I'm comitting what may be considered blasphemy.

I've knocked out a few fun little pen-and-paper RPG's but after I left the service, my gaming group got dispersed but good. My old buddies want me to keep making little RPG's so they can play them with their own groups in Korea, Germany, and Iraq (who knew they had the time). I would rather come up with a way for all of us to keep in touch and play despite the distance. The answer was obvious, but I didn't really want to consider it.

Make a Massively Multiplayer Online RPG.

At first, the cons were obvious, the pros minimal. I knew how to program, no problem there, and with an independent game I'd essentially be playing with my friends, I didn't have to worry about all the expenses and such of marketing it. However, there is no MMORPG in existence that really captures the intimacy of a tabletop. They are pretty much big, elaborate videogames with lots and lots of players.

Every part of that last sentence was a deterrent.

So I decided I'd make it differently from other games. Just a computerized RPG engine with the rules from my little homebrew games built in. I decided to look at how MMORPG's were designed in order to see what I could borrow.

That was when I saw an opportunity. I found the flaw in all online computer RPG's.

MMORPG's display this flaw to the greatest extent, so I'll use them to demonstrate. The original engine is lifted from pen-and-paper RPG's. When applied to a game accomodating hundreds or thousands of players, the ruleset collapses. In order to make a game that could function with so many players, the key was to design a game that integrated the input of thousands of players instead of just four or five.

So I got to work. I thought it would be a nice little report on future RPG's. Ways to accomodate massive amounts of players by doing more than just throwing quests and loot at them. I created my ruleset from the environment inward, towards the character instead of the other way around.

So far, I've got a lot of work done and I'd be happy to discuss what I've come up with thus far. I'm bringing my project to Forge because I'm not designing a computer program (which seems the focus for most people creating one of these types of games) but rather, I'm designing an RPG and I would appreciate the input of RPG designers, players, and gamemasters in order to bring it to fruition.

Of particular interest to me are those elements of tabletop gaming that have not yet been brought to life in a computer game. I realize certain elements cannot ever be a part of an online game (Doritos especially are better when eaten with dice) but many elements have never been attempted.

Please, post and tell me what you think of my idea. Don't hold back on the "It'll never work" either. I need to know why it won't work.

Thank you,

- Wyld -

I've read some of the other posts on Forge and I've noticed a few things I've left out of my original post.

It seems that some RPG designers like to make [blank]-type versions of licensed games that they're particularly fond of. The gameworld for my RPG is based upon a book that I wrote and self-published so don't worry about it stepping on any toes. Legally, I own the license (self-published, but professionally distributed and well-protected) so I guess I own the content.

So...we're home free to talk about what might go into it.

Also, it occured to me that it might help immensely if I stated what the game was about. It's called "Armageddon Gospel" and it has a dark-fantasy setting. The story revolves around a fantasy world that is in decay. The misuse of magic by the sentient races has spiraled the world towards extinction through unnatural and supernatural evolution. The "Armageddon Gospels" are the instruction books used by the Creator to create the world in the fist place and they can be used to re-create the world in the image of the person who obtains all of them and reads from them.

Destroying the current reality in the process.

So...I'm not sure what other information might be deemed pertinent to the discussion aside from the dice system I'm using (I'll hand that out piecemeal. It's not that I'm hoarding it, but it's written for a computer and very...very long). I hope this fills in some gaps and opens the doors for discussion.

You might want to give a few design goals in point form, and then talk about how you addressed them. It'll give people an idea of where you want to go and how you've gone about getting there.

I think your approach is the correct one. I agree that the present MMORPG's, t o the extent I am familiar with them which is not very, appear to be reproductions of tabletop RPG mechanics, and with the thoughts you have on their failures. Could you expand on the design philosophy you have decided upon and how exactly you see the interactions between players and worlds actually occurring?

We have had a couple of threads on this topic, mostly inconclusive however for lack, I feel, of an updated and clearly defined 'concept of operations' for such games. This I think would be the most interesting aspect of your design and the most likely to trigger responses. Could you provide a discussion of the mechanical interactions and the interface and so forth?

I suppose my design philosphy is simulationist by default. A computer cannot narrate a story, no matter how well programmed. Also, a MMORPG is has no winners or loser, but is rather an environment in which players create characters specifically designed to interact with that environment. This makes an MMORPG a toy technically rather than a game because a MMORPG cannot be "won" but it can be "played with".

The simulationist approach is a new one for me. Certain rolls were considered "gimmes" in my old GMing days. A professional blacksmith didn't have to roll to make a horseshoe and a baker didn't have to roll to make a muffin. As a simulation, I have to create an engine that adequately accounts for the elements that go into everything the players do, skill, effort, creativity...the works. It would be daunting for a GM (at least it would be for me) but a computer can handle it with no problems.

By creating the game from the environement inward, I can actually allow the players to design their "goals" by simply stating how they may intereact with the world. If you want to become a world-renowned fighter, get the training, open a guild, and train others in your skills. If you want to become a merchant, make the goods, use the market system to get your product out, and watch the profits roll in. The engine is skill-based, so you excell at what you do.

Take the "guild" mechanic for example:

This is a skill-based game, meaning that there are no pre-defined ability lists for players to apply to their characters. Anyone can learn combat, magic, or tradeskills in any order and to any degree they desire. Skills are somewhat cumulative, however. The more "fencing" skills a player knows, the better all of his "fencing" skills become. This way, a certain amount of dedication is required to become good at something but all one needs to learn it in the first place is to want to learn it in the first place.

This is where guilds come in. "Levelling" is nothing more than attaining a certain degree of proficciency in your chosen skills. Stats are percentage-based so reaching 75% proficcency in 5 skills would gain you first level. Each level allows you to learn new skills. Guilds are essentially shops where players can "buy" skills. Each guild carries related skills in order to encourage repeat customers (remember, the more of a certain type of skill a player has, the better they all are). A player could do it some other way, but the venture would probably fail. Joining a guild is like choosing a class. The "price" of skills comes down and it makes that player gain those skills faster and become more proficcient in them. This means that a player who wants to have a "ranger" character would join a "ranger" guild (the default ranger guild in the game is the Glenwardens but a player could create a new one with more emphasis on magic and less on say...survival techniques).

This just shows how adventurering-type players can customize their characters to work outside the class system. If you like your character and your unique skills so much, you can found a guild and teach them to others. In playtesting, someone in my little group has already created their own necromancer guild called Shadowcasters (think swordsmen with considerable dark magic skill) by just creating a skill list (half of them the player knew personally, the rest can be skills the player could have learned if he'd bothered).

My goals are to come up with "rules" for other aspects of my game. "Rules" being the established way of doing things, but to have the game engine allow for alternatives. My economy mechanic is coming along, even going so far as to spawn an "alternate economiy", or black market.

So, I hope that perhaps opens the doors on the type of thing I'm doing.

I think I notice a contradiction in what you've stated so far:

1) "All MMORPGs are inherently flawed because they mindlessly repeat certain cliches from tabletop RPGs." Probably true. (But I've never played online games, so I speak from ignorance).

2) "My game will have guilds -- and levels -- and Rangers..." Aren't all these things examples of the unquestioned assumptions copied from tabletop RPGs you were upset about?

Again, I am woefully ignorant about online gaming. I did find an interesting document which you may or may not have seen already, and which I'd highly recommend: http://mu.ranter.net/theory/index.html

First, what's your impression of Neverwinter Nights?

Second, check out this post for some related comments: http://www.indie-rpgs.com/viewtopic.php?t=10147

Mike

Actually, I've read Mu's rant. In fact, it was what lead me to try and find ways to plug up the holes in online gaming.

Lemme respond to your specific statements, however...

"All MMORPGs are inherently flawed because they mindlessly repeat certain cliches from tabletop RPGs."

Actually, despite the quotes around this statement, I don't believe I ever said that. The inherrent flaw in MMORPG's is the fact that the game engine is lifted from a tabletop game. The tabletop game has no errors in it that would be passed on to the MMORPG. In fact, the tabletop ruleset is probably one that works perfecty...for a tabletop

MMORPG designers seem to have paid little attention to the fact that pen-and-paper RPG's are designed for four to five players. When you take that same system and put several hundred players into an environment, the flaws--perhaps I shall say weaknesses in the system become apparent. The system was not designed for thousands of players and it will eventually show it's limitations when put to the test. I'm trying to design a system that can accomodate thousands of players but be fun even if all you want to do is adventure by yourself.

"My game will have guilds -- and levels -- and Rangers..."

Actually, this is another paraphrase but it's largely true so we'll go on.

Aren't all these things examples of the unquestioned assumptions copied from tabletop RPGs you were upset about?

Again, this question missed the mark slightly because I have no problem with certain standards in RPG's. Never said I did. I do think that MMORPG's fail because they neglect to adjust the focus of the ruleset they're adapting to the goals of the game they're making.

However, in order to clarify my own use of standards in my game, I'll explain the rangers, classes and guilds.

Well, this will be easy, my game doesn't have rangers, it has "ranger-type" skills. Learn as many as you want and call yourself whatever you like. Then again, if you call yourself a ranger...I guess my game would have rangers.

To start off, all my game will have are guilds. If you want a class, join a guild and learn only the skills they teach. If your guild is "Fighter" then your "class" will be fighter. However, these words are only to simplify the system for players. No two guilds will teach the same skills or...teach them in the same way. Also, since they're named by players who are generally pretty imaginative, it's also unlikely that they'll be called "Fighter", "Thief", " or "Magic-User" guilds.

Not that you couldn't if you wanted to.

If a guild is owned and operated by a "fighter-type" who learned and honed his skills through military service, his approach to weapons will be tactical. His students will learn simple, mechanical motions that are effective when standing as a part of a military unit. They will learn how to kill efficiently, how to find weak spots in armor, and how to incapacitate an opponent quickly. If another "fighter-type" with the exact same skills but who honed his skills adventuring rather than serving in a military opened a guild, his approach would be diferent. He would focus on other types of combat such as dueling or fighting monsters rather than other humans (so probably a very weak "disarm" skill but a very strong "Find Vitals: Nonhuman" skill) and his overall guild would look nothing like his neighbor's.

So to use classes would be misleading. If two fighter guilds can have so much variation, then to say that all skills falling under a certain class deems you a member of that class is impossible.

Now for levels...

Not all RPG's use levels to denote player advancement and character development. I do for simplification sake, but the game engine only recognizes the skills you know, and the extent to which you know them. Although there is a mathematical advancement system to define when players get to learn new skills, it's hidden from players. All in all, there are sixty levels a player can reach in this game, but attainging level sixty only makes you roughly three times as "tough" as a level one player statistically. The skills a level sixty player knows (about a hundred if they only learn what's useful to them) vastly outweigh what a level one character knows and these skills make all the difference.

Think of stats as being a big pool of resources. Skills define them and make then effective. You can be fast as all get-out, but if you don't know how to dodge or evade a combatant, all you're going to do is get hit while jumping around frantically. An attacker could be slower, but because he knows how to use his weapon and read his opponent, he's going to get a hit every time. Interesting conflicts happen when it's skill vs. skill. Stat vs. stat equals a playground slap-fight.

However, in a tip I took from Mu, leveling is hidden from players. They only know roughly how good they are at something. Same goes for health...they get a percentage. I did this to make players consider whether or not they would initiate combat. The Kobold has twenty HP on a good day and this one looks sick, you can take 'em. However, you're at 12% health (this could be as much as seventy HP mind you)...still wanna risk taking on that kobold?

So, I hope this clarifies a bit more what I'm trying to do. Thanks for the questions, however, it's really bringing out my definition in what I expect this engine to be capable of.

Mike:

I love the NW Aurora Toolset. It does it's job very well. The toolset is akin to buying three hundred dollars worth of manuals, kits, and supplementals for the D&D ruleset and making them available to be played online with friends. The toolset is a game maker and a very good one. A DM can design campaings with a definitive beginning, middle and end.

Unfortunately, a MMORPG is a toy, not a game. So while the urge to make a MMORPG with it might seem tempting, the finished result would (along with breaking numerous intellectual property laws) have the same limitations as every other MMORPG based on the existing D&D rules.

But if you use it to do what it's intended to do, it's a steal.

As far as my economy goes, I stole an idea from the Jamestown settlement...that was then stolen by Harlem street gamgs...which was then taken over by Italian street gamgs...that was subsequently pilfered by state and federal governements.

The Lottery.

Originally, lotteries were used to raise money for public projects. The governement would put up a nice sum of money and invite citizens to purchase lots. The citizens would buy the lots and one lucky individual would get the money. The government, on the other hand, would have made their investment several times over.

For small, player-run cities, it works very well. The largest player-run city only has about six-hundred citizens. The farmland can only support that many people and building farms farther away from the marketplace leaves them open to raids by bandits (and worse). I used Mu's example of how farmers have to be able to take their goods to market, being able to get there, by foot work the market for several hours, then walk back home.

The economy itself is based on grain, much like the economy of feudal Japan. A platinum piece is worth ten sacks of milled grain. A gold piece is worth a single sack of milled grain. A silver piece is worth a pound (1/10 a sack) and a copper piece is worth a single cup (1/10 a pound).

Errata: A cup only makes a small loaf of bread, usually fried in a pan with a bit of fat. The loaves are called pancakes by peasants and copper pieces are commonly referred to as "pannies".

So I've got a functioning economy and, as I've stated, a black market. It is possible to simply take gold, mix it with lesser metals, and strike false coins. It's also possible to set up an underground lottery where tickets cost much less (a few coppers or a silver piece). A policy is set up where the true cost of the ticket is subtracted from the winnings, if any are made. If not, you owe some very unsavory for the full price of the ticket.

Policy rackets (number running) and Counterfitting are nice little things I was able to toss into the game.

Mind you, this is just the common form of an economy that some of the smaller cities use. Since money can be traded just like any other commodity, it's possible to set up your own economy if you like. I came up with this so beginning landowners wouldn't have to invest in a complicated and expensive tax system (tax collectors and their hired goons cost money you know).

Okay, I see the little bits and pieces here, but I don't see the big picture. There are games out there, like Shadowbane and Dragon Empires that are actively designed around the concept of large numbers of players, as opposed to older generation games like UO and Everquest which have the problems you state. These newer games are trying to address the issues by creating rules for social structures to manage large numbers of people, give them reasons to work together in large groups, and codify certain types of social behavior through rules in order to encourage certain types of play on a large scale. These games are designed around the larger interactions first, and the smaller scale rules flow downward from there (UO and Everquest were designed around smaller interaction, and the IMO unplanned for macro-results evolved outward from there). This is a focus on large scale social engineering, which I think is really what MMORPG design is all about.

I see skills and guilds and such, but what about your game addresses the central point you brought up that you find as a failing in other MMORPGs:

"In order to make a game that could function with so many players, the key was to design a game that integrated the input of thousands of players instead of just four or five."

Shadowbane, for example, uses the input of thousands of players to determine the territorial extent of various empires. It allows many people to work together cooperatively toward a goal with broad accessibility (warfare) instead of the Everquest model of having many people working against each other in competition toward a goal with limited accessibility (camp kill and loot).

In a MMORPG it is the dynamics which govern the way that people interact on the macro scale that define the nature of the game and ultimately determine what the challenges and goals of the game are, i.e. how the game is played. What kind of mechanics do you have in place on the macro level? How do the rules socially engineer the way in which the game is played?

Everquest is based on restricting access. They restrict based on time (travel time, respawn time, actions that must be repeated large numbers of times to achieve results) and they restrict based on exclusivity (items appearing only in certain camp spots that can sustain only one group of players, limited goal-related spawns that can only be used by one group of players over a given period of time). The time mechanics result in the primary measure of skill in the game being patience and perseverence in the face of tedium. The accessibility result in the primary measure of status and value in the game is measured by the ability to competitively lock-in control over contested resources. The entire dynamic of the game, from the economy, to the nature and vocabulary of social interaction, to the things that guilds focus on, to the general demeanor of the players, all flow from these design tenets. If you've played the game you probably know what I'm talking about.

So, how does your game engineer the "way the game is played" through the ruleset at the macrocosmic (world view) scale? How is this design intent reinforced by the rules at the microcosmic (player's eye view) scale.

Good question kenjib,

Well, the macrocosmic view of the game world is that it is actively working towards the destruction of the players. The game world is supposedly on a slippery slope to oblivion and this game mechanic reflects that.

Players create communities and the game creates communities. Players build high walls, grow wheat, and otherwise try to keep the wilderness from wiping them off the face of the earth. The game on the other hand, builds ancient crypts filled with horrors, marauding bands of goblins, and demonic nightmares that lurk in deep caverns.

The game creates random monsters, but it creates them "naturally". A dragon has a life cycle in the game, as do orcish settlements. So coming across orcs is possible, but it means that there is a larger settlement of them nearby. This makes skills like "Tracking" and "Wilderness Lore" more useful.

This also makes it important for the player who is acting as a city planner to carefully lay his city out to keep it far from areas that generate monsters (swamps, forests, and mountains) or take a calculated risk and place his city there in order to gain a valuable resource (swamps=potion ingedients; forests=lumber; mountains=precious stones and metals).

This also gives adventurers something to do. Namely, blunder into dangerous and unholy places in order to clear out all the monsters (which half the players would probably do without even being asked). The city gets a safe mountain that produces gold, the adventurer has fun and gets to keep the valuables in the lair, the guild that sent the adventurer gets prestige and everyone else can rest easy knowing nothing is going to come pouring out of the mountain to murder them in their sleep.

The reason players would work to ensure a better world is not for each other (although, that would be nice huh), but for their children. Time isn't static in the game. Players will eventually die, whether by the sword or in their sleep. The achievements of the previous character become hereditary skills that subsequent characters can learn. If daddy was a master swordsman, junior should already know how to use one coming into the game. If mama was an elven enchantress, chances are her little princess knows a conjure or two.

Players will eventually have to create new characters. Die to many times and the soul becomes weary, making ressurection impossible. Characters that have learned all the skills they can learn can retire in order to remain in the game as benefactors for later characters. This makes the player who just plays to make a successful bakery have just as much at stake as the player who wants to become a legendary hero of great reknown.

The small picture is to make a name for yourself, not to make a famous and successful character, but to make a string of them. The microcosmic view is to become successful so your next character (your offspring) can be that much better. They'll have access to skills you didn't, they'll have resources you didn't. Of course, being the child of a hero or villan brings on a different type of fame. Any villans or monsters that a previous character vanquished may want a piece of you. Other players know it's really you and they might want to settle old scores with your kid.

The big picture is that the world is producing monsters in order to wipe out the players. The Armageddon Gospels are unmaking creation. Dragons rise from the sea...ancient kings hold court in their moulding tombs...undead armies re-enact battles on the ground where they were slain. These monsters have a social structure to them, and players have to work together to either destroy the monsters, or work around them (a haunted battlefield makes a damn good city wall).

So I hope that clears up this project of mine a little more. Very good question by the way. I never actually posed that one to myself. I just knew what I wanted it to be capable of and worked the little pieces, seeing how they fit into the whole.

The thing about RPG's is, for the most part, they are an interactive story. Thats the one element MMORPGs haven't been able to transfer is that story.
I'm liking that I can see the elements forming TO have players create a story.
The drawback? I don't know many players who would think baking muffins all day was fun. Most players are adventurers of some kind, looking for excitement, mystery or whatever (Thus you are dead on about most players clearing out the monster nests and what not). The drawback: If the vast majority of players are monster hunters, whos left to tend to the fields, the cities and everything else needed to support the adventurers?

Interesting ideas and everything, could really go places with the right players. The downfall I see is the same with any MMORPG: As RPGs are stories, the more players you place on the stage, the less focused and the less interesting it is. MMORPGs are for the most part pretty chat rooms where you can kick your pals butt and would be difficult to have function as a table top.

WyldKarde wrote: A dragon has a life cycle in the game, as do orcish settlements. So coming across orcs is possible, but it means that there is a larger settlement of them nearby.

WyldKarde wrote: The reason players would work to ensure a better world is not for each other (although, that would be nice huh), but for their children. Time isn't static in the game. Players will eventually die, whether by the sword or in their sleep. The achievements of the previous character become hereditary skills that subsequent characters can learn. If daddy was a master swordsman, junior should already know how to use one coming into the game. If mama was an elven enchantress, chances are her little princess knows a conjure or two.

Ooooh, story...one of my favorites.

Well, I know I won't be able to get the intimate story setting that comes from five pals sitting around a table tossin' dice and making it up as they go. However, I'm hoping for perhaps the type of collective story behind fans of a football team or people who watch CNN all day. Since it's an MMORPG, I'm not worried about the me element. A player who focuses on themselves and sorta tunes out the rest of the world will get that on their own. I'm counting on that collective audience that watches world events.

Information:

Information is another form of currency in the game. There are "hints" generated when the world changes. Those with second sight might see glimpses of a dark future. Augurers can look at patterns of birds in flight and determine that something is wrong to the west. Any of these portents means that the game has generated some new horror. Maybe orcs have settled in the swamps or a portal to hell opened up in the mountains somewhere.

Once this information gets to the people who see it first, it will be told to leaders like city heads or interested crime lords. From there, it will be passed down to guilds who will dispatch their "adventurers" (probably sitting around waiting for the world to go to hell) and the fun commences. Mind you, this is just a possible pattern. Nothings stopping the original "seer" from grabbing a party and going into battle himself. However, there are those who would pay for such info.

In the meantime, thieves, spies (you don't need to play two characters to play two sides...besides, I can check ISP addresses to prevent most multiple log-ins) and just nosy neighbors are trying to "steal" the information (it's treated like an object) to get it to their own little cliques. Tavern owners, for example, run makeshift guilds, using roaming adventurers to collect the bounty on quests. The barkeep finds out the "Mage" Guild is looking for an enchanted sword and then passes this info along to a few over-eager adventurers, saying he'll pay 'em handsomely for the weapon. They retrieve it, are paid a fraction of it's true worth (which most computer RPG players are used to anyway) and the barkeep gets to reap the benefits of guild ownership without the expense of training members or paying guild taxes to the landowner. It's a way around the "legal" way of running a guild.

Which brings us to the next question...

Conflict:

While I have allowed for conflict within a community, there is yet no conflict between warring species. That's because I only have the human race. C'mon, this engine is complex enough without having to write it to include different variations on the player characters.

Although, once I get the engine running, I will work multiple races into the game. The human race already has multiple cultures that each excell in different things based upon their cultural upbringing.

However, players play differently and this allows for ideological differences. The cultural variations even play into these ideological differences. The Naja are a nomadic people who live in the desert. They do not hold land long, but rather use what is available, then move to better land elsewhere, allowing nature to replenish what they have used. The Yuanchi live on an island nation, dangerously overcrowded, they hold land fiercely and do not abide foreigners. Naja fight on horseback and use long curved blades in battle, less likely to get stuck in an enemy and dismount the rider. Naja are prepared to take what land they need and the desert has hardened them against pain. Yuanchi use horses, but they are reserved for nobility (the animals eat to much for a peasant to own one). Yuanchi nobles are essentially warlords who have held the same land for generations and they train their people constantly for war. Even the peasants in the fields can use a simple spear as effectively as a warrior from any other land (women are trained to use the bow).

Because of the way these two cultures live, there's a high chance for conflict right there and they're both human. I have races in development that need different things, placing them in conflict with other races but I'm trying to balance them so that they could live symbiotically with one another. i.e. Human settlement with dwarven miners or elven tree village growing out of an orcish swamp (traditionally unlikely but damn wouldn't they be invincible? Elven archers in the trees and orcish muscle on the ground).

So, when I get my engine to accomodate (hey, anyone wanna help me with this one...the racial thing is a doozy) different races with different needs, I can start including them in the game. In the meantime, the cultural differences within the existing race work pretty much the same way.

Hmmm, started to answer the story one, but never finished.

Essentially, the super-story is what I'm shooting for. Players keeping track of world events. If their kingdom is at war with another kingdom...how's the war going? Who is the great hero of that war? He died in a daring assault on the enemy's flank. His son has taken over his command? The boy was wounded but was healed by his wife, who led a wild charge into the heart of the battle to get to him?

Now, the players taking part in the super-story probably don't know that they're stars. They're just fighting and having a good time. One of 'em lost his first character in the battle, but it's okay. The old guy was getting dull and now junior already has most of the things his dad had. Also, he brought his girl into the game and she's a cleric (hey, like I'm the only one whose addicted his girlfriend to a game so she could be my cleric...don't look at me like that). Ooops, look like junior should have spent more time learning new skills because his hereditary tactical ability isn't going to help him out of a skirmish with a group of Orcs. He's just not skilled enough with a sword and his troops are scattered, fighting one-on-one. He gets wounded...he's bleeding out...the screen is pulsing from dark to light in time with his dwindling heartbeat (took forever to program that BTW) and then his girl gets to him with a bunch of other players from the computer lab on her side of campus. She heals him, it was a close call, and they go to the nearest trainer to work on that boy's sword arm.

Now, from a player's perspective, the above might be a fun gaming session. From the perspective of someone who wants to know whether or not he should sell his bakery and move to a city with higher walls, the story from the front is interesting reading. Although, to that baker-player, the business section of the news might be more interesting.

So what I'm going for is the shared experience of multiple people with common interests. Like sports fans or 24-hour news junkies. The players who want story will make their own (you can get a journal where short notes of your actions in the game are recorded so you can literally write your own story).

So, I hope that explains story. There isn't an intimate narrative, but rather a superstory that players "keep track of". There's no need to immerse players in it because they're already immersed. If the enemy army takes the city, they'll all be fighting orcs in the streets.

This isn't lore, it's current events.

- Wyld -

WyldKarde wrote:
Information is another form of currency in the game. There are "hints" generated when the world changes. Those with second sight might see glimpses of a dark future. Augurers can look at patterns of birds in flight and determine that something is wrong to the west. Any of these portents means that the game has generated some new horror. Maybe orcs have settled in the swamps or a portal to hell opened up in the mountains somewhere.

Once this information gets to the people who see it first, it will be told to leaders like city heads or interested crime lords. From there, it will be passed down to guilds who will dispatch their "adventurers" (probably sitting around waiting for the world to go to hell) and the fun commences. Mind you, this is just a possible pattern. Nothings stopping the original "seer" from grabbing a party and going into battle himself. However, there are those who would pay for such info.

In the meantime, thieves, spies (you don't need to play two characters to play two sides...besides, I can check ISP addresses to prevent most multiple log-ins) and just nosy neighbors are trying to "steal" the information (it's treated like an object) to get it to their own little cliques. Tavern owners, for example, run makeshift guilds, using roaming adventurers to collect the bounty on quests. The barkeep finds out the "Mage" Guild is looking for an enchanted sword and then passes this info along to a few over-eager adventurers, saying he'll pay 'em handsomely for the weapon. They retrieve it, are paid a fraction of it's true worth (which most computer RPG players are used to anyway) and the barkeep gets to reap the benefits of guild ownership without the expense of training members or paying guild taxes to the landowner. It's a way around the "legal" way of running a guild.

Good one kenjib.

Well, in terms of server support and cost. I'm just going to set up my own server. Since the game is free, I don't have to really worry about overcrowding. Whatever the server can handle, it can handle. If I end up with a behemoth on my hands that everyone and their mother wants to play, I shouldn't have any problem finding the funding to make it large enough to accomodate vast amounts of playing customers. Until I have a game that works, it's a little presumptuous to count money.

Actually, I have a simple chat program that runs the rulesets from other games I made in the past. I used it on my barracks network back at Ft. Huachuca. Anyone on the network could log in, find a GM and get to town. The ruleset for my games could also be suspended so you ended up with a dice-rolling chat applet that could play any game you want.

Also, I'm not making an MMORPG.

Wait, quick...lemme specify.

I'm currently programming an MMORPG engine. It actually works like a MUD maker. It allows the user to create rooms, objects, and NPC's and assign properties to them. Then, the program compiles the users input according to the ruleset in my RPG. The RPG is designed from the environment's perspective, not the character's.

So if a world builder makes a group of goblins and places them in an encampment outside of a human settlement, the game will play the goblins according to the rules in it's database. If they're hostile and poorly equipped, they'll raid. If they're well equipped and fairly intelligent, they may build a fortification and prepare a more organized attack. If they have adequate resources where they are, they may simply settle and raise their little goblin children. The world builder only has to create them and plop 'em down.

Then again, maybe the goblins are part of a quest. In that case, they will do whatever the world builder tells them to do. They will kidnap a princess, set up a toll and extort gold from travellers...whatever they're specifically told to do. If the world builder doesn't tell them what to do...they do what nature (the program) tells them to do. World builders (technically, the game GM's itself) can make as detailed or as simple an environment as they like.

So I'm really just programming an MMORPG engine. If I were trying to create an entire MMORPG from scratch, I'd have a near impossible task on my hands. Don't forget, however, that Lineage started with a single programmer writing code in his spare time. Say what you will about the quality of that game, but it achieved (and possibly exceeded) it's goals.

Believe me, I know the astronomical cost of mounting a MMORPG. That's why I'm only making part of one. If it works, then I'll go ahead and make the added investment to turn it into a downloadable that anyone can play. For now though, I'm trying to see if my theory is viable. If it's viable, then I'll look into seeing if it's profitable.

Oh...as for the competition in Quests. That's a good point. Quests are generally very, very hard. Only a small percentage of the playerbase will be able to complete them and only a small percent of that group will be willing to (most high-level characters will be running guilds or cities of their own). Simply put, not everyone will get to a quest.

Then again, isn't that what adventuring is about? I would think that, despite the quest system, most adventuring players would actively seek out trouble rather than waiting for it. Augury and Seeing only work within a certain radius of the affected person and only when the game is about to unleash on an unwary community. A small group of goblins won't trigger augury, but a massed army moving towards the city walls will. The main thrust of Augury is reading patterns in nature and is therefore useless unless something has gone horribly wrong.

But yes, not every player will get a shot at every quest (or even most of them). But, the game generates things for them to do. Quests are just "sanctioned" adventures. Nothing is stopping an entrepid party from going goblin-hunting, cave-crawling, or cleansing unholy ground. The area around a civilized area isn't going to be exactly roiling with monster activity but the farther you get from those civilized areas, the rougher it's going to be. Without the playerbase thinning out the creatures, the game is allowed to "heap"

"Heaping" occurs when enemy NPC's establish a balance among themselves, becoming the monster equivalent of a kingdom. It might be a Lich that has raised an army of undead and who is keeping a tribe of orcs enslaved to dig tunnels where he can summon demons directly from the pit of hell. The surrounding countryside has no life and the radiating dark magic (magic works like weather...influenced by and influencing nature) has given birth to random horrors all around the Lich kingdom.

The game creates things like this in response to player activity. Like bacteria that get stronger due to weaker strains being killed by antibodies. Only the unusually strong will survive and then the unusual becomes the norm.

Adventurer one: My but the lizardmen are hard to kill on the western penninsula. Where I'm from, they usually die when you cut them in two. I've never had one grow a snake tail where his waist was and keep coming.

Adventurer two: Yeah, they didn't used to do that. West Siiiiiiide!!!


Good questions kenjib...this is tightening up my engine nicely. Keep 'em coming man.

kenjib wrote:
Okay, that sounds like a great idea. Now, how do you make it actually happen the way you want it to?

When people play a MMORPG, they are going to find the quickest way to get from point A to point B. It's really hard to close loopholes, and finding and exploiting loopholes is actually one of the primary goals of game players. What kind of mechanics are you going to use to reinforce these kinds of behavior and discourage behavior you don't like.

WyldKarde wrote: So if a world builder makes a group of goblins and places them in an encampment outside of a human settlement, the game will play the goblins according to the rules in it's database. If they're hostile and poorly equipped, they'll raid. If they're well equipped and fairly intelligent, they may build a fortification and prepare a more organized attack. If they have adequate resources where they are, they may simply settle and raise their little goblin children....."Heaping" occurs when enemy NPC's establish a balance among themselves, becoming the monster equivalent of a kingdom. It might be a Lich that has raised an army of undead and who is keeping a tribe of orcs enslaved to dig tunnels where he can summon demons directly from the pit of hell. The surrounding countryside has no life and the radiating dark magic (magic works like weather...influenced by and influencing nature) has given birth to random horrors all around the Lich kingdom.

Whooo, now you're getting into programming. It's cool because this conversation was bound to invite the question of how. Just giving code snippets, even for the simpler functions in the game would fill about ten pages of posts so I'll break down the how of what I'm doing in simpler terms.

Basically, I'm writing this in an object oriented language. This means that I can deal with certain things on an individual basis. For instance, the game does not recognize armor as "armor". Armor is simply a skilled piece of metal. Lemme explain:

Armor starts off as a piece of steel.

A blacksmith uses his skill to "level" that piece of steel, teaching it new skills. Now that piece of steel knows how to absorb damage and it is given the label of "armor"

Because the blacksmith knows how to make plate (and this is, in fact, what he's trying to do), the "armor" is subcategorized as "Plate"

So, the game recognizes the armor as a piece of steel. The player recognizes it as armor. The environment sees something in a way that makes sense for it. The player sees the same thing in a way that makes sense to him. Certain "skills" (variables that determine how obects interact with each other) define that object so that it has a role in the game.

So, how does the player see that armor?

I don't have to come up with a complex algorithim to determine the damage resistance of every piece of armor in the game. I only have to write a basic set of rules governing all armor and each individual armor will adhere to those rules to the degree they are able.

rule: All platemail slows character movement by 50%

Exception: Elven plate increases character movement by 10% (i.e. elven plate only slows a player down by 40%)

Exception: The "Veteran" skill increases character movement in plate mail by 10% (Soldiers have to wear heavy armor and move efficiently in it...now the charcaters speed is only reduced by 30%)

Exception: A strength of 20 reduces all movement penalties to 1/2 of their value (so the plate penalty is reduced to 25%, the fact that it's elven plate reduces it to 15% and the fact that a veteran is wearing it reduces it to 5%).

This means that two different characters would get completely different values from the same piece of equipment. I don't have to say that "thieves cannot wear plate" and write the program to enforce that rule. The game simply makes it impractical for a character without the skill to perform a certain task, perform that task.

So that's how inanimate objects relate to characters...now on to your question...how to characters relate to characters.

NPC's get a different skillset from player-characters. Their additional skills determine how they react to other NPC's. As far as AI goes, it's somewhat primitive, but as I create more complex monster types, the AI starts to step up considerably.

It might be a Lich that has raised an army of undead and who is keeping a tribe of orcs enslaved to dig tunnels where he can summon demons directly from the pit of hell. The surrounding countryside has no life and the radiating dark magic (magic works like weather...influenced by and influencing nature) has given birth to random horrors all around the Lich kingdom.

Adventurer one: My but the lizardmen are hard to kill on the western penninsula. Where I'm from, they usually die when you cut them in two. I've never had one grow a snake tail where his waist was and keep coming.

Adventurer two: Yeah, they didn't used to do that. West Siiiiiiide!!!

Sydney Freedberg wrote:
Now that is very, very cool. How on earth do you program the nasties to interact with one another like that? You're tracking lots of relationships there (Orcs to Lich, Lich to undead, tunnel-digging to demon-summoning), all of which have multiple possible values (slavery/obedience, mastery, purpose).

Interesting coding ideas, but what actually enforces roleplaying?
The vast majority of games don't consist of Cedric the Bard regailing travels with stories of the great Warrior Prince, they consist of Bob, Joe and Mac going off into the "wilderness" and leveling while Craig, Alex and Josh stand around in the "square" talking about the football or hocky game on TV.
I applaud the coding efforts as a coder myself, but fantasy RPGs I personally think are the hardest to transfer faithfully to the PC, because almost no one actually role plays while online.

Arright kankib...I'm not sure I follow your question this time.

There's another aspect you didn't touch on WyldKarde, which is the relationships between actual objects in implementation (as opposed to classes in design, which you are talking about).

Roleplaying...ahhhhh.

Actually, I haven't come up with a way to enforce a roleplay mechanic. I honestly think it's a waste of time to enforce role-playing. Every player will have a different level of involvement depending upon their tastes. Even in a role-playing tabletop setting, you have players that consult their guides or charts while waiting for their teammates to make rolls. That's not "realistic".

Also, I don't really consider it to be out of role to go powerlevelling. If there's fistfulls of money to be had by going out and killing monsters, reinvesting that money into better tools and going out to kill bigger monsters, then yeah, lots of people are going to do it. If you create a game that rewards that behavior with powerful items and trunkfulls of gold, then it's the game's fault that the players act that way.

No one becomes a Rogue/Fighter/Illusionist to sit around the tavern and swill beer.

That said, I beleive that one can encourage role-playing. In this game it is beneficial to join guilds, become usefull to the community, learn skills and make friends. A good role-player is debateable, but the game rewards good players. If you want to become king, go ahead and do it. If you want to become a demon-hunter of great renown, get to killin' those deomons.

Player griefing is reduced because powerful characters have more to worry about than hasslin' the newbies. The king who decides to tussle with the kids in the goblin forest is going to end up assassinated by a player at his own level who also wants to be king.

I'm considering taking a note from illarion and having players pre-create their characters (not a bad idea considering the first character will be the Patriarch or Matriarch of an entire bloodline) and get them approved. If nothing else, it will reduce having to rename characters like TERMINATOR007 and LeftNutz2004. Also, it kind of thins out the goofballs. Since the game is free, a short wait and an approved character wouldn't be much to ask.

As far as not having to listen to the American Idol results in-game, there is a moderated main chat channel that is In-character only. Misuse results in "muting" where the punished player can only communicate through pre-defined phrases (interpreted as hand-signals). It's like being forced to use the "scripted" conversations in one-player RPG's.

Normal:

Caleb says: Hale and well met! Is anyone present willing to join me in an orc hunt? I understand they're camped to the north of here.

Muted:

Caleb signs, "Can I join your party?"
Let Caleb Join? Yes/no

You don't have to hear out of character comments as OOC has it's own chat channel that can be ignored. You can also punish muted characters by ignoring "sign language".

As far as encouraging roleplay, my moderators (anyone who has played a MUD knows that they're easy to hire, as long as the game is free) will be able to reward good roleplay in-character. The Bard who tells a rousing tale will get a commission from the king, a private quest, or something like that. In fact, good roleplayers will probably get goodies from other good roleplayers without any help from moderators.

Generally speaking though, roleplay is usually it's own reward. When I had my thief run screaming and naked into battle to distract the enemy while my friends escaped, I did it because that's what the character would have done (our cleric was pregnant by the perverted little halfling). I didn't do it for any gifts from the GM. In fact, I got captured and tortured thoroughly for my efforts.

But oh, "The Dangly Charge of Relmin Lightfinger" is remembered to this day.

WyldKarde wrote: Arright kankib...I'm not sure I follow your question this time.

I've played MUDs for several years, mostly just to kill time.
During that time, I've met one person who actually role plays his characters.
I'm bringing this up because it seems you're really into roleplaying yourself and it would so suck if you put this effort into this and have people come online and be all like 'dude ur coo ken i b in ur party'

Personally, I think the only way to pull off a true, successful roleplaying game is to use real people as opposed to hordes of NPCs. More work, but when you're dealing with a select few people its easier and more enjoyable.
Sit down, examine the world. Run with the random generators, that can actually be a help~ But look at areas to create the kind of story RPG games are known for and find a way to make something like that possible. Get three of your pals and yourself together with Admin accounts and running say 3 or 4 characters at a time- have them "GM" the game in their own little segment. The automated systems will take card of the rules, so all your GM Admin buddies have to do is help drive story- react to the players in an appropriate way, direct them a little to the possible occurances etc. If the players decide they want to kill the bouncer (as a friend of mine does repeatedly), throw them in jail for breaking the law. If they help out someone whos dying, allow them some small reward (ie everyone in town gathers and cheers when the poor adventurer is saved by the traveling Knight, get 1/2 off the inn for the evening or something).
The problem with MMORPGs isn't the sheer number of people playing, its the reliance on the technology to create the atmosphere. It can't. It can regulate the physics, but leaves the meaty, fun stuff to the people- the roleplaying.
With a small world, this isn't impossible. 20 players, 5 of which are admins and you have 3 people per admin to 'manage'. If the area is reletivly small, then the admins could easily work together to weave the stories and what not. GM's will have a heads up on the random occurances and can reflect that in their characters. Rather than have a scripted "There is a dark cloud to the East," wouldn't it be cooler if the player was walking along and someone grabs him - "Sir Leoric? It is you! Please, I need your help! My daughter, she went off to pick flowers in the forest earlier today and she hasn't returned! Normally I wouldn't worry, however there have been whispers of dark creatures in the forest after sunset and I fear for her safety!" Now, this could be legit OR it could be a plot to attack the brave and legendary Sir Leoric by getting him off and alone. With a typical MUD/MMORPG, it would be one or the other and everyone would know "Talk to the man, go to the woods, kill the thieves, take their treasure".

Enough of my rambling though :P Point: Computer NPCs cannot do what real people behind a character can, so for the best game, ditch the Computer NPC as much as possible and try to enlist some GM Admin aids to RP.

Ahhhh, now I follow kenjib.

Actually, I guess I could have answered this question a lot more simply (then again, someone was bound to ask about combat so it's prolly best I got that out of the way).

All skills have limitations on them. Magic has a range. The lich kingdom would actually have to be pretty small because the lich is using up so much power to raise demons. It wouldn't be a full-sized kingdom (although, in this game even the largest community is a circle that radiates only eighteen miles from the town square). The lich is limited by what he can do and the extent to which he can do it. It wasn't touched on before, but certain skills, especially magical spells that require concentration to maintain, limit a character's ability to perform other skills. The game is self-balancing in that regard. A character can simultaneously perform two spells of equal power and maintain them but can't do much else (actually, a character could perform three spells in this manner, unfortunately the poor guy would immediately black out and all three spells would dissapate).

So, of the most powerful abilities, the game only allows the use of two at a time (and this only by the strongest characters). Human-players, computer AI, both have to plan which two high-level spells they want to use in this manner. Ironically, the simpler, weaker skills can be affected by dozens of modifiers (i.e. backstab affected by ambient lighting, elevation, armor type, weapon type, character skill, defensive stance, offensive stance, etc, etc, etc.). Strong skills aren't affected by much because they don't really have to be. If a player casts the spell "Godlike Might" at master level, strength modifiers aren't applied.

Now...advancing the story through the playerbase.

Actually, the game needs a good playerbase because it takes place during the reconstruction. This would take awhile to explain and would contain spoilers from all three Armageddon Gospel Novels. Since the first one won't be on bookshelves for seven months, this would be counterproductive to the revenue-earning venture that I am involved in.

But, I can tell you that something happens that leaves the world laregly void of sentient life. The sentient races are reduced to tribes, stumbling through the wilderness and scraping together what existence they can. eventually, they band together and use their unique talents to construct a mighty city. The goblins dig tunnels and create a sewer system, dwarven craftsmanship creates beautiful walls and buildings. Elven arboreums and gardens create a beautiful campus. Human scholars, with their simple language, create a library where all of the combined knowledge of every race on earth is stored. All of the races stay together to create this one mighty city, a wonderful place where their past differences were forgotten and they would live together in peace and harmony.

It lasted roughly seven years.

After seven years of nonstop construction, many of the races began to remember their old glory. If they could create something as great as this city, just think of what they could again become, this time armed with the knowledge of their former enemies. The sentient races scattered to their old homeleands and left the city in the hands of the old men and children.

Despite the apparent helplessness of great age and great youth, this turned out to be a volitile combination. The children of the city went to the old sages and learned their wisdom at a very young age. Dwarven warriors trained beardless little whelps in the art of combat and hoary old scorcerers taught children how to manifest their will upon all creation.
The children of that great city became far more powerful than their parents, now they had only to make their mark upon the world. Unlike their parents, however, they named the city before they left it and it was ever after known as Akadime.

However, not all children were trained in the honorable arts of other races. Some went with their parents, leaving their sisters and brothers to be polluted by the weak philosphies of old men. Race-mixing leads to the destruction of the pure bloodlines that generations have fought and died for. Once they saw the error of their ways, the mighty [insert race here] deserted their folly and left it to fall on the heads of those fools who beleived in it. The children of the pure [insert race here] were trained to be greater than even their parents, but in the ways of their ancient culture.

Hmmmm, sounding a little like the rants of certain political groups? Well, I said this is dark fantasy. Along with other things, I decided to take the casual racism in most fantasy settings and put an uglier face on it. There's more ways to make the audience uncomfortable than oozing sores and creepy lighting. Make note, that this is something only found in the Novel itself. The game doesn't make assumptions on what anyone'smotives are. Game lore is all stored at the Academy (what, I know you saw that) so it's got a watered-down, just-the-facts feel to it.

It explains the diaspora as something that was bound to happen eventually and doesn't go into much depth as to what triggered it (in the novel, it's when a half-orc child kills his half-elf brother). The game doesn't roleplay anything, so my story's darker racism kinda bottoms out in gameplay. Frankly, I'm not sad that it doesn't make the transition.

But anyway, the game world is created by the players (the beta testers who get to be that first generation out of the nest). They found the first cities. The only game-moderated civilizations are the Academy and the various homelands of other races. Guilds are born from warring ideals. What is taught at the academy versus what is taught culturally.

These beta testers get to work out the kinks in the system and eventually determine the political climate that the other players walk into. Since the game will be, upon it's release to the public already in progress, there's no need to beat players over the head with a story. There will already be several storylines in play and the fastsest road to success will probably follow them.

So NPC's will be limited. Then again, NPC's will also be player-created so it's not so bad. Beta-testers will create small communities that grow into large communities. I'm not sure if I mentioned this, but NPC's are the retired characters of active players (what, you didn't think I was gonna let 'em play fifteen different characters did you?). If your old ranger hangs up his boots to become a gardener, you'll see him hanging around the garden. If you ask, he'll even tell you stories (where do you think that journal goes when you're done with it) about his adventures.

You don't need to go to the warrior's guild to get a map of the ancient dwarven mines, just ask old Pete the baker, he once brought a king's ransom out of those mines. Old party members will have relationships (so NPC's will still roleplay their old animosities) with each other and maybe even old villians will pop up occasionally.

"Retired" NPC's don't fight though, so don't think you're going to get Azrik from the potions shop and Meldark from the weapons emporium to continue their old rivalry over Hyatha, the old lady who sells flowers by the temple, it's not going ot happen.

Although they'll gladly tell you a few embarrassing stories about the old fart.

It's not player-run I know. But shaping my playerbase to fit my ideal like pieces in a dollhouse is where many designers go wrong. You play with your players, you don't play with them. The other characters are attatched to humans. To force them to fill roles my gameworld needs when they don't want to isn't fun for anyone. I have to find a middle ground. This is my solution.

WyldKarde wrote: You don't need to go to the warrior's guild to get a map of the ancient dwarven mines, just ask old Pete the baker, he once brought a king's ransom out of those mines.

It is possible, for a large group of people to all be in the same place at the same time. The game is supposed to work that way. Otherwise, wars and marketplaces would be pretty boring. If everyone decided to go to the old dwarven mines, then yes...everyone would be down there picking around for lost treasure.

The game limits the maximum number of people in a room to be no higher than sixty (The actual number isn't sixty, but I'm not going to explain this in hexadecimal). The game can perform perfectly with up to that many players onscreen at once.

But, I assume your question had nothing to do with "clumping". You're asking if players will all crowd into the same areas and step on each others toes.

Well, there's nothing stopping them from doing that, but there's no reason they should. Let's look at the math.

Lets assume that a city has it's maximum limit of six-hundred people. Let's also assume that they are all player-characters and that they are all adventurers looking for something to do. No bakers in this city...all paladins, mages, and rangers.

For argument's sake, lets say they're all the same level. This means that they all need enemies that are roughly the same strength as they are in order to have fun.

To understand the world map, we need a Hex grid. A single hex contains the city proper. The six hexes around it contain farmland. The twelve hexes around that contain "wild" land that produces random roaming monsters. The eighteen hexes surrounding that area produce more powerful, more organized creatures.

Beyond that, you have "heaped" monsters that are operating at a level equal to that of the city that these adventurers walked out of. Arguably, no single party could handle such an entity, it would take a full-on war involving every citizen from our theoretical adventuring town. We're not even going to have to travel that far to satisfy every single player. We're only working with the thirty-six hexes immediately surrounding the city.

A single hex on the map contains sixty "rooms". Each "room" contains sixty "spaces" where players can stand. This means that each hex on the map can contain the entire polulation of our town six times over.

However, the city isn't where we go to fight monsters. We could, but let's assume we aren't. The farmland usually contains weaker "newbie" level monsters that don't attack or organize on their own. We aren't going for them.

Of our thirty-seven hexes, we're only going monster hunting in twenty-nine. Seven hexes equalling four hundred and twenty "rooms" or twenty-five thousand, two hundred spaces are going unused in this example.

Usually, "wild" areas have creature populations that are up to six times as dense as the largest city, depending on the level of the creatures (strong creatures lower population density). The presence of the strongest creatures lowers "wild" areas to populations closer to that of a large city. "Wild" areas never have less life than is found in a large city.

Except in this example.

The creatures in the "wild" areas around this city are at half their lowest allowable number, three hundred per hex. We're also going to lower their skill level to half that of the adventurers. Normally, critters this weak would outnumber the adventurers six to one, or be killed by stronger monsters and simply not exist in the area.

So, in the hexes nearest the city, our critters number three-thousand six hundred. The average battle in this game takes ten minutes. At half skill however, it should only take five minutes for an adventurer to kill a monster.

So, with six hundred adventurers fighting nonstop, it will take a half hour of real time to kill every monster in the area surrounding their wheat fields. This is with the monsters lining up to be killed and the adventurers not having to look for them.

Beyond that is our second area. Now, this area would be home to a few organized bands of skilled monsters, many of them are tougher than the adventurers and could only be brought down by organized parties. They would outnumber the adenturers three...perhaps two to one.

Not this time. They're the same level as the adventurers and each hex holds a number of monsters equal to the humans. There are eighteen hexes this time, each containing six hundred monsters of a level equal to the adventurers. Combat will take about ten minutes per full battle.

The adventurers now have ten-thousand, eight hundred monsters to kill. Fighting nonstop it would take the entire citizenry of our theoretical village three hours of real time gameplay to kill every single monster in this area. Mind you, they can still see their chimneys from where they're standing.

So...in answer to your question, I don't think there's any real danger of the playerbase "not having anything to do". Especially if all they want to do is kill things. I said earlier how "quests" weren't the only way to adventure.

I guess I didn't explain the in enough detail how the world spawned monsters and uses them. The terrain literally spits critters out of the ground, keeping track of how many have been created and killed and how they were killed and what type of creature killed them.

A swamp knows when it needs to make better goblins, or tougher slimes from how many of it's "players" have been killed. Use poison on the goblins and eventually, they will develop an immunity to it, or use it themsleves. Each "hex" is it's own GM, creating monsters that are slightly better organized than the ones that got killed previously.

And this is just natural terrain. Swamps, fields and forests. Unholy ground, hellmouths, and dragon lairs create monsters that...well, frankly I haven't thought of yet. MMORPG's have done a lot of things wrong, but they have done a few things right. The ability to run off and adventure for hours on end is something they've given the casual gamer. I see no need to change that. Let the casual gamer have their release.

You didn't really think I was going to go to all this trouble to fix the problems inherrent in MMORPG's just to screw up the few things they got right. Trust me, there will be plenty of things to stick your sword in.

Stepping on toes is a side effect yes, but thats not what I was getting at.
I've always felt that most MUDs destroy the specialness of certain achievements.
IE Pete made a mint raiding the dwarven mines. He's a rich man, yes. But do you go around giving your hard earned (or stolen) money? Why did he give me the map? Was there any special reason? And why do I need to go to him for a map? If its a commonly known location because anyone can get a map, why isn't it listed on a world map? Why don't the poor citizens go down there? Theres enough adventurers down there to kill the monsters and Balrog, so theres nothing for them to fear as they're looting.
How cool is Excaliber when everyone has one? How cool is "The ultra rare cool only weapon of doom in existance" when anyone above level 15 has it? What value is it to the player to explore the "Lost Ruins of the City Never Seen" for treasure when there are 60 people on the same map and the treasure simply repops? They have their uses and their cool factors of course, but thats enhanced when you're like "I have the ONLY Excaliber!" or "I was the first person to map the area and loot the treasure!"
I'm not talking about the mechanics or math (and I used to hack roms via Hexidecimal, I'm fairly familiar with it ^_^) or "not having anything to do", I'm talking about the flavor of the world in general.

I worked on an online adaptation of Pokemon out of boredoms sake a few years ago and got a considerable chunk done before NOA clamped down.
Part of the premise in the video games is the "Legendary Monsters"- creatures of mythic power and proportion, only one in all of the world. Or gamepak, in which case everyone had it.
Our online world was handled differently- there literally was only one of each of the Legendary monsters. Powerful, rare and difficult to catch- capturing one was a true accomplishment worthy of bragging rights.
With Pokemon, the entire principle is battling, not much in the way of roleplaying, but by limiting some things we forced the players to expand in other avenues. Teams that traditionally relied on Legendaries found ways to compete successfully with common monsters and the ones with the actual Legendaries were well admired because it was difficult to do.

Point is there are ways through a little careful control to create other incentives and in a round about way enforce roleplaying.
And too, are any GM forced to fill roles? Yes and no. They have to play any other character, but some people get off on that, thats how they like to play~ Not saying they should force the players, but they could better provide the characters with a genuine interaction than a series of scripted responses.

Ahhhh, now I've got you.

How does one guarantee the "specialness" of certain accomplisments?

I suppose I could take the easy way out and say that certain things will be special to certain players, yada, yada, yada. To an extent that's true though. Different "generations" will look at different achivements differently. For grampa, killin' that bear in his cornfield was an accomplishment. Now, five generations later, you're killing bears in your sleep.

Also, the only "collective knowledge" is stored at the academy, or read in the newspaper. Ol' Pete isn't going to tell everyone about the old mine (unless he's programmed to). When characters are retired, the player who is retiring the character to NPC status determines the character's "personality", a list of modifiers that determine what he'll do if asked.

Since information is treated like an object, you can get info with question commands like what, how, where, when, why (although this will generate a pre-rendered response), and who. Trigger responses that have to do with those objects. It's like asking for a few gold pieces. Maybe you'll get it, maybe you won't. The NPC's "personality" decides how he'll respond to you. Maybe he has a fondness for members of his own guild. Maybe he likes pretty girls. Maybe he only respects strength, smarts, material possessions. Maybe he'll only talk about that with his family.

So not every NPC will react to every character in the same way. Then again, this feature is really just a novelty to enhance roleplay. Not many quests are going to be had from old men. If they killed the goblin king, then he's not there anymore. If they looted the dwarven mines, they're empty.

However, this does allow me to sugue into another point raised. Your legendary monsters.

Every monster in the game has an ultimate form. There's an ultimate slime, and ultimate goblin, and ultimate dragon, an ultimate everything (sixty in all). Killing one is like killing a god. They can, mathematically, only be killed by a party of six players each at level sixty (and that only makes it a fair fight). It's probably possible to do it with fewer, but not likely.

These ultimate monsters are lifted directly from the book and all uniquely named. They posess every skill available to members of their "monster family" and other skills right out of the book that can't be learned, each unique to only that monster. They are like "bosses" and killing one earns you fame, adoration, and the eternal wrath of every lesser version of that creature in the game.

Seriously, the game will create armies for the sole purpose of killing you.

However, you're cool for a year. Legendary creatures all die and are reborn every year (two months of game time). This means that if you haven't been able to kill Yoloram, the death lord after eight weeks of trying to get into his castle, you'll have to start looking for him all over again. If you did kill him, you've got that much time to get ready for his return.

I'd advise retiring and letting junior take the heat on this one. After all, if you take out a legendary monster, you're pretty much as tough as you're gonna get. The new character will have the "Child of a Legend" background added to whatever you give 'em. It's like being the "Child of a Hero", but with the entire spectrum of a monster class gunning for you. It doesn't unbalance the game too much, but you'll find yourself fighting a particular type of monster more than any other.

The next generation will have "Child of a Hero" automatically if his parent lives to retirement.

So that's unique monsters. Legendary weapons are easier, but they're unique.

It is possible to hand down an item instead of a skill to your offspring. Signature weapons are weapons that "level" along with their owner, improving over time. These weapons can be handed down to future generations, becoming heirlooms. It takes a lot of work to get a heirloom or signature weapon how you like it. After three generations, the weapon becomes "ancestral" and will stop leveling. It also loses it's exclusivity and can be used by characters outside the family (but only reaches it's full potential in the hands of a family member).

Signature items can also be created for guilds, clans, and races.

So yes, with enough time, anyone can get excalibur, but only the chosen one will use it as it was meant to be used. There are a lot of signature weapons, items, and objects out there, but each one has it's own specialness.

Tell me you wouldn't take it a little personally if someone stole grampas' battle-axe that he used to kill Agarath, the great dead sea.

Oh yeah...it would be on then.

West Siiiiiiiide!!!!!!

How many estimated simultaneous players are you designing for, again?

daMoose_Neo wrote: And too, are any GM forced to fill roles? Yes and no. They have to play any other character, but some people get off on that, thats how they like to play~ Not saying they should force the players, but they could better provide the characters with a genuine interaction than a series of scripted responses.

Simultaneous players?

Well, I'm designing for sixty thousand. I'm not really expecting that many, just trying to keep from having the game collapse on me. After desiging a game structured around Massive Multiplayer, it would be embarassing to have it fail because of too many players.

I like the GM idea. I was thinking about it in an earlier iteration (a page or a verse of the gospel allows for the end-user to design worlds and quests). This is why the game engine has such a simplistic format from a builders standpoint. Drag and drop floor tiles to make the ground, set pre-programed objects like walls, rocks, trees and such. A money-changers table makes the area around the table a shop. A forge makes the area around the forge a smithy.

But, as the idea came to involve more players, I started pulling back on that idea. However, if it generates a nice playerbase that could support such a system (end-user changes to the game world have to be approved by an Administrator if they're going on the main server) I'll go ahead and do it. It's something I wanted to do, but it presupposes a certain level of commitment on the part of my players. If I see any of that commitment, the world-builder will go downloadable (or, as originally intended, attainable in-game).

Oh, I've been thinking of a way to convert this to dice. I originally designed this game for dice (hence all the multiples of six) but when I decided to move it to the computer, I went in favor of percentages (percentage-based leveling slows powergaming to a crawl, as does having to go to multiple guilds in order to attain that "perfect" set of uber-skills).

If anyone has any advice on how to work the dice system, I'll break down how the computer handles "rolls".

The character attempts to perform one of their skills.

Example: The character is attempting to cleave an opponent.

Take the skill being attempted and compare it to the character's proficciency in that skill.

Example: The character is 55% proficcient in Cleave.

Take the proficciency in that skill and compare it to the base attributes being applied.

Example: Cleave would be an application of strength.

The result is determined through a combination of proficciency and the level of base attribute.

Yeah...the computer uses different formulas depending upon the skill being applied, the level of proficcency in that skill and it adds several sub-modifiers depending on where and how the character learned their skill. A fighter who learned to shoot at straw targets has different modifiers from a ranger who learned to shoot at running deer.

For a computer game that's neccessary. It makes the continued performance of a skill (powerleveling) useless in practice. Skills attained through training alone all suffer a "Toy Soldier" penalty where they critically fail more often than not.

But for tabletop, roleplay is a given. I'm not big on dice systems unless they're ridiculously simple (I'm putting up one of my pen-and-paper's later on tonight and you'll see what I mean) so if anyone has any suggestions, I'd be glad to hear them.

kenjib wrote:

daMoose_Neo wrote: And too, are any GM forced to fill roles? Yes and no. They have to play any other character, but some people get off on that, thats how they like to play~ Not saying they should force the players, but they could better provide the characters with a genuine interaction than a series of scripted responses.

I think that's a potentially revolutionary idea. Take what Neverwinter Nights has added to the online rpg lexicon and expand it to a persistant mmorpg. Create a GM rights rating for each player account that determines how much and/or often a player can take on the GM role - all players have GM access. The purpose of the rating is to provide a quality control check on the volunteer GMs. The more you play the higher rating you have. Non-GM players can also moderate your rating by reviewing you. This would allow people to restrict the GM'ing rights of players who abuse them.

User/Designers

I've played MUD's and I've seen it go wrong in practice nearly every time it's been implemented. However, with more control, I've also seen player/builders become integral parts of a game's content.

Unfortunately, an MMORPG can't have traditional player/builders. If an MMORPG makes revenue, then anyone adding content deserves a share of that revenue. The game needn't even turn a profit. Contributors to the game's content can arguably lay claim to a share of the operating costs. Even a game with a specificly written EULA would need a huge legal team on hand to defend it's content if the players contribute to it.

So that's why I went with in-game building. If you want to create a huge castle filled with evil monsters, then do the following:

Build huge castle.

Summon monsters.

Mix throughly.

This would incorporate someone's idea of creating "monster" races to have interplayer global conflict. I'm working on the monster races, but until then, there's no reason that an evil human can't worship at the altar of some elder god, obtain mastery over hideous fiends and use them to create a temple of evil.

So this is where we get into roleplay. My world-builders will be (after I let the beta testers play with it a little) roleplayers. Until (and unless) I give my editor program out to the players, the only way to hold sway over vast portions of the game world is to be a damn good roleplayer. Building a city means making friends with about twenty people (I reccomend farmers, carpenters, and blacksmiths), persuading (or forcing) them to make you their leige, and managing your resources well enough to keep the city functioning.

For now, there's no simple way for players to do what you're proposing. However, I'm still considering the possibility of finding a way to give more creative control over to the players.

WyldKarde wrote: For now, there's no simple way for players to do what you're proposing. However, I'm still considering the possibility of finding a way to give more creative control over to the players.

Hmmmm, I like that idea.

I hadn't looked too deeply into the "money-making" aspect of this design. I always considered it to be presumptuous to work a compensation system out when the game wasn't yet playable (though I'm hustling to make dice conversions...no reason I can't simplify the system for an ambitious GM).

Actually, I've been looking into "professional" publishing of my RPG's since I hit forge. I'm starting to see that although this is our hobby, Forge members seem to have a higher level of commitment to the industry. In playtesting my old games on other sites, Forge was always spoken of with reverence.

...once you're finished, go to Forge and post your game. If you can make it there, you can make it anywhere.

You could implement a roster for GMs, ensuring that there are never too many or too few GMs at any given time. You might also make becoming a GM "invite only", in that a GM must invite you, and you must be approved by all the existing GMs. If you start mucking up, like editing monsters to be really easy, or sending plague after plague against a nation you don't like, then you could just be "voted out". If you establish an elite community such as this, you will automatically be establishing the seriousness of your project and the rules for players. Taking the Forge as an example, unlike many other forums, there are only 2 moderators, and there is no chance for anyone at all, regardless of friendships or contributions, to permeate that barrier and become a mod (as far as I know). Additonally, Ron and Clinton keep a very tight set of rules around here. And that's all there is really. It's not magic. Just build it like that and it will automatically be seen as a respectable place. Not only for the GMs (moderators), but also for the players (us forgites). Human psychology is strange sometimes, but sometimes, it is really easy to manipulate.

So if you did that, you really wouldn't need to worry about providing any sort of incentive for being a GM. The simple honor of being invited into an elite group will be enough for that. Hell, you could even very easily establish that as a basis for many other things, like guilds and such. Just say "this is a group, you cannot join" and instantly you've created a desire in others to join that group.

But you know what I think would be really super massively fun? Making a sort of sublevel GM who would be the "Kings" in your world, each with a nation that is "theirs". Just don't allow them to alter the world or the creatures/players in it directly. You could give them the ability to issue decrees that would appear on signs throughout their towns, give them messengers, access to reports on their nations status, and of course, a very large coffer determined by their nations status in varying aspects. Just took over another nation?: have a bigger resource pool, and hell, now you can mine that gold vein. That way you are giving them massive incentive to provide their "people" with challenges to boost them, to encourage the formation and recruitment of large groups of people in all different areas to boost economy and armies.

It might be impossible, but I just love the idea of hundreds of players meeting hundreds of other players in a battlefield for war, and players being sent in to spy on other nations, and the counter-spies that you would recruit within your own nation to find other spies. And having players engage in ruthless marketing tactics to boost their own ecomomy and wealth, like espionage, sabotage, and theft, along with clever manipulation of the market. This sort of stuff might just "happen" on it's own, but it would be so much more likely and powerful if it was in pursuit of competition between rival kings seeking to make their own people posper the most. Hell, you'd even get "missionaries" popping up, trying to convert players to other nations, and all the hilarity that would ensue. Oh yes, that would be so cool.

Of course, it should be a very strong rule in your GM clique that no GM is allowed to show favouritism to any player or group. The last thing you want is natural fortifications like mountains and canyons appearing around nations and cities, and natural resources suddenly becomming very sparse in other areas.

As a side note though (heh), your system of "PC dies: new PC spawns who is child of that PC" could be made a bit more interesting. I don't know how you have it exacly planned, but maybe you could make players only able to pass on their gifts to a new character if they have have found a PC of the opposite gender to mate with. Of course, only females could reproduce, so what you might do to make things interesting, is give female characters full power over whether or not the father character gets to take over a child when the father dies. This would provide incentive for the father to be nice to the mother, and incentive to make sure that he is the nicest to her out of all other men she meets. In this way, babies would become a resource parrallel to "lives" in other systems, in total control of the mothers. Female PCs would be incentivised to not get killed, because whilst they would get to choose which child they take over, the other children would become "free property". Hell, children whose parents have died could be the only way to make a new character! Now that would be very, very cool. Also, say tom fathers a child to sue, but whilst he's out getting stuff, she meets bill, who has lots of stuff already, and needs more "lives" because he plans on living a dangerous life hunting dragons or something. So now tom comes back and finds sue is now with bill, so tom has lost his "lives", and bill has gained some. Of course, sue could tell them all to get bent and keep all her lives for herself when tom and bill die. I think that sounds hella cool. That simple mechanic of babies being a resource controlled by females makes so much shit really interesting and incentivises a shitload of PC interaction. So in summary, if you sire a child, you have a strong say in it's stats when you take over it, becaue they will reflect your stats and the stats of your partner, but if you are creating a character for the first time, or otherwise get stuck with an orphan, you have no say because it's the child of other people. Man I love that idea so much, I might make a TRPG out of it sometime. There's just so much stuff that can come from it, I couldn't list it all. What do you think?

-Ben

Out of curiosity, WK, which MMORPGs have you played?

Chris

Well, the low-level GM system is already in place. High-level characters can easily create their own guilds, run their own cities or kingdoms. In fact, it's the whole point of the game. It really gets fun when you're commanding a batallion of mercenaries.

Also, I've finished a rudimentary racial conflict system. There are three new races to oppose the standard human races. Also, the human races now have better defined cultures. The Cyrilli, Vashar, and Gurtha races live in different regions, thrive in different terrain, and eat different food. Therefore, what one race would not want to have near them, another race needs to survive. The game forces the races to fight over land. Cyrilli, for example, live in trees. Humans use trees but only to cut them down. Gurtha live in swamps and need the stagnant muddy water to breed (don't ask, it ain't purty). Cyrilli and humans tear swamps up for different reasons. Humans to obtain spell ingredients, Cyrilli because Gurtha consider Cyrilli young to be a delicacy.

The Vashar are a desert-dwelling cat race that exist only because they exist in the book. For the purposes of the game, there are Vashar sub-races that thrive in every climate. This makes the Vashar compete with other races moreso than the one human tribe they compete with in the book.

The reason I did this was to expand the warfare engine. High-level characters can wage war on other high-level characters, and the lower-level characters who follow them. This makes the creation of Clans (which I've noticed seems to happen even if there's nothing to support it) not only possible, but also a wise choice. I wanted the players to have differences that were more than personal. A Cyrilli king might have to destroy a human settlement to protect his sacred forest, whereas a human lord might have to wipe out a Vashar encampment in order to ensure there's enough wild game. Players are forced into conflict. They may find a compromise, (Vashar hunting while humans grow crops) or they may just unleash holy hell on each other.

Either way, the choice of taking on a larger role in the game as your character grows larger is not entirely optional. It's burned into the program.

Since I've come to the forge, I've made considerable changes to the system based upon your suggestions. However, there are still a few things I'm stuck on. I think that I've answered all of the initial questions pertaining to, "How are you going to avoid this common mistake?" Now, the questions are starting to get into the arena of "You know, it's never been done this way before."

This is where I was hoping we'd get. In the past, I'd never been able to get past the initial arguments of "It'll cost too much.", "How is this different from everything else out there?", and "MMORPG's suck so this will suck." I had answers to those questions, but it seemed the people I was talking to couldn't hear them.

God I love this site.

Anyway, now I can get down to design goals. I didn't want to lose them in the onslaught of flame that I expected after starting this thread.

What I have so far...

An engine that (on a synthetic network where most "players" were robot programs) allows for multiplayer input that can be viewed globally by specific players (generals watching the battlefield where individual troops are fighting). This has been tested up to six hundred "players". I expect beta testing to reveal any problems inherrent in the system, but this is encouraging enough to proceed.

An automated GM that is a seperate entity from the game system. The game's ruleset works for and against the computer and the players equally. The GM is limited in the same ways that the players are. The GM is also fractured in that certain "boss" monsters will work towards their own goals regionally instead of working towards a collective goal globally. This prevents unstoppable onslaughts when the game launches massive attacks against player-run cities or kingdoms.

Catalyst-driven quests that happen spontaneously through player actions. Although they can be scripted events, most quests can be generated through a combination of mundane actions. i.e. An evil necromancer kidnapping children to generate fuel for his army of the undead...either the town will have to stop the wizard or turn into a ghost town that will serve as a dungeon-crawl for future adventurers.

Actually, I've been implementing ideas from suggestions made and questions asked in the forge.

Sydney Freeberg wrote: You could have a whole separate group of players who are playing the MONSTERS. In fact, you could have multiple groups of players whose characters are building communities (and whose players presumably building communities) quite separate from each other, and which are bound to clash.

The Forge wrote: And too, are any GM forced to fill roles? Yes and no. They have to play any other character, but some people get off on that, thats how they like to play~ Not saying they should force the players, but they could better provide the characters with a genuine interaction than a series of scripted responses.

-damoose_Neo-



Create a GM rights rating for each player account that determines how much and/or often a player can take on the GM role - all players have GM access. The purpose of the rating is to provide a quality control check on the volunteer GMs. The more you play the higher rating you have.

-kenjib-



Uh, MUD superusers? Gah. First, this isn't a new idea. Second what it leads to is terrible real world player politics. The game quickly becomes a popularity contest to get the special powers.

If you made GMing more of a chore than a privilege, then I think you wouldn't have this problem - but I then think you'd have too few GMs.

-Mike-



But you know what I think would be really super massively fun? Making a sort of sublevel GM who would be the "Kings" in your world, each with a nation that is "theirs".

-Ravien-

Food...

The economy is agricultural. Land is a key element because of the food it produces. Farm production determines the size of a community.

But my characters don't have to eat.

The game never makes you sit down and eat a sandwich, anything. I'm still working on a realistic system for food involving nutrients and calories. Players need to eat a certain amount of food (calories) of a certain quality (nutrients). This makes cooking skills important instead of a throwaway statistic. Skilled cooks would be important because they can efficiently feed players for low cost (handfull of grain into a loaf of bread). Players who can't cook have to either buy their food or eat it raw (nutrients and calories satisfied, but due to sickness, player may react as if they'd not eaten at all, or been poisoned).

Skill relationships...

Not something I'm struggling with systemwise, but I need more skills. Creating this system from tradional RPG systems, skills are largely employed in combat. Even there, I haven't touched on all of the possible skills players can have. When I extend skills to things like crafting and military command, I'm getting into largely uncharted territory.

Hmmm, as far as the idea with kids goes, I'm starting to see room for invention in what was originally a way to permadeath players without them getting pissy about it.

I'm thinking about making it more involved, but I'm not sure how to do it in terms of game balance. After all, the obvious problem is...if two players have one child...who gets to control the child. The child develops as an individual and they are merely influenced by their parents. To have two players each controlling the child would create a logistical and roleplaying nightmare, so sharing is out. I don't want players to raise children, (although some players might like the idea of grooming their next character from the ground up...hmmmm) I want them to develop their character and create something worthwhile for that child to live up to.

So I'm trying to strike a balance. When you have players who develop their characters, you have the type of role-playing game I'm shooting for. But when you have players who develop characters who in turn develop other characters, then things get blurry. I struggled over adding a feature that allows players to train and raise monsters for this reason. It would upset game balance in terms of goals. While the "Monster Ranchers" would go about their business, there would be players who, inevitably, would kill those monsters to satify their own goals.

This idea has promise, but it has to contend with two things (there are probably more, but I can only think of two right now). First is character selection. You create characters during the character selection process, which is designed for balance. You cam make unique characters, but they're all at the same level. To raise heroes allows for a different type of powerlevelling. I'd get powerparenting (although a soccer mom with a +4 to backstab is so cool I might do it anyway) players.

Hmmm, I like it so if you're willing to work out the enevitable kinks in this system, get at me. I'm just a little concerned about the player who tries to take out his opponent by killing his wife and children first (realistic roleplay, but so is waiting until a player logs out to rob his house). Until I can think of a way to prevent that type of gaming, I'm sticking with the contrived (but effective) device of having children of legal age just pop up around the time daddy gets ready to retire.

To raise heroes allows for a different type of powerlevelling. I'd get powerparenting players.

I struggled over adding a feature that allows players to train and raise monsters for this reason. It would upset game balance in terms of goals. While the "Monster Ranchers" would go about their business, there would be players who, inevitably, would kill those monsters to satify their own goals.

This idea has promise, but it has to contend with two things (there are probably more, but I can only think of two right now). First is character selection. You create characters during the character selection process, which is designed for balance. You cam make unique characters, but they're all at the same level.

although a soccer mom with a +4 to backstab is so cool I might do it anyway

I'm just a little concerned about the player who tries to take out his opponent by killing his wife and children first (realistic roleplay, but so is waiting until a player logs out to rob his house). Until I can think of a way to prevent that type of gaming, I'm sticking with the contrived (but effective) device of having children of legal age just pop up around the time daddy gets ready to retire.

Ravien wrote: ... females become a very valuable resource, and one which should be protected. Men won't want women fighting because they can make and distribute lives. But if a woman's child is threatened, she will have every reason to protect it at all costs. Does this seem familiar at all? In essence, children and food are the two most fundamentally important aspects of human life, so if you model them with reasonable accuracy (artistic licence included), then human-like behaviour will just naturally emerge from that.

I just see one problem: Who wants to play a "very valuable resource" that other people actively discourage from going in harm's way? ...
*snip*
... I just want to raise the yellow caution flag that Here Be Fifty Thousand Years Of Traps.

Hmmm, I never woulda thought the "Legacy" feature whould have grown so much. I just kind of included it as a way to permanently kill my people without them getting too pissy about it. Also, a character who creates a great character who died from natural causes should be rewarded with a child who is a little better for it. After all, the good players will level in half the time anyway because they already know how. They'll have to in order to maintain what they've got going.

I'm starting to crack Ravien...I'll give you that. Everyone comes to this MMORPG thing with preconceived notions of what will absolutely not work and this was one of mine. Of course, this was a preconceived notion about something that hadn't been done before so I'm pretty flexible on it.

I think I can work this out. Players can raise children the way they'd raise any other "herd" object. The skills of the player go into the object being created (an enchanter making a dagger makes an enchanted dagger).

This is the same thing, but taking random skills from the parents. When the player creates a new character, he has the choice of using one of his children (if he has them) or a "protege". A protege will be much like my original childhood system where the player simply picks the skills his parent "in this case, benefactor" taught him. Protege's are nice because your second character could be a race that neither you or your partner are.

I might discard the protege system now that the offspring system is getting fleshed out, but I don't know. In the meantime, the protege system does have the original "passing down of skills" formula so I'm keeping it for the time being.

Anyway, here's how I'm thinking of working the offspring system:

I'm thinking of awarding players "custody" of the child. Upon the child's maturing into the age where they would be trained, the players decide which path of training the child will follow. Do they loan their child to the Thieves guild? Do they homeschool 'em (raising them like crops...which I do have in the game. I just got rid of monster ranching. Players can still raise armies of undead or fashion constructs though). Adventuring players could then strike up agreements with more sedate roleplayers to raise children. Dad goes out and wages war while mommy stays home and teaches the kids how to be like daddy (or vice-versa of course).

Extra children could be raised just to run the family business so both mom and dad can go adventuring. A housefull of kids was how most feudal families made ends meet anyway. This means that players can generate extra kids...some enterprising players may raise harems and have their own homegrown armies. Since the NPC's are player-created, this system can be stretched to include things I haven't even thought of. And there are the grandparents...they can be used to teach adventuring skills that perhaps neither parent have. Four grandparents versus two parents equals some badass kids. Mind you all characters have the same limits on the number of skills they may know, but no limits on how well they know them...up to 100% that is.

So, when the players get ready to retire, they look at their surviving children (players who send junior off to serve in the Imperial Guard may not get junior back) and decide who will controll who. Back when only one child per family was the norm (and why was that when the system encouraged multiples???) who gets to control the "good" kid was an issue. But with a family of kids, all gaining different skills through the tasks they successfully complete (and the degree of success in completing them) as NPC's...the problem might now be that players only get to pick one of 'em.

Sweeeeeeeeeet.

And now, if a player reaches permadeath before having childen of their own, they can take control of a sibling. The idea seemed contrived when it was first suggested, but now it's starting to become a legitimate roleplay device. Imagine killing an evil mage just to run into his sister a month later in a dark alley.

Ohhhhh....I'm all a-tingle.

Development Note:

Oh, by the way, I'm going to start building a MUD based on this engine. No reason I can't begin to establish the game world, skill system, and roleplaying culture now. When I finish the graphical client, I'll be able to simply lay it on top of the existing MUD. Eventually, I'll have to break down and go with 3D graphics to see all my ideas come to life, but for now, this keeps the project affordable and playable while I continue to develop it.

WyldKarde wrote: Hmmm, I never woulda thought the "Legacy" feature whould have grown so much.

WyldKarde wrote: A protege will be much like my original childhood system where the player simply picks the skills his parent "in this case, benefactor" taught him.... I might discard the protege system now that the offspring system is getting fleshed out, but I don't know. In the meantime, the protege system does have the original "passing down of skills" formula so I'm keeping it for the time being.

Yeah...I'm struggling with the balance now. I'm making the protege system a lot like living at a guild and learning those guild skills gradually. It nice because it allows protege's to apply their own dynamic to the parent players skills. If you're a halfling theif who raises an elf child as your own, you'll have an elf who performs your skill sthey way an elf would perform it.

So far, I'm getting things like elves who sneak and backstab like halflings, and humans who craft like dwarves.

The Vashar crossbreeds are so bizzare they're like entirely new races. The first time I got backstabbed by a bite (which had somehow been envenomed with a toxin that induced blindness???) I liked it so much, I had to save the exact formula that created it.

So...balancing will take awhile, but I think I'll keep some of the unpredictablility in this little parenting mix.

Well, I like to keep interested parties informed on what I've been doing with this thing.

Since I've decided to make an early version of this engine operate around a MUD framework, I've been trying to see how much of the core gameplay would make the transition and what would have to wait for the 3d MMORPG version. After all, since the MUD was just a way to establish essentials like character development, in-game world building, and the Adversary system (the command strings that organize enemy NPC's into collectives), I really wasn't expecting to get all of my ideas into the MUD.

Oh yeah, if you don't know what the hell I'm talking about when I say MUD, just click here.

But anyway, it looks like I'll be able to get everything in there. Let me explain how...

The key revolves around a custom client made specifically for this particular game. This was really just supposed to be a rudimentary graphical MUD client that I would later use as a platform to create my 3D game but it turns out it works pretty darm well on it's own.

The client contains a large window for the "scroll" that every MUD (and most MMORPG's) have. This is where text appears, crucial to any game that promotes roleplay. Above this is a graphical representation of the characters information (just think character sheet and you're dead on) with tabs for additional party members if that player is grouped.

Next to the "core" info is a simple graphical representaion of the "room" the player is in. This is a first-person persective of a single wall of a room. If anyone remembers those old adventure games where the graphics consisted mostly of looking down corridors, then you've got the idea. Each room has four "facades", north, south, east, and west. So each room is represented with four different pictures of walls. Not exactly Worlds of Warcraft, but it keeps the focus on textual descriptions of rooms and objects.

Next to this window is a simple scrolling window with a listing of all characters and objects that are in the room. Below these windows, is another that contains the descriptions of the room and the "facing".

Below this is the control bar where simple commands are. There is also a blank row of buttons for custom macros (favorite spell, backstab/dirtkick combo...whatever).

So...that's the interface. Clicking on certain characters or obects inspects them and (when I draw the pictures) will cause a graphic of the object to appear in the "eyes" window and a description of it to appear in the window below.

So...down to getting all this lunacy into a MUD.

Combat:

Well combat is pretty easy. A graphic of the attacker and the opponent (nothing fancy, think old-school NES) facing each other will overlay both the room picture. With each "tick," increment of time equalling about six seconds of "real" time, the two graphics will cross to the other side of the screen, passing each other. There will be a simple graphic to indicate that an attack was made as they passed. All crucial information will appear in the "scroll" window, same as with any MUD.

That's it...nothing fancy.

This simplification is giving me ideas as to how I can translate this into a simpler dice system but I'll wait until it's tight before I talk about it here.

Warfare appears in the same way. Opposing "army" graphics charge at, and pass through, each other. "Attacks" come in the form of "tactics" and "rounds" are called "skirmishes" but it's pretty much the same thing.

Parentage:

This has been hot lately, so I'll talk agout it. It not really something that couldn't have been done in a MUD anyway, but since it hasn't (to my knowledge) been attempted before, I'll talk about it as if it's some great innovation.

Women will be the only ones capable of carrying a child. NPC husbands and wives are available to the player who can woo them. Mind you, all NPC's are related to actual active players, so it's not as easy as just going out and snatching a barmaid off the street. It could be, but it doesn't hurt to be in the good graces of the active player (especially if you need their permission...it might be a character they intend to use when they retire).

However, husbands do not automatically pass their name onto the child. If mommy's saving junior for her own use when she's too old to cave-crawl anymore, then he gets her name. Mom chooses who gets the kid. If she puts her family name as the child's family name, then the kid is hers. Daddy better be nice, or his family name will end with him. NPC's do what their spouse tells then though. This is why permission is important. A married NPC no longer obeys their parents, which means that training or skills could go unused and unimproved. Worse yet, a master craftsman might end up making "heirloom" weapons or items for other families.

Wait...so how to families combine to create larger families?

They don't. Combined families are called clans, the clan leader being the head of the most prominent family (a sticky subject, but basically it's dependant upon a combination of land ownership, standing armies, the "Legacy" rating of the family, and cold hard cash). Clans are beneficial because it's where you'll get your army if you ever need one. No one is going to pop out enough kids to man a garrison so your family is not going to give you an army. Besides. being pregant takes a female char out of comission for one week of real time. She can do anything but "adventure" as movement points and endurance are equal to that of "unplayable" NPC's.

Oh yeah...I put an automailer in the MUD code. Your character will continue acting without your guidance and you will receive emails regarding their progress. Weddings and births will happen without player input. The character won't do anything life-threatening though. If their home is destroyed in something like an orcish onslaught while they're offline, they will log in in their chosen "home capitol". This means that refugees from destroyed cities will rot in refugee camps where they essentially do nothing until their players log back on. Wait too long to log on and the refugee camp becomes a prison camp.

Fun fact, leaving a clan can really mess up families. The resources generated by the family that left go back to the family. This includes land, weapons, taxes, skills, and military service. So, if you're depending on the Whitewater name to supply your armies with fish and spears, you'd better be nice. Clans have to co-operate. Just like marriage, it's give-and take. An overbearing, power-mad player will find himself seriously hurting if he mismanages his friends.

So, that's what I've been working on. Mostly I've been building this interface and adapting a MOO language to trigger the graphics and sounds in it. Also, I've noticed that forge members who produce a product seem to be the ones who receive the most help from the community (who wants to work on a project that will never see the light of day?), so I'm producing a tradional pen-and-paper RPG of my own just so I can establish a track-record of finishing projects.

Content is done...I just need artwork and a nice layout.

But anyway...I appreciate everyone's help and I just like keeping everyone abreast of where this one is.

Good things I have to say: That is a great epiphany in MMORPG design as far as I'm concerned. I say go for it! I think it'll be a great, unique RPG.

Bad things I have to say: What exactly building from the outside in entails may be hard to figure out. Still, give it a try (and I'd love to help if you let me; email me if so).

Hey, help is always nice. Doin' this alone is fun, but it puts the completion date well out of this year, even with my simplifications.

As far as building it from the outside in, I was just answering the question of "why to MMORPG's fall so short of anything resembling traditional roleplay?" The best among them are pretty much just deathmatch games with leveling and fantasy themes thrown in.

I responded by saying that it was because of the fact that MMORPG's are too shortsighted in design. If the game is intended for thousands of players, why are you using a ruleset that revolves around eight players at best? Using tabletop RPG rulesets is the first step in making an unsuccessful MMORPG.

By designing a game that is written with the purpose of building a larger gaming experience from the contributions of a vast playerbase, I have a better chance in making an MMORPG that is deserving of the term RPG. This is because instead of picking a class and gettin' my fillin' of killin'. I have to actually immerse myself in the game in order to do anything. All of my actions effect the game around me. If I become a powerful warlord, my armies will effect everything from the environment to the local economies. If I become a wizard, fashioning enchanted weapons high atop my tower, I'll have adventurers beating a path to my door trying to buy, or perhaps take them from me.

MMORPG's allow the player to pretty much exist in a vaccum where they're playing a single-player video game with other players tossed in as window-dressing. This game allows that too actually, but it also allows players to create functioning communities where everyone works towards a larger, attainable goal. No more killing the goblin chieftan just to have him come back in the next reboot. No more completing a quest that some other guy will complete twenty minutes after you're done.

Honestly, I just decided to do this to clear up some of the problems that I saw inherrent in MMORPG's. Instead of condemming the genre and using their shortcomings to make myself feel superior as an old-school gamer, I decided to crystalize some of my ideas and see if I couldn't help the next generation of RPG's along.

So, whaddaya do? Maybe we can find a place for you. Of course, this is really just to prove a point in all honesty. I don't see this making anyone rich. Although...I'm really hoping it'll boost book sales so...it might make me a few bucks. Any artists want to be responsible for the "vision" of this little project...drop me a line.

I assure you, as an artist...I make a damn good writer.

PS: I need cover art for the actual novel this is based on. It seems most RPG artists are very busy. Even the mediocre ones are booked solid. I know of one artist who's damn good, but they dont seem to be picking up my hint that I'm trying to give them money in exchange for goods and services.

*cough* Ravien *cough*

*cough* Ravien *cough*

Hey, help is always nice. Doin' this alone is fun, but it puts the completion date well out of this year, even with my simplifications.

Ahh...as far as help goes...right now I need a decent sprite artist. I mean, the only reason I'm using old-fashioned NES sprites is because that's all I can do. Anything nicer than Mario is a stretch for me.

As far as world building goes, Rooms and areas can be constructed with a simple kit that constructs the four facades of a room by where walls and doors are. If you want anything fancier, you can place "appliances" (it's a theatre term for anything fake that's onstage, since object was taken, it's all I had) like skulls and torches to give some flavor to your areas.

However, the world builder is waiting for me to implement the core MUD code so that it recognizes rooms as four views of the same thing. Also, things like lighting and terrain penalties have to be implemented into the ruleset so that making a pitch-black dungeon is worthwhile. Depending on what you want to do, it may be a minute before you can jump in. I've pretty much been counting on only myself so my scheduling has been revolving around everything from teaching my classes to rewriting chapters for my editor (hateful harpy...damn her command of the english language!).

I understand Ravien. I'm jumpin' myself. Take your time to get what you need done. If you wanna throw some color on the spindlemen it's cool. I should be able to squeeze a few color pictures into the book...probably to seperate chapters, so there'll be splashes of color inside as well. Along with the cover and inside jacket.

Now...for what you're talking, with the names I guess they'd have to be part of a larger cultural theme. Maybe goblins have chieftans while humans have Lords or Kings. I suppose that much I should hardwire into the various races. I'll have to establish my core cultures from the books.

Ohhh, I get to be a Nadjir and my girlfriend gets to be a Jensei Master.

Okay...calm down. Make game first, then create badass uber-characters based upon overknowledge of game lore.

Muahahahahahaha!

P.S.:

The game time is six times faster than real time so:

game hour = ten minutes
game day = four hours
game week = one day + three hours
game month = four and a half days
game year = two months

so...

nine game months = six weeks

It's safe to assume that players won't put their feet up the moment the child is conceived (although death with kill the child at this point...resurrection will only save the mother). The game won't inform the player of the "added inventory" for one month of game time, and only during the last three months (two weeks) is the mother under such strain that they cannot do much more than putter around the house.

So, that's why female players are off their feet for two weeks if they're with child. Only endurance is affected though...anything she can do in some dank dungeon, they can do in their house. It's just unlikely that she'll make the journey to a dank dungeon with her severely reduced endurance.

Oh...that and her armor won't fit.

Awwww fiddlecrap...I never answer all the questions in a single sitting do I?

Food:

Food is a "herd" object. Basically, that means that multiple objects are created through specific skills. Instead of creating a single sword, a blacksmith with the proper skills can set up an armory that turns out dozens of weapons a day. The more exquisite weapons are harder to produce, but there's no reason an army can't be equipped with masterwork everything (it'll cost an arm and a leg, but it can happen).

A "crop" is produced by players or NPC's with the proper "farming" skills. Although meat can be raised like grain, let's stick with grain. Besides, the economy is based on bread, not beef. Each player needs to obtain 100% of their daily vitamins and minerals in order to maintain proper health from their food.

What...don't look at me like that.

I'm serious. Races require six immutable vitamins in order to get the proper nutrients from their food. Players will need to make sure that their races eat these "staples" so that thier hunger is balanced. Although you may eat your fill in a single sitting, players will become hungry at a faster rate if they haven't eaten foods that contain these vitamins. If they do, they won't be hungry again for another hour of real time. If they don't...they'll need to eat sooner, thus making them eat more throughout the day.

Hunger affects core stats, so gameplay will suffer if you ignore what your body needs.

There are also six vitamins that character's can eat in order to keep their performance up. They slow down the drain on vitals when skills are used. These vary. If your character casts a lot of spells, they'll need their perception and willpower up so they'll eat "brain food" This will cause them to cast powerful spells without suffering the usual drain on their willpower. Instead of casting spells at normal strength, they can put a little extra into it and not lose as much in the process.

This really just helps gameplay along. Food won't give you special powers or anything, it just allows you to do what you normally do for a longer amount of time, or at a greater level of exertion, than you normally do it.

Also, it's not that hard to meet those nutritional requirements. If you eat the food grown in your hometown, it will pretty much take care of you. Elves eat birds and fish so if you live in an elven village, you'll see a lot of that on your plate. If you find yourself in a dwarven village eating goat and potatoes, you'll be hungry again pretty quick (think chinese food).

There are also nutritional potions that you can drink, get your complete regiment of vitamins, and eat whatever you want with no consequences. These cocktails can be expensive, however, as they are tailored to each individual and will only supplement a single meal.

But this is all underneath the game. I doubt players will try to min/max their diet. Some may come to realize that certain foods seem to help them do certain things, but these mechanics aren't really meant to be played they're just there to form a basis for the agricultural civilization that the game takes place in. If food is the center of all commerce, government and economy, then I've got to somehow make it important.

Regarding food. Sounds cool. You've got some really neat little aspects in there, that make food interesting. Because of this, I don't agree that you should have food "underneath the game". You should let players know how food works, just like you let them know how everything else works. This allows players to choose where they want to focus, and if they don't want to worry about food, then they can decide to leave it "underneath".

Also, it would be useful to know how food works when rationing food for long campaigns (if you add food spoilage, that would be mega cool). Food was actually a very important part of managing any army on the move (and stationary too), so I'd love to see it implemented in ways that are representative of it's tremendous importance.

But how does a player "interact" with food? How do they know when they are hungry? How long do they need to be hungry for before suffering penalties? Are penalties linear or exponential? What about water? Do characters have to manually eat (like selecting an action) or can players choose to have their character eat automatically? If they don't get a particular nutrient, will they die? Or can they sustain themselves on bread alone?

Water is arguably more important than food, and I'm sure it wouldn't be too hard to implement a quality of water either, so you could distinguish between water from a swamp (which would need distilling, which could be a whole other skill, or tied in with alchemy or survival or whatever) and water from a fresh stream.

Implementing water and food is really cool. Especially if you focus on how hard they are to obtain. Fighting wars over arable land and water spots is really cool. I'm picturing hundreds of desert warriors fighting over a small oasis, and I'm liking what I see.

And then you could implement droughts and flooding. Sweet.

But your game is looking awesome. I'm only worried that it might be too much for a single person to pull off.

-Ben

Right. This is simply THE COOLEST COMPUTER GAME I HAVE EVER HEARD OF! Put it this way: I thought Half Life 2 was cool. Now it is not.

I think I'll just sit back and let the genius' work, but if I get any ideas (after I manage to do more than quickly skim over thread) I'll tell you. ;)

I'm doing some art at the moment for Crux, but I might be able to do some sprite work at some point.

Oh, and I'd LOVE to playtest it when you get to that point.

Kirk

I think food should stay under the covers. In fact, as much as possible should. The food system sounds easily simple enough that players will figure it out over time. Let them. That's just one more layer of game to the whole thing. The more of those kinds of puzzles you have, the better the game will be. I'd seriously suggest checking out A Tale in the Desert if you haven't yet.

Chris

On the subject of food, it should be rather simply implemented. Some of my favourite games are Roguelike games such as Ancient Domains of Mystery and such. They have food implemented in them and I find it rather annoying to have to force feed my character every five minutes. How about, if you have food or water, you consume it if you need it. Otherwise, you begin to starve or dehydrate or whatever. I just think that it gets to a point where realism isn't fun anymore.

Kirk

Well, my first suggestion earlier in this thread was to have hunger and thirst represented by "health bar" sorts of things, which would quickly and easily show how hungry or thirsty your character is. Underneath each bar, you could have a little toggle button which would turn auto-feeding/drinking on or off. This would allow players to just game without having to manually feed themselves (they could just stock up their backpacks now and then), and also allow them to manually feed themselves when rationing becomes important (longs trips, survival, etc).

Most food, IMHO, should only be available in ready-to-eat form from populated areas. Things like fruit and nuts could be found in forests, and wild game should be able to be hunted (finally! a reason to hunt animals! WOOT!), and perhaps some skills could be involved in finding raw materials to make food when trying to survive away from civilisation.

But I definately don't think food should be under the covers, for a few reasons:

-- if it has a mechanical benefit/penalty, then players who figure out the rules will have better characters than those who don't.
-- if food is just represented as "bread" and "water", the importance of different items of food or quality of water is lost, and players will pay very little attention to food at all, treating it just like a "necessary but boring feature". This wil diminish the usefulness of cooking skills dramatically.
-- if you leave the mechanics of out hidden, the far-reaching economics of food will appear to be foundationless. For example, right now you could have food play an important role on the micro-scale (character health and the health of your children/spouse, career choice), and the macro-scale (economics, wars, land rights). But if you take away the mechanics from the eyes of the players, you are taking away the entire reason that food is important on the micro-scale, and thus the macro-scale as well.
-- in terms of realistic characters and world, most people know what sorts of foods are healthy and what sorts they need to eat to ensure they get the best out of their food intake. Sure, they don't know the specifics like exaclty what nutrients are involved, but you can't code "life learning" into recognition of food, so nutrients would do just fine.


I think that if something about your game is cool, players should be told. All the things posted in this thread so far are awesome selling points (as if you hadn't noticed from the feedback so far), and thus you would be selling yourself short by not marketing your game with the best hooks available, namely, all the cool features you are implementing. If potential players see a feature they don't like, they may still play your game. But if they don't see anything that they like, then you don't stand a chance. But right now I think a huge number of players would like every feature you implement.

-Ben

Well, in terms of showing the food "mechanic", there will be little hints as to how well food nourishes you. So under hunger, you may appear sated if you've eaten a fell-balanced meal, but merely full if you've eaten enough. A player who eats foods that are representative of their race and culture will receive little bonuses whereas a player who doesn't won't receive those little bonuses. If you've ever played a MUD, eating a single meal for every hour of gameplay is pretty generous. Having to to it more frequently than that is pretty much just the norm.

This carries over to combat as well. All combatants attack simultaneously (something I can do more smoothly in a computer-run RPG than a pen-and-paper one...no takebacks when you see what the enemy has up his sleeve) so defensive and offensive stances are important. If you're not strong, but very fast, you can tie up a stronger, slower opponent with constant attacks, forcing them to defend and burning their initiative. Just attack them from a defensive stance to harrass them and keep 'em busy while your party finishes off their mage or whatever.

This of course can be countered by the slower character using skills that he's mastered, thus allowing him to perform complex maneuvers faster than normal. Also a character who's being constantly attacked can simply switch to a defensive stance of their own and then wait for the attack instead of initiating it. Pulling stunts like that shatters the harassing strategy because it opens the swift attacker up for a powerful attack every time they close with a weaker ineffectual one. The powerful attacker doesn't have to burn that much initiative because he's mastered his counterattack. Also, he automatically burns half the initiative he normally would because he's letting the attacker come to him. If he has the actual "counterattack" skill, then he's basically just swatting his attacker every time he comes around and not breaking a sweat to do it. The attacker's strategy is reversed and the swifter character will have exhausted themselves while taking some hard knocks in the process.

Then again, players could just pick a cool move, and use it every turn until the bad things die.

The point is that most of the features in this game are designed from the perspective of rewarding good roleplayers (or at least, attentive gamers) rather than punishing bad ones. Combat can be tactical and layered if you take the time to learn techniques, maneuvers and stances. Or if you'd rather work on something else, you can just get real strong, get a huge sword, and hack away at the scenery.

God help you if you run across a player with techniques though...

Food, religion, government, military...they all work the same way. While a player may not know the recommended daily serving of grain for his particular race, he'll notice that certain foods fill him up faster and keep him full longer. He'll carry food from home on long journeys (dry rations are have high concentrations of just about every nutrient on the game) or learn "survival" and get the most out of what's available. You can also just condition your body to eat just about anything (Rangers, Barbarians) or take the lazy way out and pick "iron gut" at creation. Take a slight blow to your overall fitness (your physical stats are slightly lower than normal for your race) for the ability to eat anything that won't kill you outright. It might seem pointless, but it also gives total immunity to some of the weaker poisons in the game.

So, if you roleplay your character well, you won't really get too hung up on any one mechanic. From the player's perspective, they're just using what works for them. A character that doesn't focus on wielding the biggest and sharpest killing implement in the game will probably focus on techniques that make more modest weapons more deadly. This will change their combat style as they'll have to focus on the technique versus their weapon. Other players are probably more comfortable switching weapons on the fly, and they can do that if that's how they prefer to play.

So, the food is really just another underlying mechanic. If you're a city planner and your city is built near water, your NPC "farmers" are going for the food source that makes the most sense. In all honesty, things at this level are based on money so you can expect to see whatever grain earns them the most money. If you're a lord, you probably don't care if your people are getting a balanced diet. The NPC's operate at a level below that of heroes, so they don't see any bonuses or penalties. The same way that if you're not an athlete, you're not "carb-loading", you're just eating bread.

Not to say that dwarves won't eat fish, they'd just season them with spices and herbs that satisfy their nutrient requirements. Diet isn't restrictive for growth, as long as there's enough land to support the community that is. Orcs can learn to fish and elves could raise cattle. The resultant dishes would just be bizzare to those races that eat those foods normally and aren't used to seeing them all tarted up to meet the tastes of other cultures.

Think Sushi vs Chicken Fried Catfish.

I guess all I'm saying is, for all the work I'm putting into this particular aspect of the game, I don't expect it to become a selling point. In fact, I hope it goes ignored so that the farmers can have something to do when they're trying to make the perfect "rations" package for half-elf illusionists who cast a lot of summoning spells. This is something that can be ignored, or it can be played up. It depends on how the player plays. Most of the game's features are like that (I hope).

Hmmm...so other things about the food engine.

Preparing food is no different than making a sword, it's just combine raw materials and applying skills to them. The higher the cooking skill, the more ingedients can be added to a single dish. So if you just know enough to survive, your ingedients are fire and meat. If you're a master chef, you can add six ingredients to make a single dish and combine three dishes to make a single meal. You can also transform those dishes into whatever form you want, the same way that eggs, flour and butter can be made into either a loaf of bread, or a cake. This way, the same ingredients can be made into different things.

I'm betting on an Iron Chef Tournament within a month of launch.

So...that's food. Next time, we talk about the skills. Thank god my buddy Joe finally surfaced. He's way more excitable about game mechanics than I am. I'm more story and theme. He's the guy who really has a hard-on for probablilties and algorithims. He's also trained a squad of rabid gamers to savagely playtest anything that comes within their territory.

It's a damn shame what they did to that dog.

Ravien wrote: -- if it has a mechanical benefit/penalty, then players who figure out the rules will have better characters than those who don't.

Ravien wrote: -- if you leave the mechanics of out hidden, the far-reaching economics of food will appear to be foundationless. For example, right now you could have food play an important role on the micro-scale (character health and the health of your children/spouse, career choice), and the macro-scale (economics, wars, land rights). But if you take away the mechanics from the eyes of the players, you are taking away the entire reason that food is important on the micro-scale, and thus the macro-scale as well.

Ravien wrote: -- in terms of realistic characters and world, most people know what sorts of foods are healthy and what sorts they need to eat to ensure they get the best out of their food intake. Sure, they don't know the specifics like exaclty what nutrients are involved, but you can't code "life learning" into recognition of food, so nutrients would do just fine.

Wow, I think it's cool that game features I considered the least interesting in the game end up being the ones most hotly debated. Seeing what was out there, I thought the combat and reward system would be everyone's hot button. I would never have put my money on families and food.

Basically, I just want to reiterate that food works the same as any other skill. The more important it is to you, the more information you'll have about it in-game. Farmers will know out-of-hand what races need what nutrients and so will many cooks. They'll know how to combine different foods, or where to plant certain crops because they'll need to know. Players who take a backseat to their food strategy (and I'm fairly certain most will) will only know what they like, and how much it satisfies. I guess my point is that if you want food to be a major part of your gaming experience, it will be. If you don't, then you'll just set one of those blank macro buttons under your core commands to "autoeat" and try to keep a full canteen and plenty of vittles on hand.

Water is also important in this. In fact, water was the core program for the current food system. Water comes in various "purities" and different races need a certain amount per day. Skilled chefs can also make drinks which satisfy thirst and nutrient requirements. Only pure water is considered as water, however. Juices and such are considered to be "impure" for thirst requirements which just means that it'll quench your thirst temporarily, but not for as long as water will. Drinking actual "impure" water, like seawater or swamp muck (unless you're a race that can drink that stuff) does any number of things, from subtracting nutrients from your body, to flat out poisoning you. Nutrient loss also does fun things like causing blindness, uncontrollable vomiting, muscle spasms (which take the place of attack rounds) and HP loss leading to eventual death.

Starvation is a slow and horrible process in the game. While it's not neccesary to be a master chef, at least fix yourself a sandwich from time to time.

But, enough on food. This next one was to be about the game's skill system which is an area where I actually need some help. Of course, this could still be about food if someone out there is dying to be an orcish sous chef and wants to make sure the requisite skills make it into the game.

Actually, that's so damn cool, I might do it anyway.

This skill system is based on certain schools of knowledge and the skills that make one able to gain proficciency in those schools of knowledge. All skills fall under categories called "Talents". I'll explain:

Fencing - The art of swordplay focusing on finesse and agility rather than power. The core principle of fencing is speed and most fencing weapons accentuate swift, gracefull movements rather than violent and forcefull ones.


Fencing Skills:

Parry - Deflecting an opponents attack, lowering it's chance to hit. Has a higher success rate than a block, but a successfully parried blow can still hit it's mark if the initial chance to hit is high eneough. Each successive level of Parry lowers the attackers chance to hit by a greater percentage.

Riposte - An immediate counterattack following a failed attack.

En Guarde - The ability to assume a defensive stance immediately following an offensive posture, reducing the opprotunity for counterattack.

Main Gauche - The ability to use an off-hand weapon for defensive purposes only (parrying), taking no penalty when attacking with the main hand weapon.



So skills are broken down categorically. This means that certain skills, depending upon where they appear in signifigance within a certain Guild's skillset, may be easier to obtain elsewhere. A player can learn to set traps from rogues, who need to know such things, or from rangers, who set snares for hunting. A rogues trap will be different from a ranger's snare, but either could get the job done if all you're trying to do is hurt people.

The difference is rogues don't usually set traps, they disarm them. Setting traps would be an advanced rogue skill as opposed to learning it from a ranger. Rangers need to know how to set traps as part of their survival training so it would be one of the first things you'd learn from them. On the other hand, if you wanted to learn how to disarm a snare or a trap, you'd proabably go to a rogue first. Rangers don't disarm snares, they just avoid them. Disassembling someone's snare is the same as taking food out of their mouth to a ranger, so they might not teach that at all.

Conversely, in order to recognize a ranger's snare in the first place, you'd need quite a few levels of "camoflauge". Rangers automatically apply their hide skill to any traps they set in the wild and their hide skill is further offset by their camoflague skill (if they have the time to spare to use the camo in the first place). Thieves do the same, but their element is the city. If you want to booby-trap a treasure chest, get a rogue...if you want to booby-trap a cave, get a ranger. Rogues and rangers working in concert can set traps that set off other traps, creating anything from an alarm to a self-destruct sequence.

So this is a small glimpse into the skill system. Basically, I need more skills (most of mine are combat, magic, and a few tradeskills) and more "Talents". A glut of skills or multiple versions of the same ones are fine. I'll clean it up in post-production.

Wow, I think it's cool that game features I considered the least interesting in the game end up being the ones most hotly debated. Seeing what was out there, I thought the combat and reward system would be everyone's hot button. I would never have put my money on families and food.

Hey, if you were a builder, _you_ would know how to break in...

Chris

Well, I've actually been working on craft skills which allow players to create "rooms" in game. Walls have multiple features from the simple (doors) to hidden rooms, transdimensional portals, and walls that can't be phased through by players who learn how to do it. Floors and ceilings are actually just decorative, but traps can be placed there.

Yeah, theives would make good builders because their own trap skill and lockpicking skill gets applied to whatever they create. A home built by a master thief would be a challenge to every other thief in the game. Most of the thunder has been applied to combat skills and even the crafting skills are applied largely to weaponsmithing but some of the basics, like home building, are already in place. They just need to be more fleshed out.

Fun fact: I found out you can set traps to only go off when they're disarmed. These reverse-engineered traps are good for catching overconfident theives. If you make the trap extrememly easy to find, then make it extremely hard to disarm and make the "tampering" penalty far higher than just letting the trap go off normally, you can make a darned dirty little trap. There's always the chance a equally skilled thief will disarm it despite the difficulty imbalance, but younger thieves who judge the dificulty in disarming it by the difficulty in finding it will fall for it nearly every time.

Sorry, this open engine sometimes surprises me. I was gonna flag it as a bug, but since it's something you have to be a master saboteur to do, I think I'll leave it.

So yeah...as far as skills go, there's a lot of work to do regarding crafts. I know how I'd like to use musical skills. Lemme know if this one hits you guys or if it's back to the drawing board.

Music:

Characters with this Talent will know how to add an in-game soundtrack to specfic areas. Musicians in a throne room will cause the kings personal "anthem" to be played for everyone who enters. A musician in your party will cause "mood" music to be played as you adventure. The "depth" of the music will rise from a single guitar plucking out a tune to complex harmonies and melodies depending upon how many party members know this skill.

Alternatively, if there's no music, all that will be played are atmospheric noises which were ripped off from meditation tapes by me and converted to wave files. Who's gonna sue me?

"Those are my ocean sounds you thieving bastard!!!!"

"Unless you're God...bite me."

The best part of this is that if the game sucks, it'll be the best screen saver in the history of screen savers.

The hard part about pulling off the actual music is that I'll have to write (or have written) several midi files that can be overlaid to create a unified harmonic sound. With twelve or so instruments, each playing a line of a four-part harmony, of over twenty different songs (combat, caverns, dungeons battle, throne rooms, guild songs...etc.), I've got um...a lot of musical possibilities even using pre-written music.

I know music well enough to put that together, but writing all those songs myself...

sigh

...well, let me get to work. I've gotta dust off the old Roland and plug it into my computer.

Well, the music engine seems to be working nicely. I was able to plug two songs into the game. "I'm a yankee doodle dandy", and "America the beautiful." I'm not really going to use them in the game, but I wanted to try a little experiment.

The two songs I used can easily be placed on top of each other to create a unified sound (grab a buddy and hum 'em together if you don't beleive me). Using a simple sound mixer, I seperated the two songs into four-part harmonies. I also used twelve different instruments playing each "part" (tenor, bass, soprano, alto) for each song. As I'd hoped, every combination of instrument created music that ranged from merely tolerable to strikingly beautiful. I even threw in a "choir" instrument to see if it would make any difference how bizzare the instruments were.

Using a "mood" program to change tempo in different places, I was able to make the same songs seem completely different. This was something I took from Star Wars. Taking the imperial theme and playing it slowly on a harp makes a tune that evokes completely different emotions than one normally feels listening to the famous Darth Vader theme.

So yeah...looks like music'll work as a learnable skill. Who'd have thought, picking party members based on what instrument they play?


Garell, Warrior Chief: "Okay, you're great at surgery, you can heal burns, which we need if we're gonna take on this dragon, and you know your way around a warhammer. Looks like we're all set to go."

Lothar, Archer/Bard: "Uhh boss, you're forgeting something?"

Garell, Warrior Chief: "Oh yeah, we need a lute player to really fill out our ensemble. Lothar's banjo just isn't gonna cut it inside defiled churches and temples of unspeakable evil. We need the mournful melodies that only a lute can give us."

Jophin, Hopeful Adventurer: "Aww damn, I only have a few levels in harmonica."

Garell, Warrior Chief: "Ohhhh, that's too bad. You know, I don't think we can use you at this time, but we'll keep your resume on file."



Wow, I am the worst thing to ever happen to computer role-playing games.

I guess I'm not grokking the significance of music. If it turns out to be too mechanistic it'll seem dumb. If not, then what? I'd like to see a mystery behind music too -- something like diet that has to be figured out. It could even be set up so that only players with characters that have sufficient in-game skills can take advantage, but still have to be figured out by the players.

One thing, I'd like to see more player skill involved in such things. Can players write music and import it to the game? And then sell it in the game? I'd be more excited by that kind of development. Obviously, this notion applies equally to graphic elements. It might be one way to get the player base to do some of your content development, too.

Wow. what if various musical elements (chords, notes, progressions, instrument/vocal combinations, etc) had different "magical" base effects and the players had to combine them in such a way that desirable combination-effects were generated by their work. It would be a whole system of experimentation and knowledge development. The "spells" that were generated could then be sold or shared and it would be natural for a bardic (or whatever) guild to form. If I had the music theory background...

Chris

Actually, I've been playing with the idea of weaving music and magic together. However, for a program that allowed players to write their own music in-game, I'd need a program of near unheard-of power and flexibility. So far I'm allowing for pre-written songs to be blended into each other in a number of different ways, but for written music made by the players...

Actually, I could just write a simple music program where all the notes are pre-programmed and let the players arrange them how they want. It's tempting now that I see it's possible, but it would definately be a "down the road" sort of thing. Right now, music is just a colorful addition to the game. It does impact the game experience but not actual gameplay. Right now, learning an instrument is essentialy no more than telling the computer how you'd like it to play the soundtrack for you, or how you'd like it played for others.

Then again, bards were never my thing. I'm not intimately familliar with how music and magic work together (although a certain clerical order casts spells through hymns instead of prayers). Mathematically, musical skill does effect a bard's spells, but not to the point where a trained ear could hear the difference (because there is none). I've got bardic magic, and I've even got a "make your own spell" thing going, but it'll be awhile before I can blend the two to the point where players can write their own bardic songs that are tailored for a specific magical result, and sound decent to boot.

I'm not sure what you mean by mechanical, but here's how the music selection works. First off, I'm going to describe music in fairly technical terms. I almost always do that. Since I'm not giving numeric examples through dice rolls or other familiar RPG numerology, I tend to simply explain how it works, then let the reader decide how cool it will be.

Now, there will be multiple songs for a given area...let's say a pastoral field in this instance. These multiple songs will be written in such a way that they can be played one on top of the other and maintain an audio cohesion. This just means that the sounds coming out of your speakers will still sound like music instead of just noise. DJ's do it alla time.

Now, parties are limited to four characters. This means four-part harmony if all four know music. With several songs to pick from, all of which sound decent when combined with any other song, players can get several different sounds out of a single party. When you add different instruments into the mix, the possibilities are impressive.

Now this is something else that isn't really "played". I'll work on a "compose" skill that'll allow for in-game written music, but that's not something I expect to see up and running at launch. In fact, if I manage to get it up and running at launch, that means that I probably forgot to do something important. Even so, music is a tertiary priority. Much like graphics, it's something that can be expanded upon later. I'm handling that one with kid gloves, because how does one roleplay that? A player who has a tin ear can't be expected to make a decent song no matter what his character sheet says.

Maybe I'll preprogram chords as well as just notes. That should help a little.

Now, the system of customized objects you described is in effect for pretty much everything else. Walls can be designed by "builders". Building a wall out of a certain stone not only determines what properties it has, but also what colors it can be. Players can play with shading and anti-aliasing to get the overall effect they want. A swordmaker follows a pre-set mold when making his swords. A scimitar will always look like a scimitar, but the colors used are up to the swordsmith. A paper-doll system changes how the weapon looks when it's used in-game. So your pretty blue sword will still be blue during the attack animation.

Hmmm, all-in-all, I'm intrigued at where this could go. I'm holding characters to sixty skills, so picking important skills is important as there's no way to get all off the skills available (or even all of the skills in your own guild). I'd like for music to be important (even if it's just subtly important, like with cooking) so any other ideas, throw 'em at me.

Concerning music, I'll be honest. Doesn't really float my boat. Unfortunately, whilst I do have an alternative suggestion, I don't really think it's necessarily better.

Alternative: Skill opens up sound effects and mixing options for an in-built sound editor/synthesizer. This also relies on player skill to create good sounding shit. Created music can then be sold to other players in-game, and can be paid for on a per-use basis at a price agreed upon by both. For example, Player A has high music skill, and thus can create quite a few very nice sounding pieces using the in-game editor. They save a song called Song A, and they approach a local lord to sell it to them. The local lord asks to hear a demo, so Player A plays Song A for a bit and the lord decides he likes it, and asks how much Player A wants for it. Player A says "5gp", and the lord agrees (this would have to occur in a shared dialogue box). The file is then transfered to the list of songs that the lord has available, and the price is coded with it. Now, everytime the lord plays the song, Player A gets 5gp and the lord loses 5gp. Alternatively, the lord could offer Player A 500gp to be able to play it for free as much as he wants, or 5000gp to own the song outright, removing it from Player A's list of songs he can sell.

I like this alternative the most, because it is the most flexible and would interest me as a player the most, rewarding both character skill and my skill as a player. It also allows other players to have as part of their inventory a list of songs they have purchased and can play at any time. My only problem with this is the implied method of delivery, namely the "mp3" style of music, which doesn't mesh very well with the fantasy era of the game. However, this "unrealism" isn't really all that bad when you consider that realistically, no-one hears soundtracks when they do stuff or walk into a different area.

As an extra bonus, perhaps players with maximum music skill could import sound effects from their own library to be used in the game, giving a real benefit of maxing out your music skill, by opening up unlimited potential for sounds.


But like I said, these are just things that I would have thought of, which may not be better than what you have. But the idea of layering different predefined songs doesn't do it for me.

And I've never been a fan of musical magic. To me, it just seems... for lack of a better word.... very, very gay. With modern heavy music, perhaps the idea has merit, but not with lutes and flutes and harps. Also, it would be incredibly hard to implement.


Now, on to buildings. I'd suggest that instead of builders building "walls", that they instead build predefined houses. This would make being a builder far easier and less time consuming, and I don't think the ability to make a specific shaped house will really add that much to the game. Their skill could simply be used to determine security, market value, and resistance to natural disasters (which would probably affect the security measure). Maybe let them choose the colour... but that should be something which can be changed by the owners at any time. I personally would find building a house wall by wall tedious and not really necessary for the focus of the game. So my suggestion, is that whilst it is tempting to make this game "absolutely everything to everyone", trying to do so will only end in tears. Stuff like that can be added later, if at all.

Same goes for the colour of a sword. It might have novelty value, but damn it would be ugly (to me) picking up yet another purple and red greatsword. For some reason, swords look more menacing in steel, gold, and leather than in blue and yellow. If you're really attached to the idea though, then go for it. But the coding effort doesn't seem justified by the gain.

-Ben

Well, it's good to get this music thing reigned in a bit.

I should probably start off by saying that I'm no artist, nor any great composer so getting a skilled either one of those would allow me to dump this on them. But, as long as I'm doin' it, I have to stay within my limits. Also, these "asthetic" devices are further on down the line and they're under fairly tight control. You only get to "color" your crafted objects insomuch as you get to choose the material they're made out of. If you make a sword out of steel, it'l be flat gray, if you make it out of gold, it'll be gold. I'm not opening up the game to bubblegum pink plate mail any more than I am to characters named LordGygaxx174. The game doesn't support color "palettes" yet, just prerendered pictures that combine to form a complete image (elf+armor+sword=elven warrior).

Since it'll be fairly basic out the gate, much of this is academic.

I'm torn with music, but it does have a functionality in the game. Playing certain songs will produce certain results. Until I get a sound mixer that lets players make their own music (which is probably out of my programming capabilities for the time being), I have pre-written songs that musical characters can play in certain situations. A battle hymn gives, not only music during combat sequences, but it also helps endurance, or increases damage, or aids accuracy. A travelling tune reduces the cost in endurance that long and exhausting journey takes out of you.

I'm not certain how far I'll define music. As a pure roleplaying device, it's easy and I've got some help in the programming department so that the 3D absurdly graphical MMORPG will allow for skills that are just there for pretty's sake. You could "paint" or "sculpt" with the 3D engine. Those maniacs decided to cell-shade everything just to show they could (kinda cool until my eyes started to bleed).

With the MUD, everything's got to "do" something. Otherwise, you could roleplay skills that weren't game-essential and to hell with actually "learning" it. I think allowing for songs to give mild bonuses is sufficient. At the very least, it justifies taking it as a skill. I also like the fact that it makes music as optional as every other skill. It's a nice skill, but it's no "must have".

I try to ensure that there are no "essential" skills. There's about a dozen ways to get the same results. If you wanna roll 3 dice on attack (look ma, I'm streamlining it!), then you can get those 3 dice about a dozen ways. Whether it's by learning the weaknesses of your enemy, learning the limits of the weapon you're using, or simply by practicing the movements of the attacks rather than learning how to use the weapons themselves (there's one martial art that focuses on the "motion" of certain attacks, making the weapon used, if any, irrelevant). Mathematically, it's all the same, trying to roll 3 dice on attack. To a roleplayer, however, it's all about learning those skills that define your character and make them more effective.

Hmmm, there are times when I have to draw clear lines of distinction from this "engine" which is a way of playing my game. And the game itself. There are things this engine can do that I don't particularly need it to do for my game, but which may be useful in other games. I'm kinda rambling here, but I'm starting to wonder if it wouldn't be a good idea to start a second thread dealing just with the game and keep this limited to the way I translate the role-playing experience into an electronic medium. I like the "this is cool, this system should be able to do this", but there are many things I don't particularly need it do to.

For example, the engine can easily create multiple planets or "dimensions", each governed by different rules. There are probably games that could benefit from this but since mine isn't one, I haven't brought it up until now.

Perhaps I'll do it once I've finished grinding my cold, soulless equations down into dice. Now that the games design has been fleshed out to accomodate numerous players (in fact, it may be too big), I can now make it more intimate.

Funny how it's easier to edit than add. It took me over a year to get this thing on the computer, and now that it's starting to look like something, it takes me just over a month to get the entire monster compacted into pen-and-paper.

Life is both funny and cruel that way.

I'm changing the name of the actual RPG that's to be run on this system as the title of the book is changing as well.

The title of the book is changing to "Heralds of the Dying Age". I've got something in mind for "Armageddon Gospel" so don't think I'm letting that cool title go to waste. I figure I'll write a story that's appropriately controversial since everyone seems to think that's what the title suggests.

I was hoping for a few suggestions as to what the name of the game should be since the book changed as well. I was thinking "Heralds of the..." so that it was immediately recognizable as an offshoot of the book. This fits nicely as the main characters in the book are "Heralds" or messengers to the world at large that their civilization is nearing collapse. This paralells nicely as player-characters are "messengers" of a sort as well. They weave, through their actions, a story that involves every person who'se life they've touched.

But...what to call the game?

Ahhh, I loathe putting up back-to-back posts, but in case no one's noticed. I use this for my own personal notepad regarding ideas that are "questionable" for the game. Hopefully the Forge will burn away the weak ones and leave me to focus on getting this done.

Well, the game's got a title now. Since it occurs after the "event" that the book leads up to, it's called "Advent of the Dying Age".

So:

Book = Heralds of the Dying Age
Game = Advent of the Dying Age

I've got something in mind for A.G. and it's sweet. Too bad I can't work on it as hard as I'd like right now.

The MUD still exists as a way of tightening the core ruleset. That way, I can test weapons and skills in the MUD wthout "bugging" the MMORPG. The system going into the MMORPG is just an enhanced version of the MUD. Example.

Music manipulation is so easy in the MMORPG that I think I may have wasted everyone's time debating how I should do it. Although, the idea of selling prewritten songs hadn't been considered and I'll thank you for suggesting it Chris and Ravien. It's cruelly simple, just learn the instrument and write the music. It's a no-fail skill so there's no chance of failure but progressive levels in "music" allows for more complex chords to be played. Players can "build" music out of prewritten chords or "write" it from their own skill.

So, that takes care of music...I think invention was mentioned as something that would be cool.

The crafting system is something of an "invention" system. Basically, it allows players to create objects that do not presently exist and infuse those objects with skills. Weapons fall under very, very vague descriptions.

For example, weapons are One-handed short, one-handed long, two-handed one point, two handed two points, one handed ranged, two handed ranged, and exotic. They are subclassified as swords and such, but the game recognizes them by mass alone.

So making a one-handed small weapon could be a dagger or a hammer, or some bizzare combination. Exotic can be anything you want...fire ring, bloodsucking vampiric cape, or any object that directly attacks enemies. It can also fit the other classifications but do so uniquely. A sword can be taught a specific skill, thus giving the character that skill while being wielded. Just by being creative, players can "invent". I'm not sure if you wanted something more "creating new technology", but you gotta admit, this is a pretty good start huh?

Besides, I don't want airships and gun v. sword battles. My Final Fantasy Rip-off is gonna happen further along, I can't jump ahead of schedule. That's where we'll get summonded beings from beyond the realm of nightmare fighting giant robots powered by crystals containing the very life force of the planet itself.

Mmmmmm, I love the smell of copyright infringement in the morning.

Advent of the Dying Age huh? Cool. ADA. It works.

By invention, I was referring to the ability for someone, with a high enough skill, to invent say, a steam engine, or a new type of siege weapon. That way your world could really evolve. But it's your game, and it's gonna be mad anyways.

But it looks like you've got most things under control. And just so you know, I do follow this thread. I only reply when I think I can add something.

-Ben

WyldKarde wrote: Also, these "asthetic" devices are further on down the line and they're under fairly tight control. You only get to "color" your crafted objects insomuch as you get to choose the material they're made out of. If you make a sword out of steel, it'l be flat gray, if you make it out of gold, it'll be gold. I'm not opening up the game to bubblegum pink plate mail any more than I am to characters named LordGygaxx174. The game doesn't support color "palettes" yet, just prerendered pictures that combine to form a complete image (elf+armor+sword=elven warrior).

Hey, color could be a whole subcomponent! Pigments to color different kinds of materials can be concocted from raw ingredients using different treatments. (e.g. Iron takes many forms and does pretty wildly different things to final glazed ceramic products in a kiln depending on the firing process employed.) Tossing reality out the door for a second, you could make dingy pigments easy while requiring more specialized ingredients, equipment, and processes for more vivid hues. Then, color would be a commodity in the game world because color is an automatic sign of wealth or skill. "I am El-Bouran -- Chromatimancer of the Second Circle..." (OK, maybe I'm getting carried away, but damn, it's a cool idea.)

Chris

Wow...I like the "painter" idea. I'd been trying to encourage players to contribute to the game's asthetic and that one's so obvious that I'm kickin' myself again for not thinking of it.

I suppose it could be done with the MUD, but I'm about done with the client on that one and adding a painter is something I probably won't do. Mostly it's just because it'll be infinetly easier to do it with the 3D powerhouse of an engine I'm using. As far as visual effects go, the engine almost does it itself (also, I don't trust myself as an artist to come up with anything but the simplest visuals). The core system of the MUD is something I have to do because the engine I'm using is pretty much for a first-person shooter. I have to adapt those mechanics to an RPG and for that, I need the usual things that go into an RPG already.

The beautiful thing is, that I've got all the bells and whistles of the "Tribes" engine for graphics. I just need to design a working RPG to power them. That's also why I decided to make a MUD first. Get the basics down, then get jiggy with it. Since there's no plasma blasters going off every two seconds, the graphics can process at a pretty decent clip. Two guys swinging swords runs a lot faster than the particle effects from a dozen rockets hitting some poor shmo all at once. I've got more power than I need visually, and that's always a good thing.

For "Painting", I already had ways players could "color" things they'd created. I didn't have ways they could obtain those pigments though. I also didn't have colors having any sort of signifigance. If you were a Vashar, your civic pride wouldn't rise at seeing gold and white against a field of scarlet. Now I'll start working these color schemes into the game. This way, players could be painters, making art and selling it, but they can also be generals designing their own military banner or kings creating national flags.

Since Rangers are skilled at getting natural ingredients from animals (you can hunt slimes for the nucleus inside them as well as hunting for meat), It's simple enough to know how to obtain pigments from flowers. As always, there's magic for the easy way to explain why anything is in a game so that one's a given.

I like your idea for seige engines. orginally, I had seige engines as the product of only certain civilizations (those who'd developed fortifications and thus needed a way to breach the defenses of their enemies). But, I don't suppose it would be too difficult to...adjust...a few....there!

Invention:

This talent allows players to create objects that perform certain tasks. The complexity of the task and the skill of the inventor will determine the size of the object. Objects created can perform any magical or technical task that the inventor knows how to do (or has the spell scroll or tech plans for). A device that hurls stones at brick walls will have a size relevant to the efficiency with which it performs this task and to the skill of the inventor. A skilled inventor could make a catapult small enough to be carted by a single horse, whereas an inventor with less efficiency (or a catapult with more power) would be larger and harder to transport.

Now, invented objects are subject to the same laws as anything else. A catapult will not create it's own projecttiles (unless it's magical and has been built with the proper spell to do so) and any materials used for the invented machine to work must be restored to the objects "inventory". A surgey machine that automatically heals certain wounds must be replenished with potions. Magical inventions must be replienished with whatever magical material powers their spells. Simpler devices might not need fuel.

Things can also be invented that simply replinish the fuel source of other things. The way a water wheel will gather force from a flowing stream and apply it to the "crank" of a millstone. Anything is possible if the inventor merely has enough imagination.

Whew....is that what you were lookin' for Ravien?

Now, this can really only see full beauty in 3D MMORPG form. A MUD description and static picture is nice, but it's so much cooler to make the thing and see it work.

Next time, I'll be discussing the "Surgery" mechanic. In case you wanted to have your characters suffer actual wounds instead of just losing hit points, you're gonna want your pen and notebook out for this one.

WyldKarde wrote: The core system of the MUD is something I have to do because the engine I'm using is pretty much for a first-person shooter. I have to adapt those mechanics to an RPG and for that, I need the usual things that go into an RPG already.

The beautiful thing is, that I've got all the bells and whistles of the "Tribes" engine for graphics.

If you were a Vashar, your civic pride wouldn't rise at seeing gold and white against a field of scarlet. Now I'll start working these color schemes into the game. This way, players could be painters, making art and selling it, but they can also be generals designing their own military banner or kings creating national flags.

Since Rangers are skilled at getting natural ingredients from animals (you can hunt slimes for the nucleus inside them as well as hunting for meat), It's simple enough to know how to obtain pigments from flowers.

Once you have added things like color and invention, that leaves a whole nother option open just asking to be implemented. Heraldry. Heraldry is actually not as complex as you might think. Look on-line or go down to your local library and you can find a catalog of meanings and pieces of heraldric blazons. And only people of a certain rank could have one, and everyone's was unique. Have a clerk in the major cities who can (For a price) grant characters with the right credentials (probably gained from the King) a their own heraldry. There are a number of programs you could take a look at that allow you to design your own. Then the player would have a reusable "item" representing their blazon. They could "lend: it to a painter or weaver for a single job to make them banners or armor bareing their blazon. Also using your mechanic for children, children could inherit a blazon containing a mix of both of their parents' (if they had them). I don't know if it would interest you but I think it could be an extremely cool mechanic that players would jump all over.

Well, as far as my engine goes, it's right here, if you wanna read up on it. Since it's just the graphics, don't expect a lot of documentation on what it can do for an MMORPG because honestly, it can't. You're gonna have to make your own MMORPG with that one, but with my astounding lack of anything resembling artistic talent, it really takes care of my personal weaknesses for me. From what I read, it's everything that was in Tribes, from the physics engine to the sound. It's also got a few bells and whistles that weren't in the original game like volumetric fog and a multiplayer limit that exceeds 128 simultaneous players.

Honestly, you can do just about anything with it.

I'm not sure if you consider players spending lots of time on their clothing to be a good thing or a bad thing, but yeah, it's there. Crafting as a whole is time-comsuming. Whether you're building a house, or a sword. I want to make sure that the skills you put towards making other things are well realized. "Weaving" is a way to make interesting clothing and blacsmiths can heat metals and glaze them in such a way to effect color changes.

There are special colors. By default, magical colors are flat and unresponsive to lighting effects. In short, my computer art guy assures me they'll end up uglier than hell when compared to natural 3 dimensional colors. I dunno, but I hear that natural colors will just look better. I'm not an artist (I feel obligated to say that when talking art) so don't hold me to this one. He's doing something to "magical" colors that make 'em a little less purty than real ones.

Also, I'm not familiar with the history of pigments, flying on notes with this one too, but certain natural sources for pigments are very hard to get. Dyes especially are obtained from the innards of extremely dangerous or hard to obtain creatures. I assume a dye trade will start up between interested parties on it's own. Certain things I don't much have to push too hard. I know golden and silver dye comes from two of the toughest characters in the game (they're also holy, making obtaining dye from their organs an act of extreme evil). The difficulty in obtaining those dyes and the rarity of their source would automatically establish a dye trade. I can't control it myself but the game is designed so that any player who's interested could.

Just for fun, color enhances magic. This isn't new actually, just undicussed. Mages have long had a skill called "focusing" where they could "charge" spells by passing them through certain materials. A staff made of bone would enhance any necromany spells focused through it. Simply holding a crystal to a wounded man's flesh while casting the spell increases the power of the healing magic.

Items that absorb certain forms of magic or specific spells will store some of that spell power. This is how certain magical items are created "naturally". The armor of dead mages is usually packed with old spells that have passed through the mage wearing it. This is an example of the "magic cycle" I mentioned waaaaaaaay back in another post. I just decided to bring it up because colors were already a part of that cycle...they just happened on their own. Objects would change colors as they became infused with magic.

Actually, the heraldry feature is an aspect of certain cultures, but not all. Certain cultures approach it differently. Naja humans value family over clan, whereas Farrowen dwarves value clan over individual families. Naja symbols are simply the family "name" but in war parties, they will fly under a single "clan" banner. Farrowen won't share their name, but will proudly announce their clan affilliation to anyone within earshot and wear clan symbols on just about everything they own. Willowen dwarves pledge allegiance to their guild above family or clan and don't give either clan or family name under casual circumstances (Willowen employ kidnapping as a means of gaining leverage in political or business deals. Guilds are "outside" of this facet of Willowen society.)

You idea is good and I like it, but the game has a very light touch regarding "How it should be done". Basically, your idea exists, but it's optional for those who decide to implement it in-game. An enterprising artist can set up the "Heraldry Records Office" you suggested and make himself a lot of loot in-game. I see artists guilds popping up (and I might toss in a few of my own just to get it started) everywhere. My goal is to make a framework that players can play in just about any way they want.

Ahhh surgery.

I'm getting this thing down to tabletop playability. Mind you, it's not really intended for tabletop play, but this does allow for a faster engine when the graphics come into the picture. Before anyone points out the obvious contradiction of doing this when I've said making tabletops into MMORPG's won't work, remember that I said they don't work because the tabletop game wasn't intended for more than eight or so people. ADA, which is what the Miscreant engine has encapsulated to (can't seperate the game from it's engine), is intended for hundreds of players. Even the monsters are playable characters which can be leveled and can acquire new skills. In short, the game can be played on a tabletop, but isn't really meant to be.

However, breaking the game down into die rolls just makes sense. The engine zips along when it doesn't have to perform complex algorithims and any holes can be plugged easily by forge members who are more accustomed to seeing 1d10 rather than KC=(M*V2)/2.

So anyhoo, surgery was something I decided to do to get around the oldest powergaming trick. This is something of an institution in CRPG's and has even crept into traditional RPG's. It's loading up on healing. Healing potions have stripped combat of all it's risk. No matter what injury I suffer, I can reverse it's effects by drinking healing potions. This is because injury is simply a subtraction of points from the total HP. Healing potions add points to the total HP. Therefore any wound, no matter how fantastically greusome, can be completely healed by drinking a potion.

Yeah, that one had to go. Not only does it encourage powergaming...

"Of course we can take on that Ancient Red Dragon. I got potions don't I?"

...but it actually weakens one of the most underappreciated characters in any RPG. I'm talking about the poor cleric. With miracle elixirs that heal all wounds, no matter how varied or severe, clerics really don't have much to do. Any city that has a mom and pop potions shop doesn't need any medical professionals at all realistically.

I didn't eliminate potions entirely though. They're still there, but let me explain how injuries work.

First of all, let me describe how the body is laid out.

One hundred percent of the total hit points are stored in the "body" Lowering hit points to zero, through repeated strikes to the body will cause incapacitation. Lowering hit points to negative ten percent will cause death.

Twenty-five percent of the total hit points are stored in the "limbs". Lowering hit points by twenty five percent in any limb will cause that limb to die.

Fifty five (*2) percent of the total hit points are stored in the "head". This means that HP loss through the head causes twice as much damage overall as a blow anywhere else. Lowering hit points to zero will cause the character to die.

So basically, you can hack off limbs, you can go for head shots, or you can just go the old-fashioned way and put metal through their hearts. These are the most severe injuries and are actually a special case so I won't go into them just yet. But we can discuss the more common ones.

Let's say you get stabbed with a flaming spear. The spear has inflicted a piercing wound and burned you. Just for fun, let's say you're bleeding heavily too. That's three things wrong with you. A surgeon then has to diagnose the severity of your wounds. This is done one of two ways.

Diagnosis: This roll is when the surgeon rolls 1d6 for every aspect of your wound. You only get to roll against an aspect of a wound if the surgeon is familiarized with that particular wound, either under his Diagnosis talent or his Surgery talent.

Triage: The surgeon rolls 1d20 and makes a snap judgement regarding your condition. The surgeon is allowed a modifier of +1 for every immediately recognizable condition you have (bleeding, certain poisons, burns, missing limbs). Unlike Diagnosis, rolling higher than the severity of the wounds adds the overage to the actual surgery.

The attacker who wounded you has a spear skill of 5, a thrust skill of 4, and utilised an attack stance that adds 3 to his total skill in the technique that wounded you. Your surgeon has a Puncture Wound roll of 4, an Internal Injury roll of 5 and a Bleeding Wound roll of 5. If any individual aspect of the wound were over 5, the extent that they were over would be subtracted from the actual surgery, forcing the surgeon to operate at a penalty for the little "surprises" he'll encounter in your body while fixing it.

So, the surgeon has a "Diagnosis" of 14. The wound has a severity of 12. The surgeon has successfully diagnosed the patient and can operate without a penalty.

Let's also say that another surgeon made a disasterous "Triage" roll of 8. in an attempt to get a bonus towards the surgery. He's familiar with the puncture, and he's familiar with the bleeding but he misses the internal injury (bleeding conceals certain injuries completely if a thorough diagnosis isn't done) so he only gets to add +2 to his total triage, bringing the total up to 10. The wound has a severity of 12, so the resulting surgery is penalized by -2.

Let's say the spear is of a design that inflicts a +3 wound, the technique used drove the spear in to a +4 depth and the enchanted flame at the tip burned you by +3. This makes the wound's total 12 +10. The surgeon who diagnosed his patient has to now roll for Surgery. The surgeon can roll 1d6 again for each aspect of the injury and further modify his rolls for +1 if any of the wounds fall under an applicable skill within his Surgery Talent.

The surgeon who made the Triage blunder can roll 1d6 for each aspect of the injury that he's familiar with through his Surgery Talent. No bonuses are allowed and he can't roll for anything he's not skilled in (this would be the same penalty if a disaterous diagnosis were rolled). Let's say he's skilled in burns and piercing wounds, but the bonus given to the spear for it's unique design isn't something he'd have been able to catch. He rolls 2d6 for his surgery skill in treating burns and puncture wounds and rolls 10 which becomes 8 after the -2 penalty. The wound goes untreated and increses in severity by 4. If not healed on the second attempt, the wound becomes critical and will reduce HP until the patient dies.

This is something for the computer to keep track of. Unless you know a GM who is willing to track every wound, the manner in which it was inflicted, what it was inflicted with, the skill of the person doing the damage and the quality of the weapon used, I doubt anyone would want to play a monster like this with dice. But it is possible if anyone's interested. Lemme know if I should release a playtest.

P.S.

It's the formula for determining an objects kinetic force.

I'm not going to pick nits in your formula for 'kinetic force', but here's something you might or might not know, to help you fine-tune those body-hitpoint percentages (and which might be useful to anyone designing damage/healing systems).

There's a quick and dirty rule about body mass called the rule of 9s. This basically means the human body is, by mass, made up of chunks of 9% of the weight.

Each arm - 1 chunk
Each leg - 2 chunks
the head - 1 chunk
upper torso - 2 chunks
lower torso - 2 chunks

Giving us 11*9=99%. I think the remaining 1% goes into the head, but I can't remember.

That doesn't take anything into account for vulnerability/composition, but it might help.

Hmmm, considering the "chunk" system for another game where dismemberment is more commonplace but I'm hesitant to make it too easy to lose an arm or a leg because it's hell to put it back on. If a player can lose 9% of their HP and lose an arm in the process, players might shy away from combat entirely. I'll agree that this system makes more realistic sense, but realistic fantasy doesn't go over well.

Thanks for the role of 9 though. I'd never heard it before, and it's something that'll definately work in the next one.

Oh yeah...what's wrong with that formula (although I purty much slept through math in high school so it could be anything).

I was considering starting a new thread for this, but since it involves the actual Micreant Engine instead of the RPG I'm designing for it, I decided to put it here.

Basically, early tests of the engine is revealing it to be more versatile than I planned. I found this out when I discovered one of my local playtesters using it to play GURPS with his college buddies in Florida.

Turns out this half-finished MMORPG is a fairly decent Play-by-web program.

Right now, it requires some programming skills to turn it into anything useable (before anyone starts clamoring for it) but with some scripting, it can be taught to recognize simple #d# formulas. Which means that the engine already knows what 1d20 is and will recognize any rules that incorporate that die roll.

Basically, here's what the Engine is shaping up to be.

A PDF reader.

I really just did this so that I wouldn't have to make seperate files for instructions. However, web players can reference a PDF for rules. I'm trying to turn the editor into a PDF writer. That way, RPG designers might use this to playtest their games.

GM "Authority"

This is the skeleton of the computer AI, but when manually used, it allows GM's to adjust character sheets, ensuring that rolls are managed fairly. Also, we're writing script that allows die rolls to automatically make the appropriate changes to characer sheets so that the "rulebook" determines what happens to characters on their rolls. In the basic version, everyone adjusts their own character sheets and the honor system is used.

Interactive Rules:

We're working on imbedded script in the PDF's (hence the need for our own PDF maker) so that when you play the game on this engine, certain rules are automatically enforced. Gm's get the final call though.

Miniatures galore!

Hey, we're making a MMORPG. We've got orcs, knights, swords, altars of skulls and just about everything else. Also, since the game allows characters to create their own items, you can create your own objects. However, if we start selling this to designers, we might just start making content packs of random aliens, demons, knights, and dragons. Another reason for our custom PDF writer is so that when a designer sells a game or expansion pack that's made with this, it comes with miniatures, maps, and objects for the GM to use to build his own worlds that can be played over the web.

So, that's what we're doing over at...Hmmm, looks like I'll need to come up with a name for us. Anyway, I didn't want it to look like we just disappeared off the face of the earth.

Oh yeah....what do you guys think? Good idea or should I just get back to making that MMORPG?

I get the feeling the question's way over my head. So many things to consider... time, compatibility, complexity, consumer demographics, technical issues.

I'll defer to someone more knowledgeable in the deployment/marketing field of these things. The computer buff in me likes it, though - although I'll never (well, not soon anyway, life's too long to say 'never') MMORG.

Yeah, it's a little over my head as well. I dunno if I've got something great on my hands or if I'm just wasting time playing with this thing when I should be finishing it.

Hi all,

first of all let me say that I'm impressed with the quality of discussion on this board - funny how you can find jewels with any random query to google.. :)

Reading through this thread gave me the shivers over and over again; I'm perceiving a familiar pattern behind the features (or design goals) listed.. I've been toying with the idea of creating a MMORPG engine/framework that would be based on same general priciples that the Miscreant Engine seems to work with; everything that happens is a natural consequence of some event in the virtual world and, this causality can be achieved with a set of relatively simple rules. Thus, by just programming in a certain events and rules for them, we should be able to create a game (actually, I also like 'toy' better) which would produce it's 'content' itself.

Let me clear out the point with couple examples.

a)

WyldKarde is speaking of players running to orcs because there is a bigger encampment nearby sending out raiding parties (maybe this is one of them). This is a simple example of the causality I'm talking about - the players didn't run into the orcs because some GM plotted it, but rather as a natural consequence of some GM placing that encampment there.

b)

I'm also tingling all over with that idea of items being the basic material, which has been refined by charging it with player skills - that actually serves as an excellent example, because a plate mail is simple a piece of metal charged with capability to protect it's wearer. While the long sword could be similar piece of metal, charged with capability to inflict damage.

This makes crafting just a natural consequence of players having available materials and the capability to enchant items and, can actually take us places with the game; think about a pool of various abilities that an inventive character can draw from to create new and magnificient items. These abilities could be divided into several categories, each providing a different aspect to item. For instance, there would be one category for the shape of item (you cannot wear a long sword and hitting people with full plate mail would look ridiculous) while capabilities to inflict damage and protect from it would make up two more. Then we of course have the spells which can be embedded into items.

We would of course need to constrain the combinations in some way to maintain game balance, as players tend to get a bit too creative sometimes. "Yarr. Buy thee this fineth dagger, it offers ye protection better than a plate mail and cuts through ye foes like a warhammer."

Mental note: something based on mass of the material flavored with material quality and type should do nicely.


I seem to be rambling a bit here, so let me get back to the original reason for this post. :)

WyldKarde, have you ever thought about open-sourcing your project? From the posts I've made two conclusions; that you have implemented at least some of the features and that you are at least not completely committed to making a big buck out of this - and while what kenjib said earlier is propably correct, it might as well prosper as an open source project, given certain requirements are met.

This would perhaps work best as an open-source project, but I think open source games haven't usually been very successful in the past because it's impossible to find certain key people (like graphic designers) and also when it comes to games everyone wants to talk and nobody wants to implement. Most likely, it would end up a huge meandering project that is never finished.

First off shoka, welcome to the forge.

It's good to see a little more "where can I pitch in?". Not to say that there haven't been offers (don't want to alienate the few people willing to put their backs into this thing) but most responses have bordered on "wait and see" and the occasional "it'll never happen". So anyone interested enough in this project to ask is definately welcome.

I've mentioned before that, as long as it's just me doing the work, I'll do what can be done when it can be done. Most of the work thus far has been refining the RPG. A lot of the standard mechanics of RPG's have had to be tossed aside to further many of my original design theories. Defining objects they way I do, for example, demands a completely different type of crafting. On paper, this is shaping up to be a very different RPG. In play though, it usually works the way I want it to.

Something that makes me a little uncomfortable is the lack of a definitive stance from the GNS perspective. As far as the computer GM is concerned, it's a simulation where accuracy reigns supreme. For the players, however, it can be approached from any perspective, simulation, game, or narrative. A gamer could view it as an ongoing game where the goal is to create a prosperous family name, or to create increasingly powerful characters. A simulationist could probably lose themselves in the crafting, politics, religion, warfare, or economics. A narrativist gets to write their own legacy through their bloodline.

Perhaps it comes from never having read the GNS articles before I started designing this, but one of my goals in making this was to prove that certain "types" of gamers could play together if the game was designed well enough. I told people who would whine about "powergaming" that any game that rewards combat and power was going to have players who played that way. In fact, those players were "roleplaying" since those are the "roles" that the game encourages be played. This is a common complaint in MMORPG's and I said it was the game's fault, not the players. Someone suggested I prove my point and here we are. Besides, my old gaming group wanted me to come up with a way we could play together regardless of distance. Seemed like a way to kill two birds with one stone.

However, when applied to a MMORPG, I could use the strengths of the medium instead of beating my head against it's weaknesses. With a computer handling the rolls, there was no reason I couldn't make any game I wanted that played any way I wanted it to. Designing it has been rough considering I have to not only make a MMORPG program that works in a way that no other one does, but I also have to make a RPG that would be a blasphemy to any purist.

So yeah, it's safe to say that we've got a lot on our hands.

If there are enough interested parties, we can design the game right here. This is a massive project and I have no problem sharing the effort or credit. Since it seems, from the above post and several PMs, that there are those interested in creating this. I'll make this thread a development thread and any work done on ADA and Miscreant will be posted right here. Originally, I just started this thread for a little advice and some guidance but since there have been so many people willing to help, I'll go ahead and "open source" it right here.

So throw your ideas out there. I'll be cramming everything I have on ADA into several threads.

WyldKarde wrote: First off shoka, welcome to the forge.

WyldKarde wrote: Someone suggested I prove my point and here we are. Besides, my old gaming group wanted me to come up with a way we could play together regardless of distance. Seemed like a way to kill two birds with one stone.

WyldKarde wrote: If there are enough interested parties, we can design the game right here. This is a massive project and I have no problem sharing the effort or credit. Since it seems, from the above post and several PMs, that there are those interested in creating this. I'll make this thread a development thread and any work done on ADA and Miscreant will be posted right here. Originally, I just started this thread for a little advice and some guidance but since there have been so many people willing to help, I'll go ahead and "open source" it right here.

So throw your ideas out there.

WyldKarde wrote: I'll be cramming everything I have on ADA into several threads.

Arrighty then.

I think that the core component of any RPG is story. If at any time, the players look up and wonder "why am I doing this?", then someone needs to take a long, hard look at the story. Story provides motivation, it puts the meat on the table. There are probably those who do, but I don't know many people who jump into a game eager to see how the dice work.

Actually, I know one. But he's a playtester and I consider that to be a desirable trait in that case.

So you want to create a world that drips with story. Five minutes in, you want your players to go off script and start adding to the story you've begun. You watch Star Wars or you read Lord of the Rings and you see people eager to be "just like this or that character". This is a key component of Role-Playing that takes it's roots from storytelling. This is where I base my assertion that story is key. Maybe it's because they're the only ones with the skill to do it, but I've noticed a lot of game designers put absolutely no thought into the "story" of their RPG's or MMORPG's. They make a great game engine, say "Just add elves" and decalre it a masterpiece.

From a design perspective, I've noticed story makes creating the game a lot easier. When you're looking for "cool stuff" to put into a game, the story will usually provide lots of fodder. The hit game Knights of the Old Republic took a single theme from the Star Wars movies and turned it into a vibrant game. The theme was:

There used to be more Jedi.

And they made an entire game from that. They added to it, and expanded on it, but the game is pretty much built on that one premise. Someone said, "Wouldn't it be cool to have been a Jedi back when the order was strong?" and everything just falls together from there.

So, for a few posts, I'll be talking story. Focusing less on die rolls and conversion formulas and more on the thing that will hopefully make this game interesting enough to play. To get everything started, I'll summarize the game's "theme". This way, the story will make more sense.

Advent of the Dying Age is based on a series of novels I'm writing called Heralds of the Dying Age. The books are something of a coming-of-age for the genre as a whole. Throughout the series, we see a stereotypical type of "perfect" fantasy world (all crystal castles and enchanted forests) slowly corrupt into a darker, more mature fantasy world. If I were a psychologist, I'd compare the story to myself. I started writing about purple dragons and faries when I was very little because it's the only thing a six year-old can write without an adult telling them they got it wrong. As I got older, that "fairy tale" fantasy lost some of it's gloss as I lost my own bright-eyed innocnece and my stories became a lot darker.

If you're wondering what the "theme" is, then that's it. I'd say dark fantasy, but I should define my interpretation of "dark fantasy". It's unsettlingly realistic at times, but it's not thick with muted colors and despair. I've noticed that a lot of dark fantasy has this "goth" feel to it. Mine isn't like that, I just add reality to my fantasy until I get the right level of disturbing.

I'll put fairies in my stories. I'll give them their own culture, their own language, their own religion and their own caleandar. And then I'll have another race use them as lightbulbs.

Yeah, this ain't Narnia baby.

WyldKarde wrote: They make a great game engine, say "Just add elves" and decalre it a masterpiece.

Well, I suppose it's a good time to go ahead and suggest that we all team up and make this thing together. You've got a lot of good programming ideas in your rant there. All we need now is someone who can make sprites sing and dance and we're good.

Until then, toss out your ideas. If you throw out something implausible, believe me, you'll find out very quickly.

WyldKarde wrote:

Yeah, this ain't Narnia baby.

Ohhh...I love talking story.

Yeah, Narnia isn't really a fairy tale. Actually, the only innocent and doe-eyed fairy tales are the ones disney puts out. Fairy Tales...if you're talking the Brothers Grimm, are anything but innocent. Aschenputel, the original version of Cinderella, is downright horrifying. If you want dark fantasy...fairy tales are actually where you should be looking.

I also know about Narnia's parallels between christianity. Wrote a paper on it too. Also, Narnia could be a pretty dark place at times. The death of Aslan on the stone table is a reinactment of the crucifixion that would fall under your "thinly veiled" category.

Then again, the bible is pretty dark at times too so it's not surprising that a book based on it's teachings has some genuinely disturbing moments.

I probably should note that I'm not shooting for "disturbing for the sake of being disturbing". I do at times in other projects. For example, Outatowners is an RPG filled with stupid, wailing horrors that exist for no reason than to make your skin crawl. The very purpose of many of them is to force the reader to ask themselves "What merciful god would allow this to exist?" The shreiking malformed ghosts of aborted fetuses...now that's disturbing.

Faries being used as lightbulbs...that's realistic. It might be seen as disturbing to some people. It might be funny to others. I perhaps could have said "gritty" fantasy (though I like that term about as much as I do X-treme) but dark seems to fit in my experience. For example, the casual fantasy racism seen in the classic Elves vs. Dwarves conflict goes somewhere that few people are comfortable seeing it go. Having a dwarven youth lynched by an elven mob for his relationship with an elf girl hits notes at the low end of the fret for a lot of people. Me included.

I think that particular scene better portrays my version of "dark" fantasy and setting a "disturbing" tone. Again, there are those for whom the above scene might not be disturbing (and I weep for them), but it's there because it's something that could happen and in my story, it does. I consider my story disturbing and dark because much like the Chronicles of Narnia, I draw paralells (often thinly veiled) between my own work and something else.

Well...since I consider storytelling to be an important part of game design I'll keep going. Besides, the story in question is the one having a game made out of it so I suppose it's fair game.

As for that "something worth fighting for", it's different for different characters. Playing as an orc, freed from human and elven enslavement, you might want to erode human society so that it finally acknowledges your race as equal. Playing as a human, you're not eager to share your society with a race that eats their dead, and occasionally their young.

Not everyone's "bright and shining horizon" is bright and shining.

Now, I'n not writing this to say "That way is wrong, whis way is better!" I'm writing the novels to reflect something I hadn't seen in fantasy that I wanted to see. Nothing wrong with "Fairy Tales", but I want my heroes to bleed (moreso than my villians usually). The same way that when I write vampire stories, there's precious little sonnet writing and visits to the opera. There's also very little romance in their embrace.

My vampires are messy eaters.

But, my love of conflict (to the point where good doesn't so much triumph over evil as it survives it) hasn't made me forget one of the key points of storytelling. Each of my stories has hope as the driving force. Writing horror (elves are where I fell in love, but ghosts are where I earned my chops), you learn how to dangle hope in front of the reader like a carrot. Otherwise, they close the book (or in this case, get up from the table) and say "Oh well, they're fucked. What's for dinner?"

I will admit to abusing my readers (but when it's horror, that's what you sign on for) with hope. In horror, you light a candle in the middle of a dark room and as soon as your character gets to it, bumping into things and scraping their shins along the way, you blow it out. In fantasy, you reveal that the light was actually coming from a knothole in a door that leads to freedom.

But that's just me defining my writing style. I'm not saying that everyone should do it my way, just making clear how I do it.

I should probably note that when we're talking story, were' talking about the book, not actual gameplay. As far as the game is concerned, this is all game lore. Things that happened, not things that happen. The book sets a tone, not a precedent. The game is not about dwarf-lynching, but it is set against a backdrop where that has happened.

The game focuses mainly on building the type of gameworld you'd like to see. Maybe you want orcs in the swamp and elves in the trees and dwarves in the mountains where history tells you they all belong.

Maybe the orcs, elves, and dwarves have other ideas.

Ah, we seem to have a little disagreement of terms here. By "fairy tale" I mean the modern version, which is essentially a morality play.

As for "realistic" you seem to mean not "disturbing," but "comprehensive." Fairies aren't used as lightbulbs and dwarves don't get lynched because it's disturbing, but because, in real life, people do get used/lynched/etc.

(BTW, my setting, "The Fifth Hour" also has ghosts of aborted fetuses, called "Cherubim." Go figure.)

As for "something worth fighting for," I never thought of it that way....veeery interesting. A pluralistic take on hope is something I never considered, and something I should think about in my own setting.

As for your metaphor of fantasy as light from a door...never thought of it that way either. Do you mean it in a metaphysical way (literally, enlightenment,) a plot way (what I would call "hope,") some combination of both, or something else entirely?

Ahhh...semantics.

I'm not sure about comparing the fairy tale to the morality play, though I see the comparison. Again my own approach to "morality play" might be skewed by my knowledge of theatre history. As for my use of the word "Fairy Tale"...I guess my interpretation might be entirely personal. I'm talking about tinkerbell, my little pony, and the version of the three little pigs where the big bad wolf doesn't get sealed in a brass kettle and rolled down a hill into a blazing fire where he's roasted alive and the surviving pig eats him.

Yeah...I can see why Disney edited that part out.

With regards to hope. Yes, I definately consider that to be an important part of storytelling. I don't know where the essence of stroytelling fits in the GNS model (narration I guess), but I consider it to be a vital part of the games I make so my take is slanted heavily towards storytelling.

I imagine it's different if you roleplay to "win" (gamist), or to feel the thrill of accurate military strategy (simulationist), but I play to tell a story. If the setting isn't interesting, then why should I care about my character? If I can't relate to what's going on in the gameplay, how am I going to get into the game? As writers, we have to ask ourselves this question. Your story should be powerful and difficult to put down. If it's easy to put down, it'll be hard to pick up again.

The way I do that is hope. You can use other emotions, and I have. But hope has teeth. If someone is sad and you don't allow them to resolve that sadness, they remain sad. The same goes for hatred, hunger, fear and most of the other emotions. With hope, it explodes into other emotions if not resolved.

The way Ravien spoke about players defending their young is the best example. If you attack my character, then I'll fight back. If you attack my child, I'll hunt you to the ends of the earth and end you. Other players might cry foul at having their children murdered, hindering their future character development. I would latch on to something like that. Now I have a reason to play...I'm going to pay you back for what you did.

Gameplay mimics the story...take away hope, and you have a snarling, rabid entity on your hands. This is where my philosophy overrides my creation because that is good storytelling in my eyes. I want to know how this ends. At that point, I have little to no interest in mechanics, die rolls, winning or losing...gameplay becomes story and I'm hungry for how this is going to resolve.

From the perspective of the game I'm designing, it might be somewhat outside the box. Players play for the entertainment of others as well as their own. Players are a small part of a larger drama. If there are people who log in just to find out what other players have been up to, then I'll consider the game a success. That is because my type of roleplaying is narrativist...story above all.

This might not be the technical definition of narrativist, but from what I can tell, the definition of these terms seems to be under constant debate. So, I just take from these theories what is most usefull to me and what speaks to my design goals. For me, narrativist roleplaying is more "telling a story" than playing a game. Simulationist is more "getting it right" than playing a game. Gamist is more "quiet introspection" than playing a game.

Just kidding...it should be obvious how I view gamism.

I just wanted to make the parallels between how I write and how I design so that it didn't seem as if my views on storytelling were off-topic with regards to game design. My writing style is very much a part of my design style and so I put it out for anylysis right alongside my dice system and character development.

I suppose my use of realism in this case is more "comprehension". I explore all possible resolutions in storytelling. The "darkness" comes in how this reflects on the audience I suppose. When elves go from wise, peacefull, and disneyesque to become vicious eco-terrorists (causing earthquakes and tornadoes to destroy their enemies), then I want the readers to feel slightly uncomfortable. I want the reader to go..."I agree with the descisions with this character made...but I don't like the consequences."

I hate to go back to horror, but that's something I learned writing about spooks. When you watch the sorrorrity girl hide under her bed instead of getting the hell out of the house, you laugh when the axe murderer stabs her through the mattress.

"Stupid bitch...that's what she gets!"

But when that same character heads for the front door, makes a beeline to her car, heads for the nearest freeway, and then gets stabbed through the back of her car seat by the murderer hiding in the back seat, your reaction is different.

"Hey...that's what I would have done."

It's an animal instinct and you have to hide it from the audience (although not very hard), but they will relate to what you give them. Actually, although I use hope, I silently know I don't have to. The audience will relate to the killer if they can't relate to the victim. I humanize my main characters with hope because in a RPG, players should relate to their characters more than other peoples.

Don't beleive me...watch a buddy play a video game you're bad at. As they go beyond what you're capable of doing, you'll find yourself starting to root for the bad guy. Most people don't notice it, because as the other person starts to struggle, eventually failing, the spectators attitude will shift again, sympathizing with the familiar sight of watching that health bar whittle down to nothing.

Yeah...I guess my use of hope is just how I hook my audience...get them caring. But there are lots of ways to get them involved. Outatowners...a different game...hooks them in a different way. It appeals to that part of you that slows down to watch a car accident.

You don't do it to make sure that everyone's okay. Go ahead and tell yourself that...I'm not judging. You know what you want to see and it's not little suzy happy and smiling in mommy's arms. You're looking for bright yellow sheets spread over ruined human remains. You're looking for a weeping relative on a cell phone with the next of kin. You're looking for paramedics moving without purpose because nothing can be done.

And when you drive away, you'll smile because it's not you.

But...that's my horror mindset. I dig for the worst in human nature and I don't have to dig deep or long before I find it. When I'm writing fantasy...despite my dark and brooding nature, I'm trying to rekindle that childhood hope that even though there's a monster in the closet, saying the lord's prayer will defeat it.

As far as my light metaphor...I never really thought of it like that before. My mind simplifies complex ideas for me. When I think hope...I automatically think "light in the darkness". It's actually so cliche' that it's greeting card fodder. I just personalized it. My fantasy "light through the door" scenario reflects my hope and my horror "snuffed candle" scenario reflects my fear. It's a fun emotion because hope and fear are the same thing.

Hope carries with it the fear that what you want might not happen.

Fear carries with it the hope that what you think will happen...won't.

WyldKarde wrote:

The way I do that is hope. You can use other emotions, and I have. But hope has teeth. If someone is sad and you don't allow them to resolve that sadness, they remain sad. The same goes for hatred, hunger, fear and most of the other emotions. With hope, it explodes into other emotions if not resolved.

The way Ravien spoke about players defending their young is the best example. If you attack my character, then I'll fight back. If you attack my child, I'll hunt you to the ends of the earth and end you. Other players might cry foul at having their children murdered, hindering their future character development. I would latch on to something like that. Now I have a reason to play...I'm going to pay you back for what you did.

Gameplay mimics the story...take away hope, and you have a snarling, rabid entity on your hands. This is where my philosophy overrides my creation because that is good storytelling in my eyes. I want to know how this ends. At that point, I have little to no interest in mechanics, die rolls, winning or losing...gameplay becomes story and I'm hungry for how this is going to resolve....I humanize my main characters with hope because in a RPG, players should relate to their characters more than other peoples....

Hope carries with it the fear that what you want might not happen.

Fear carries with it the hope that what you think will happen...won't.

That is because my type of roleplaying is narrativist...story above all.

Don't beleive me...watch a buddy play a video game you're bad at. As they go beyond what you're capable of doing, you'll find yourself starting to root for the bad guy. Most people don't notice it, because as the other person starts to struggle, eventually failing, the spectators attitude will shift again, sympathizing with the familiar sight of watching that health bar whittle down to nothing.

It appeals to that part of you that slows down to watch a car accident....And when you drive away, you'll smile because it's not you.

Hmmmm...we can discuss writing all day long. I love it. I suppose I'd have to...as much time I spend picking away at my stories. I'm not sure about the overriding theme of your RPG (I might have more writing philosophies to apply to RPG design I don't know about) but there's plenty of ways to approach it.

I use hope as a "hook" because it's the classical one. My story is different enough without having players relating to something like the sexual urges of nosferatu (Sanguine Embrace...coming to the forge soon) or the adrenaline cocktail of being a hired thug working behind the scenes for a multinational corporation (D.I.R.Ty work...soon as I finish Outatowners). Writing the Heralds books, my thought was simple...

If I'm going to make a book this long that's worth reading, I've gotta take a huge bite out of my subject matter. Classic Good v. Evil scenario should work. Hope for a better tomorrow is pretty much par for the course when you decide to take that route. I'm only innovative where I have to be...everywhere else, I'll happily steal.

As far as hope indicing hatred...it certainly can. I remember my theatre professor telling me that the poem "A Dream Deferred" by Langston Huges was actually a warning to america about the impending violence of the Civil Rights era. Impressive considering it was written around 1920. The entire poem was the embodiment of what happens when you rob a person of hope. Hope turning violent isn't really an innovative approach for the modern african-american writer...our literature is peppered with this sentiment, as is our history.

As far as getting my hooks in and pulling up the worst in people, I usually just dig until I hit something. The use of death and destruction as a beautiful thing is something Sangine Embrace utilizes. In fact, it goes a wobbly step beyond decency to make it erotic (the story anyway...I can't roleplay eroticism...or at least, don't know how).

But yeah, we can talk writing all day long. I love storytelling. With reards to the game, I'm fleshing out my cultures. Those interested in the food element will be happy to know that food takes a place in culture. There are certain "ethnic" foods that different cultures eat. The "ethnic" food is something that serves as a template for all of a culture's cooking. It's pretty much just for roleplay though, not actual gameplay. Where one culture makes mixed salads, another will make stew. A race might give a personal tough to a foreign dish, taking the ingredients of the stew and putting them in the salad or vice versa.

I'mma start tossin out the game rules here. Just the "player" part at first. But if you want to know how to mathematically balance the game "stacks" against player societies and how to level the terrain as it produces balanced enemy tables...keep your eyes on this site.

The narrativist is gonna get all Sim on you.

West Siiiiiiiide!!!

Oh, the overriding theme of my RPG? Right now, I figure it's "What's the right thing to do? And how far will you go to do it?" Hence, all the philosphical differences and conflicts. I figure I can dip into history and pull out all the historical religious (and maybe ethnic -- think Bosnia, Nazi Germany, etc.) conflicts...sweet.

As for Langston Hughes? Love him. I can't believe I forgot that poem.

And ethnic foods? Well, believe it or not, I've gone to something like 23 different ethnic restaurants in New York City. And I swear, it seemed like every one had a stew dish somewhere on the menu.

Ok, start tossing those Sim rules out. I hope I can help.

My sim is shaky so I'll be tightening it up before I send it out. Also, It reads like design plans in some places, and like novel excerpts in others. What do you think I should lay before the court?

I'm torn between simple rules so that complex on-screen actions (battles and marketplaces...all that math in such a small area) can run smoothly. The graphics have been reduced to 2d sprites (not that bad really...check out Ragnarock) and I'm trying to go cheap so that it runs well and runs...well...cheap.

Not...literally cheap. I'll pay for art (cuz beleive me, I can't draw...even my games of hangman look like tic-tac-toe) because I know I'm working in a visual medium. Skimpin' on the visuals is tantamount to making any of the other MMORPG mistakes I've condemned. I guess I'll go with my usual payment method (fishin' for spriters) of a nice chunk of change followed up with a percentage of profit should the thing actually make money. I's the perfect mix of get 'em on board and putting their backs into it.

WyldKarde's Frosted Payments!

"The up-front fee appeals to the professional in me..."

"While the lure of "magical money from the future" appeals to the artist in me."

Oh yeah...kenjib was right. Too much platform behind this thing to give it away free. Small sacrifice really. If it makes enough to sustain itself...I can give it away free to the handfull of people I was shooting for anyway. The low production costs would still make it one of the cheapest games out there. My first business model shows me giving away subcriptions for around the cost of a single piece of software. I.E. for the price of the actual everquest program (just the game, not the subcription) a player could have a year's worth of access.

But...enough business model. I'm still learning self-publishing through my first game so I'm hardly the one to espouse profit margins. I like my games small and intimate actually...so this is a change of pace for me.

This...I guess this one fits under "D&D killer"...you know the huge fantasy setting that's going to redefine the industry. We all have one at the back of our minds and I guess this one's mine. My motive was just to make a game that ran the way I wanted though...not trying to topple wizard and make Salvatore my dark apprentice of the Sith.

Although that's so cool I might just...

Nah. I think I've got enough on my plate already.

Anyway...I think for mechanics...I should start with Character Creation and Development. All roads lead to Character. I'll be tossing that one down next.

*sigh*...I see more back-to-back posts coming

lol...I might publish my own articles on design one day..."All Roads Lead to Character" & "Making your Players Care"

And my breakthrough essay:

Flogging the Bishop,
Armageddon Gospel and its use of Religion in a darkly erotic Bondage RPG setting.

Ahh this is where the rubber meets the road.

Ironically the "food and nutrition" debate is probably where I best defined how I use Simulationism. I will go to huge efforts to make a game feature as compehensive as possible, then toss a blanket over it, making it an unseen aspect of the finished product.

Unofrtunately, this won't work for a large part of the game. The fact is...there is a thing as too much realism. Even simulationists know that rolling things like windage, weapon malfunctions, and fog on your rifle lens can subtract from a game's enjoyability.

It's a delicate balance that I'm having all manner of trouble in making. I'm working on a combat system that plays on multiple levels (stance, skill, weapon, environment, previous experience...etc.) but at the same time, I want a skill selection system that's simple on the surface. I was thinking of a skill tree that causes additional modifiers to other skills. Things like this...

Dual Wield: The ability to use two weapons simultaneously.

Forward Stance: A body position that causes the combatant to face his opponent evenly, favoring neither right or left sides.

Dual Wield + Forward Stance = Twin Vipers: Twin Vipers is a dual-handed attack that allows a fighter to use both weapons at a bonus (instead of the split bonus usually attributed to two-handed fighting). When performing Twin Viper, a single roll is made for "to hit" and "damage" then divided by two.

So, I'm trying to cause the skills to flow logically from each other, with certain skills attainable only through combinations of others and perhaps some skills cancelling out others. Basiacally, each skill does only one thing, but when combined with other skills, it adds modifers and sometimes, completely new abilities.

Let me explain how character development occurs to show how I'm hoping this won't be a method that allows for uber-characters.

Player stats are essentially broken down into two categories, physical and mental.

Strength - Physical Strength
Dexterity - Physical Speed
Constitution - Physical Endurance
Beauty - Physical Charm

Wisdom - Mental Strength
Perception - Mental Speed
Willpower - Mental Endurance
Charisma - Mental Charm

Starting stats are 10 in all attributes, maxing out at 20. During character selection, certain "background" traits will adjust them up and down. Characters who are descended from other characters will have many of their background traits chosen for them (through how their parents were played and how their "childhood" worked out). Selectable background traits don't get good until you get some phenominally good (or bad) characters to have kids.

The 20 point system pretty much exists "within races". This means that a 10 is average and a 20 is the best you can hope to achieve for your species. However, each point has a different value for each race. 10 points of constitution for a human equals 100 HP while 10 points of constitution for an orc could equal 140 HP.

This turns a pen-and-paper game into an accounting exerscise, but I can get away with it on a computer. Those conversion tables that would make a GM weep are simple for a computer. They also allow me to make "deep" (system imbedded) mechanics while keeping the "surface" (user-end) system identical. Everyone has strength points from 1 to 20, but not everyone's points have the same values.

Makes it hard to min-max. I don't mind optimizing your character, but I hate getting my math hacked.

Besides, the stats being specifically race-relevant means that all stats are important, not just the one's relating to HP and clobberin' power. You have to be smart to learn the good skills so if you wanna be a badass warrior, you're gonna want to crack a book along with some skulls. Magical spells take a physical toll on you, so you're going to want to be tough if you want to manifest your will over all creation.

Stats however, are just a resource pool. It's skill that determines your character's true prowess. I said this before, but as we've broken the century mark it probably can't hurt to say it again. If you're really strong but have no skill with a sword, you're just a strong guy who can't use a sword. You can be a weaker player with years of study in swordsmanship and carve up characters with much larger muscles.

Fattening your stats won't help you in this game unless you've got the skills to back it up. Kind of like how thousand dollar golf clubs won't make any difference in your game if you've never played before. It's when you're good enough to know a high-quality club when you see one that there's any point in using them. In the same way, skilled characters will want to beef up the proper stats once their skills have hit a plateau.

So this is the character system I'm building off of. I'm hammering out skills to allow players to further define their characters. Basically, the only things hard-wired into the mechanics are the racial stat charts. Skills are completely player-defined.

So anyway, that's the first part of the game. The core I suppose since all players will be trying to personalize their characters. Mebbe you're teaching them to play an instrument, build a castle wall, or swing a heavy piece of metal.

Anyhoo, this is howya do it with ADA.

The rubber meets the road in a very conventional way (in the name/number of the stats).

I'm not saying that's good or bad, mind you. (Apparent) familiarity will allow really quick up-take of the ways of character-building. It may even trick players into making assumptions based on old systems - and discovering that things work different after all. And, of course, there's a reason these stats see so much use - they work. And I like that you've gone for the parallel of a physical and mental manifestation of 4 base concepts.

On the other hand, part of me really groaned seeing the same stats come along again... any chance of cool-i-fying them?

Yeah...I did use those stats intentionally. I was kind of hoping they would lure players into using them the way they'd been used before. I want the surface system to look very much like what everyone's used to. The numbers are intentionally misleading as well. This is a more accurate representation of the system in practice.

Body/Mental:

Power
Speed
Endurance
Social

But...all skills tap multiple stats. A single attack is affected by the player's strength, speed, and numerous other skills that modify it further. By using the spoon-fed system of a simple system on the surface, I can hide a lot underneath.

A player might notice that he fights better the longer he fights. Another player might notice that after a few rounds of using a heavy two-handed weapon, we fights extremely well with a lighter weapon. Neither player can figure out why this is with the mechanics I'm letting them see but I don't want to outright cheat my players with false numbers, or remove them from the mechanics by using text instead of numbers. These are game traits I can hide under this admittedly cookie-cutter interface. A lot of strategy RPG's are workin' overtime underneath their cartoony, anime-style system.

I got the idea from a game I played called Tactics Ogre. In it, players would actually have "bad days" where nothing went well for them based entirely upon their "mood" and past experiences. If a powerful character dies, characters recruited into your army by that character would either become useless, or step up to fill the void. If storyline characters died...other storyline characters would suffer noticeable changes in effectiveness. I thought this was just my inagination until I found algorithim charts describing how to keep your troops "spirits" up. There were horoscopes that accurately told you when certain troops were going to be most effective on what days and against what foes.

Had any of this information been available to me in game...in whole or in part...I would be playing it right now, trying to find the perfect astrological matches for the third-level boss. That game, more than anything else is to blame for my belief that the more complex the system...the less of it should be visible to the player. It was fun to play not knowing. I'd make educated guesses as to who would be the best match against an enemy...but it felt more like strategy because I was playing hunches instead of doing algebra.

So yeah...that is a pretty standard system but you were right in guessing that's why I went with it. I figure I should cop to that one right away before I get pounced on for "lack of innovation". It's not supposed to look innovative. The underlying system, however, reads like a payroll ledger as those eight simple stats combine to effect almost every skill in the game.

Besides, it's the skills that really drive the game. The stats aren't usefull without them.

Cool. I was hoping that'd be it.

Have you read the current thread on Strategy Guides for (A)D&D?. I mention it, because your system of hidden complexity can easily lead to a few 'incorrect' early builds - thus causing frustration for players.

'Incorrect' being a gap between imagined performance (and required tactivs) and real performance (and appropriate tactics) leading to a lack of fun. (And almost no-one likes playing a loser). If the gap leads to fun discoveries, all the better for it.

Well, I haven't read it yet...though I'll be heading over there soon. However, I notice that AD&D's skills are frequently "comprehensive". This means that something like "backstab" tends to be all-inclusive. Backstabbing covers all instances of backstabbing. This causes problems when you run across another comprehensive rule such as "blindfighting" because blindfighting covers all instances where you're fighting with reduced visibility. So if you're trying to backstab and blindfight, there will be instances where certain rules will supercede others and turn the rules into sggestions and fodder for argument.

This is of course an overgeneralization, but AD&D skills are slanted heavily towards interpretation. Some are hard and fast, but others are flexible for certain situations. This being a program, none of the rules are flexible or open to interpretation.

But my skills are very narrowly defined. Two weapon-fighting is just that...swinging a weapon in each hand. if you want to perform a specific two-handed technique...you have to learn it. You can't say...I've got a weapon in each hand and I know how to throw, so I throw one weapon and use the other as my main. You have to learn that specific technique if you're going to do it in a single turn, or learn the proper combination of techniques if you're going to do it within six turns.

Again...I haven't read the rant...though I will as soon as I'm done here. But one way I intend to avoid confusion is to have very specific skills. There's no skill where you can say "I've got this skill...what I want to do is kinda like that skill...so here goes".

Now, there are talents, which are specific collections of skills and Merits which are collections of talents. But these are more for categorization's sake. At the bottom of it all, it's the skills and I'm keeping the skills as singular as I can. Striking a fake coin is a specific skill, only applying to that specific act. Forgery is a talent because there's forging artwork, forging governement papers, forging checks...etc. Scoundrel is a merit because it's a combination of forgery, slight-of-hand, and other underhanded talents.

So I'm trying to avoid the confusion by coming here to have the weak spots plugged and also by leaving as few "open to interpretation" skills as I can.

Interesting. Tight skills are definetely the way to go for a computer-moderated RPG, assuming you have the time (I don't.) The system reminds me of Unclebear's Imagination's Toybox, which is a base-10 system with 3 different scales (I believe they are Normal, Cinematic, and Superhero.) Have you considered implementing such as scale system for very powerful players?

Also, is there the "Star Wars:Galaxies" problem with skill acquistion in your game? By this, I mean, do characters begin extremely unskilled. Frex, in Galaxies, PC have fight (and will die fighting) butterflies.

lol..I don't forsee any problems with players getting killed by butterflies. Actually this is something I hated from my days of MUDding. I don't see why games have that time period where you're locked in mortal combat with field mice and getting hacked to shreds by your average farmer's wife.

Seriously...why does the town drunk have spells that burn with the heat of a thousand suns and I'm weeks away from learning how to kick dirt?

Anyway, I'm doing that with "negative" levels. NPC's start off at 1 in all stats. The average hero is a fine specimen, having average stats across the board. The average NPC is only as strong, smart, or fast as they abosolutely need to be. A bootblack doesn't neccessarily need the strength of a blacksmith. This prevents those embarrassing situations where your lawless brigand is getting pounded into the dust by a serving wench. Negative levelling means that NPC's don't start on the same level as heroes and it's possible to make lambs that are actually weak as lambs, instead of demonically powerful engines of destruction.

Umm...superpowers aren't really possible here. I guess as we branch into magic, we start playing with off-the-scale damage and phenominal power. But magic is easily countered by magic. All skills have a rock, paper, scissors counterpart. This means that along with good rolls and powerful skills, players will need some form of strategy because there are skills in the game that may completely negate your most powerful attack. Actually, the most powerful attacks are the most easily deflected.

Magic missile is weak, but being raw magic, it's nearly unstoppable. When imbued with fire, it does greater damage, but has a greater chance of being disrupted by a counterspell. Spells are "woven" this way, adding skills to core magical spells (just like with the hunk of steel from the sword example) until you have a customized spell that behaves how you want it to. That's wizardry...allowing players to build their own spells on the fly by knowing how to perform certain magical skills (enchantment, conjuration, illusion). Sorcery works differently...each spell being complete and the casters effort is not placed in building it, but supplying the force behind it. Sorcerous spells are defeated the way they are cast...through force of will. Wizardry spells are defeated through countermagic.

This does two things. It means that individual spells are easy to stop with the right skills and strategy. However, no player would be able to have the skills to stop every combination of magic, or level of sorcery. Balance is more important than attaining uber-powers in this game. You need multiple tactics if you're going to someone on in combat. No single power is going to stop everything that gets thrown at you and may act as a hindrance in other situations (The "Breaker" talent doesn't cast spells, but disrupts them, causing them to injure the caster and his allies...a powerful spell can be more effective in the hands of a breaker than the original caster).

So I'm trying to curb any superpowered characters with things like that. Good solid combat techniques will stop flashy ones just fine (the flashy ones will do more damage should they hit however), and having a solid knowledge of the magic system is better than having obscenely huge spells.

Now, if your knowledge of your opponent is great enough, you can use powerful moves and spells against them. Wear 'em down and hit 'em with the finisher. Super-skills have their place, but their use is pretty "situationally" specific as well as being easily avoided (if you know they're coming). Basic skills are guaranteed hits, only stopped by superior armor or skill and scoring every time they're used.

Ah good, the "butterfly effect" (*smirk*) was something I hated also, so I took it out of my setting as well.

Your rock-scissors-paper mechanic sounds very interesting. Do you use the same mechanic for all types of action, or do you customize it for each group of skills (one for magic, one for sorcery, etc.) (In other words, do you do it like your Stat system, or do you invent a wholly new system for each group of skills?)

Personally, I'd lean towards having the same mechanic for all actions if this were a Pen-and-Paper game (and thus, something which I will consider for my own setting,) but making the mechanics deliberately complex would hinder people from figuring out the math behind it and min-maxing...if such a thing is possible in such a system.

Frex, as a rule in MUDs, the fighter/cleric is picked over the fighter/mage for soloing. Why? Because fighters can already deal out damage. Adding mage for extra damage is redundant for soloing, while clerical healing powers balance out the character with the fighter's damage potential.

So, I suppose people could reverse-engineer things if the system was not deliberately complex, and choose the best party composition for a given task. I'm not sure if this is good or bad. On the good side, it would encourage partying. On the bad side, it means that there is a given party composition, or compositions, that are best suited to a given task, which you seem to be against.

The rock, paper, scissors system is something that works across the board. Magic has a system, as does combat. There are even skills that are set up as counters to crafting skills in the "Sabotage" talent.

But this is more principle than practice. Rock, paper, scissors is just my way of saying that for each skill in the game there is another skill that completely negates it. There are also numerous skills that reduce it's effectiveness and others that result in critical failures.

For example, there is a combat stance called "Aggressive Defense" that increases the effectiveness of blocks and shield work. Taking an aggressive defensive stance also sets an aggressive offense on counterattack. Since counterattacks are pretty much free hits, it's easy to see where a player would want their character to do it hard and often.

"Feint" is a combat technique that causes a defender to open themselves up to an uncontested counterattack. Counterattacks usually have more penalties applied to them because you're relying on your opponent to provide the opprotunites instead of making them yourself. However, if a player feints on the attack, an aggressive defender will overcommit to the block or parry and their own conterattack will go to the attacker, allowing the attacker to get an uncontested hit where otherwise he might not break his opponent's defense.

So here we have a "super skill" that allows the player to block nearly everything thrown at him and get an advantage to their counterattack to boot. However, there is a skill in the game that actally robs that defender of this advantage and gives it to his opponent. The mere existence of "feint" drastically reduces the effectiveness of "aggressive defense" because it not only negates the skill, but takes it's advantage and gives it to an opposing player.

Mind you, "feint" has it's shortcomings as well. Using up an attack round on a false strike isn't an attractive proposition unless you know your enemy is going to fall for it. Also, there's a good chance the opponent will recover if he doesn't commit fully to his own counterattack. Effectiveness is reduced if your opponent plays moderately, giving you a smaller advantage. If instead of blocking, your opponent parries, placing only his weapon in the path of the attack instead of his entire body, your free counterattack has a lower chance of success because the opponent is still in a defensive stance (parrying instead of blocking automatically sets you to a defensive stance...even if you parry from an aggressive stance).

So this is how the skills play off each other. They work differently in different situations, but only do one thing initially. Sometimes feint will work marvelously and other times it's just a wasted attack. Sometimes "aggressive defense" will enhance shield work and be the anchor of a brick-wall defense and other times it will handicap the defender into foolishly putting his body in the path of danger.

The game is skill-based, but that doesn't mean that a player can win just by giving his character powerful skills. It's in how you use what you know that you truly play the game. The skills define the character, but your personal srategy will still show through. If you don't have strategy, get a big sword, learn simple attacks, and hope their armor gives out before your sword-arm does.

No more comments from me for now. It looks like you're getting exactly what you want, WK.

Unless anyone else has some comments, I move that you post something new.

Yep...I'm starting to think that it's time to give the game itself it's own thread. This originally dealt with how to make a Multiplayer RPG, it's internal mechanisms, interface...etc. I was concerned with how to design the game, how to make it work, so that it wasn't just another hack-n-slash with elves and hobbits. Think we've pretty much covered gameplay issues and the "how-to" of the design for this one, taking it from theoretical "this is how someone should do it" to a more concrete plan.

But, without the game itself, the ideas on this page become theoretical. I'm going to give ADA it's own thread later on today so that we can discuss the strengths and weaknesses of the game itself and leave this thread for hammering out the "how" of getting it to work with a computer GM.

Uh, WK? I didn't mean we should end this thread, I meant that we should move on from chargen to a new part of the game.

-Pal

Hi again.. :)

I've been busy writing proof-of-concept code for the framework and traveling around Finland on my summer vacation (so that's why I've been so quiet). Just thought to post something here to let you know I'm still around.

The current status is actually quite good - I was unable to sleep as the nights were so hot and decided to do something useful instead of rolling around in my bed. What I've managed to do so far is the base system with preliminary versions of most components up and running, and two rooms that you can move between - nothing fancy yet, just a basic text description of each, but its a start. (And after all, the framework doesn't care how we describe the objects to clients, it could easily be full-blown 3D model instead of simple 'This is a room'-message..)

Now I'm going to focus on writing the basic version of game rules engine (for skill/action resolution etc) so I can start testing various ideas I have about how the skills and other aspects are handled (tehcnically, that is.) Another thing I'm working on is a graphical editor for creating areas, built as Eclipse plugin with LWJGL used to render the scenes in 3D with OpenGL (as basic cubes and spheres until we get somebody who can draw at least those stick figures). It's also just a draft, but getting better every day.

Now, I think we (though I'm again speaking only for myself) are committed enough to make this thing happen, so it would probably be right time to setup an open-source project for this.. I'm a bit hesitant about releasing the code to public until I've got a working alpha (as the interfaces might change a lot and cause unnecessary confusion), but at least we would have some central place for this. Also, I think that my posts don't really belong here, because they are not so much rpg-related - so it would be nice to have a place where we could discuss purely technical (programming-wise) issues to not to clutter this thread with them..

So, that's what I've been up to - let me know how you feel about this whole open-source thing and I'll set us up to sourceforge or some other place if everybody agrees.. :)

lol...yeah. I've been elbow-deep in code myself. I've been writing a special MUD code that will support objects graphically as well as textually. Actually, it ain't that special, but there aren't too many code bases out there that support a graphical MUD client (that isn't tile-based) so I have to tinker.

I'm strugglin' to work my flexible environment into a MUD though. The MMORPG (obscenely huge graphic goodness) handles it easily because each hex square is it's own environment. A wall automatically changes the area's around it to create "rooms". Squares can be "occupied" by walls to divide areas in ways that are smoother and more natural.

With a MUD, as I'm sure some of you know, characters move from "room" to "room". This makes movement more a matter of moving across a map than moving through a room. This really throws a monkeywrench in my whole player-based world building. Now, I have to expect players to create entire rooms instead of just making a wall or a bench. This means players will have to "write" room descriptions (and modify the decriptions of adjacent rooms). It's somewhat cruel really, that certain things that I can make work so easily in the complex version of the game work disasterously in the simpler version. What's particularly vexing is the fact that it seems to be the cooler features that get cut.

Oh well...so the MUD won't be fall-down sweet. It still serves to prove that the core programming works. I'll put bells and whistles on later.

Ohhh but I abhor back-to-back posting...then again. If you use the forge as a drawing-board, you're bound to walk the same roads over and over again...

This time, it's about something far less interesting than combat, familial and social bonds, crafting objects, or even balancing a fantasy diet.

Need a name for the "Beta" of this program.

The story of the MUD is pretty much vanilla fantasy...just to establish the groundwork that'll go into the interesting one.


Hmmm..."The interesting one"...not a bad working title.

Anyway...anyone have any "Vanilla Fantasy" titles in 'em?

Not to be rude, but have you considered starting some new threads for this concept? I think you could get a lot more milage if you split out some of these concepts for further development.

Mike

I think so too. One good idea has become many and this is a hard place to track them all. Besides...this thread has performed it's intended purpose of determining what needs to happen with regards to design. As for the actual games...they should have their own threads. That becomes apparent as the MUD starts to grow into it's own entity seperate from the MMORPG. Gameplay, design...even content are becoming entirely different for the two games that this game engine spawned.

Sorry if anyone's been tracking this for updates, but I'll most likely take the rest of these designs to seperate threads. I appreciate everyone's help. I've "forged" (sweet god why?) a very solid program out of these breainstorms to not only design a RPG and a MUD, but also an engine that turns downloadable PDF's into playable games for networked or distance gaming.

I think we've worked this corner long enough...the actual games that are coming out of this thing are getting their own threads. If I get the same kind of help in the individual games as I've received while refining the game engine, this project promises to be a lotta fun.

Wow, who'd have thought this monster would have pushed it's way to the surface again?

I started working on it in a separate thread that dealt specifically with the beta version of the game, but it seems that once you go from theory to actual implementation, people get excited and things start happening very quickly.

We are now actively developing this project. Anyone interested in contributing to it can email me.

I'm considering lumping all my projects together with the projects of some of my colleagues. We're all working together to get published and together we're making some almost frighteningly impressive headway.

I'm hesitant to say it, but I suppose that the medley of genius and lunacy we've assembled (those who are assembled that is...those who aren't, join the asylum) is almost a company. It just takes someone saying it to make it official.

If no one objects, I guess we'll start calling ourselves Miscreant Games. Looking at a cross-section of the talent we've been able to trap in our little pitcher plant, it definately fits.

So yes, the wheels in the miscreant engine are actually turning and anyone who wants to ride should post to this forum.

I'm still somewhat torn as to whether I should just keep posting here (all the info is still relevant to the original system and the theory behind it..moreso than before as the actual implementation is being done in a closed forum) or whether I should start posting multiple threads elsewhere?

Anyway, that's really a question for another day. For now, we're back, we're doing some big things, and I would just like to thank everyone who's been keeping up with this for helping us get this far.

First of all, I didn't read the whole thread. It's just too much text and too much info crammed into it, so please forgive me if I'm asking questions that have already been answered.

Well, I'm defintaley very interested in this whole project and while I might not be qualified to help out with any actual developing (it does sound tempting though - I am a programmer/software developer/computer science student after all) I would be very happy about a place where I can keep track of the project and its status. A homepage of some sort would be nice. I don't believe you're planning to make this OpenSource and take it to sourceforge or something... Still I would like to have a homepage with the Design Goals, current status, screenshots, whatnot.

I'd just like to know more about the actual development. Is there something I cold help with, what are you planning to with it, how are you planning to do it, etc.

With regards to what we plan on doing with it, it honestly hasn't been discussed much. I was thinking of using it to pull attention to some of our pen-and-paper games (come for the MUD, but stay for the quality RPGs).

As far as "where we are in development". We're moving along at a nice pace, bt we're still at what I'd call the "beginning". I'll be putting up a site pretty soon, and it'll have news on what we're doing but I'd have to ask everyone involved how much of the development is public. I don't really have a problem with sharing the ruleset, or the combat system, or anything that could be duplicated with a pencil and dice, but some (i.e. all) of the more sensitive programming isn't wholly mine, and I'm not really the one to ask when it comes to sharing that. I've measured myself by the programmers on board and I think I'm best suited to just designing the game. My code comes nowhere near theirs.

Of course, if you wanna join the project, then that's another story altogether. Drop me a line, or just post here.

Well, as I said, I'm pretty enthusiastic about the project and the whole idea behind it and I've been searching for a project for a while now. I must admit that I am a bit rusty so I might not live up to your standards and I might not be qualified for the type of work that needs doing. I still don't know what kind of technologies you'll be using or what platform this is going to run on (I'm a fanatical Linux user so I'd vote for a platform independant approach). I don't even know what kind of interface this game will use. I also can't judge about how difficult the work to be done is and what sort of knowledge will be required. While being very interested in AI, for example, I know next to nothing about actually developing it.
You also said you're thinking about founding a company and I'm planning on contributing on a more casual level.

So I really don't know if I'm your man but I am eager to learn as much about the project as I can and maybe help if I am able to.

lol...well, it's a pretty casual company, so don't worry about that. It's pretty much just a bunch of guys pooling their efforts to get their stuff published. We're more concerned with getting it on shelves than making household names of ourselves as individuals, so we don't mind putting our work out under an umbrella, so long as it gets out.

Also, it helps to have experts on-board. I might be terrible at layout, but we've got someone who's great at it. If you don't have the time to establish a riveting storyline for the game that showcases your amazing new system (i.e. "It's got robots...ummm, and they're really big"), then I'll take time out of my day to make that happen. It's structured kind of like the forge in that respect. "I'll help where I can when you need it and you can pay me back by helping where you can when I need it."

But PM me with your email address, lemme know how much you can help, and in what respects, and we'll see where we can fit you. Trust me, no one's turning down help so don't let the idea of "a company" scare you off. That's really just so that everyone's ideas are protected.

I suppose I should also open up the "What would you like to see in a computer RPG" element of this thread. We've got a lot of good ideas out of it, and I'd hate to finish just in time to realize how cool it would've been if only we'd done [blank] cool stuff [/blank].

So, if you actively contributed to this thread, or if you've been trolling, and decided to keep that sweet idea to yourself since there wasn't any activity on it anymore, go ahead and post. Trust me, this thing gets looked at pretty regularly and you know I'm taking notes.