it quite heavily based on a computer's inherent strengths and weaknesses.

I'm also still looking for a decent system that bases character advancement on skills usage, rather than on awarding skill points.


Level design, NPC interaction and plot are definitely part of the equation, but the program also has to include code that allows for such flexibility. For example, a level designer couldn't include secret doors if the program had no way of recognising when the player tried to open one.

At this point, the only person I'm absolutely sure will stick with the project until the end is myself. Most of the discussions so far have been at my own forums on a fairly informal basis, and the 'net being what it is, people come and go on an irregular basis.

There is only one other person who has been joining in the discussions regularly from the start, and his views are often the polar opposite of mine. A few have writing experience, but not for games that have been play tested.

I recruited two writers from the GameDev.net forums at different times, but they both had to drop out for different reasons before they could provide any fresh material to work from or help focus everyone's ideas.

We definitely need help with the story, but having gone without the guidance of a writer for so long, there's a lot of chaff to sort through to find the wheat so I'm most likely going to have to sort at least some of it out before anyone else will want to touch it.

At some point, we're going to need to find an entire development team, but yes, the priority at present is on the preliminary written material.


It was my understanding that the d20 license didn't apply to computer games in the same way. After all, people wouldn't need to purchase a rules book to play a CRPG.

I'm not overly fond of restrictive classes or experience based levels in any case.

[Tav_Behemoth]

The d20 trademark is explicitly not allowed to be used for computer games. The Open Game License, the underpinning of the d20 system, is implicitly difficult to use for software, because of the requirement that all aspects of the licensed work which are based on open content must be open content themselves, and that these aspects must be clearly marked.

Wysardry, I think the first question you need to address is, what is going to be the source of fun in this game? If you can pin down the basis for its appeal, it'll be easier to help you design a game that delivers the experience you have in mind.

[Wysardry]

The source of additional fun compared with most other CRPGs could be summed up as "freedom".

More specifically, it would include a flexible character creation process, non-linear plot, more options for "in character" advancement without resorting to combat and a more interactive environment.

[Tav_Behemoth]

OK, good! Now, what is the theme of the game? Ideally, the theme should be expressed in the title and should be deeply related to the core fun.

For example, the theme of the GTA games is crime: says so in the title, since Grand Theft Auto is a category of felony. The core fun is freedom: a big, unconstrained city to drive around in and lots of things you can choose to do. The theme relates to the fun because it explores the dark side of freedom: being outside the law, you're free to commit crimes, from story-driven (doing missions) to senseless (beating up prostitutes), and to decide where you draw the line for yourself.

Some themes that relate to freedom, and off-the-cuff ways they could be expressed in a fantasy game:

Political Independence. The king seems to have lost divine favor, and several factions are plotting his overthrow as the turn of the great cycle approaches. Will the player support the king, a faction, or take advantage of the political chaos to pursue their own agenda?

Slavery. An invasion of monsters threatened all life. The dragons, natural enemies of the monsters, drove back the invasion, but then enslaved civilization. Some people accept the dragon's rule for fear of the monsters; others seek peaceful liberation, or are willing to ally with the monsters for the extermination of the dragons.

Service. People who devote themselves to angels gain power, in exchange for limits on their freedom of action. Angels themselves serve arch-angels, and a conflict among Heavenly masters is causing strife on Earth.