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I just realized something about my RPG habits


Nephil Thief

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Cumulatively, I've spent as much time devising and tweaking weird character builds as actually playing them.

 

With Angband variants, I hack at the game, or fiddle with preexisting skill systems... But abandon my characters out of boredom 90% of the time. I barely ever play my own Angband variant.

 

With BoE, I waste inordinate amounts of time on modeling PCs and parties, even though BoE's bugs and design flaws make most of it not matter.

 

... I don't want a game where you are an adventurer. I want a game where you train adventurers, and then send them out to do stuff.

 

Or maybe an RPG that is all plot, dialog, and skill allocation, with fighting managed by the game AI. Like, Blades of Exile meets Oregon Trail.

 

I wonder if this is just me being weird, or if there's actually a demand for such games.

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That reminds me of Spellforce. I played it a lot with a friend many years ago. There are dozens of skils to put points into, and characters automatically fight enemies on sight. There are RTS maps, but it is possible to totally ignore the base-building and sneak into the enemy camp to destroy everything (there are skills that make the character tear down houses much faster).

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  • 4 weeks later...

Kind of sounds like the ancient Microprose Master of Magic (iirc it came out about when Jeff got started, so really old.... :-p ). It's been a looong time since I've played but in addition to building up your cities & advancing your heroes, the combat was quite tactical with you moving various units & heroes around the battlefield. It was more than just a hack & slash or a Civilization style auto combat anyway.

 

I can't think of any RPG where you're the trainer sending out units to do battle. The closest that you may find is something like Civilization or Age of Empires where you've got the God level view, building up your civilization/cities & on a strategic level sending out units/armies to do battle for you. Even that though isn't exactly what you're talking about.

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Yeah, I know what you mean, but I'd imagine lots of people spend a while on their stat allocation and then just smash through the combat rather than worrying about tactics because it's easier.

 

Or maybe an RPG that is all plot, dialog, and skill allocation, with fighting managed by the game AI. Like, Blades of Exile meets Oregon Trail.

 

Excepting that instead of fighting there's detective work going on, that sounds like Black Closet. You play the president of the Student Council of a girls high school, and you send your minions out to stop things threatening the schools reputation, and don't really do anything personally in-game, just lots of stuff in plot.

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"... I don't want a game where you are an adventurer. I want a game where you train adventurers, and then send them out to do stuff."

 

That's the premise of Majesty except that games possible even more 'hands off'. It's an RTS: you build the stereotypical rpg town and post the bounties/rewards.

 

Probably not what you're looking for as there's no character building input from the player but it's one of the all time classic games so I thought I'd mention in case you weren't aware of it.

 

Can find the HD edition on GoG https://www.gog.com/game/majesty_gold_hd and it's often on sale on steam.

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  • 4 months later...

Mmm... I don't know about exact opposite - in Majesty, you don't pick up heros and drop them to where they need to be. You also don't assign your heros or peasants "tasks"; you either set a reward/explore flag and hope the heroes will go to it, or place a building to be built and your peasants go to it automatically.

 

Now, I haven't played Dungeon Keeper, but I have extensively played Majesty and judging from DK's wiki entry, they really don't sound alike at all.

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Dungeon Keeper 2 Is great also, Um, I can't think of a game more polar opposite(minor details aside) to majesty than dungeon keeper 1 or 2. Also they are made by Bullfrog, They make interesting games...

 

So I if the OP wants what he's asking for I might be able to email him warlords 2, I got it mounted ready to go if you want to sit down and tell us if its what your looking for? too tedious for me to mess with today.

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  • 4 weeks later...

I'm in the beginning stages of working on making an RPG with a friend that's heavily influenced by spiderweb games and its the sort of isometric story focused with turn based combat and such, but with what I think are improvements and elaborations on Jeff's formula, since why make your own game at all if you aren't trying to build upon what's been done and innovate or otherwise improve and enhance it to make something new and cool that isn't quite just a clone.

 

Geneforge like branched story with factions that have distinct paths, flavor wise is heavily influenced by Robert E. Howard's original Conan the Barbarian short stories (brilliant writing those are) and GRR Martin's Game of Thrones books, and also the old testament of the bible. Is actually set in a quasi biblical setting that's a heavily fictionalized version of our own World, Earth, not a new self contained fantasy world. It's set in a time before our written history but that roughly lines up with the early parts of the book of Genesis. Its set in the time before the flood. Supposed to be a trilogy and the flood happens in the third one because it's brought about by man to destroy the Nephlim.

 

another influence in this setting and story is the novel The Many Colored Land, and the rest of the books in that series. Was a scifi book that played with similar themes, but mine is more bloodshed and constant intense gory conflict like an 80s action flick like the original conan the barbarian movie with Arnold that is the atmosphere this is gonna have kinda. but not quite so derivative. will include some lovecraftian chtullu mythos elements, I think those are in the public domain and can be adapted freely right?

 

Another big influence on this setting

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I gotta start making tiles for the engine, even just a few basic filler ones so my programmer can see whats happening in order to tweak it and get it right and finish building it. so far is mostly conceptual work but he's got the basis of an isometric engine and I have like class system and character building and all kinds of that nuts and bolts [censored] already planned out although the internal details and math of those still needs to be worked out I have the structure envisioned and we just have to code it.

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