Hey guys, new guy on the boards needing help on his RPG

[Soome]

I'm not sure if this is the right board to be posting this on but here goes.
  Hey all, I'm Soome and I stumbled across this site one day when I was looking for help on my rpg's.  I possess some html skills but mainly stick to yahoo! pagebuilder.  I am currently attempting to create a fantasy rpg along the lines of everquest, minus the visual graphics.  My biggest problem with the site thus far however, which is why I have not yet opened it, is that I need to create some sort of battle engine or probability system that I can input numerous data into and it will give me an outcome.  For instance, if a group of 5 warriors attempt to take a fortified city, I input the warriors stats, the number of attackers, the number of defenders and their stats, the equipment of both sides, the terrain, and the fortifications.  Once I put in all the data, the program would calculate who won and would tell the fate of every individual who fought.  However, I would like the program to also be able to calculate within a certain time frame, so, if I wanted to know what had happened in the battle in the first five minutes, it would tell me the outcome at five minutes.  If I wanted to know where things stood at one hour, it would tell me what outcome was at one hour.  Any ideas on how to do this?  Can anyone offer any tips or their help in building such a program? If so, I must tell you that I have no money to pay for the construction of such a program and this would either have to be a charity case or I could pay you back with a supped up character on the rpg once it is finished.  Thanks all,
         Soome

[DP]

I'm not sure if this is the right board to be posting this on

You mean the right topic? No, not really. The right site, even? Also no.

I stumbled across this site

An excellent choice of words.

I possess some html skills but mainly stick to yahoo! pagebuilder.  I am currently attempting to create a fantasy rpg along the lines of everquest

I am fat and out of shape, but can climb the three flights of stairs up to my apartment without being too winded; I'm planning on running in the next Boston Marathon.

Not every "RPG," O Child of the Consoles, is an electronic one.

Read the stickies at the top of the topic list before posting.

I am not without compassion for the benighted. However, my own knowledge is not infinite, and I can only suggest you start here, or better yet, wait patiently until early October and try something that's more your speed.

Condescendingly,

[Soome]

Perhaps I should have chosen my words more carefully, but when I meant I was attempting to build a site along the lines of everquest, I meant one that was highly active and not one of the millions of plain-text oriented anime or other fantasy rpgs.  The site currently features site-owned shops, a map with various towns and communities, strict laws, and so forth.  However, I wish to add to it so that personal locaters on the maps are possible, an automated personal account updater, and various chat rooms and privately owned shops- that is what I meant by I wished to work off of Everquest.  And I do not understand what is meant by the title "Internet home for independant role-playing games" if I am making an independant role playing game on a website and I do not fit the criteria.  Thank you.

[M. J. Young]

Soome--

Welcome to the Forge.

What Dave is trying to express is that the terms "role playing game" and "rpg" do not first and foremost apply to games played on computer. Dungeons & Dragons, which either coined the term or was the first successful example of it, was never a computer-based game or designed for computer-based play (despite efforts to capture the flavor of the game later in that medium). The creator of the original D&D game, Gary Gygax, is http://www.gamingoutpost.com/content/index.cfm?action=article&articleid=80&catid=14&login=">adamantly against calling such computer games "RPGs", as they have nothing to do, in his mind, with playing a role. I'm not so convinced regarding the more recent incarnations, but I think that the distinction between real role playing games and computer simulations in any form needs to be maintained, or we fail to communicate. This site is about real role playing games, and not about computer simulations.

The people on this forum, in the main, write role playing games--books that are published either as PDFs or on paper, which players read, and interact with each other over pizza and soda when they play. Few, if any, write CRPGs, that is Computer/Console role playing games. Most of us know as much coding as you. We can tell you what dice to roll, how to design your charts, whether opposed or unopposed resolution works better in your system, whether you're thinking in gamist, simulationist, or narrativist terms, what stance you're expecting players to use relative to their characters and the game world, and all kinds of things that relate primarily to face-to-face play; but we're not terribly interested in computer games, MUD, MUSH, MUX, MMORPG, or other electronically-driven systems.

You're actually on the wrong forum because you're not designing an RPG; you're designing a CRPG. We wish you the best with it, and would be pleased to discuss aspects of it that are in the crossover area--CRPGs owe their existence and much of their mechanics to RPGs, so we know something about how to design the probabilities in a game--but as far as finding someone who knows how to code what you want, you'd have as much luck signing up for the Knitting Club list on Yahoo and asking if there's anyone there with computer programming experience. It's not what this site is about.

I hope that clarifies things; and I hope you find someone who can help with your problems.

--M. J. Young

[Soome]

Thanks alot MJ, that definately helped, and so did the links that David provided.  If I run into problems along the lines of what you described or if I'm just curious how role playing games work in the real world, rest assured I will stop back in.  I'll talk to you later,
     Soome