Hey everyone. I replied to a few posts and felt I should continue with my train of thought in a new post. I just wanted to relay what I feel is one of the greatest aspects to RPG design. The dynamics of the game world itself. As a designer I sit down and figure out my game world before I even begin work on the design of the gameplay or game issues. I figure out what type of world the player is going to be thrown into. What is the scope of exploration. What cultures and races are inhabiting my game world. What is technological aspect of this world. What is the geography of the world. Does evironmental changes such as snow, wind, etc. play a part in my game. I just feel from talking to some people and playing a few games that claim to be RPG''s that this aspect has been under developed or lost. Granted this is just my feeling. What does everyone else think?

A roleplaying game universe I designed a while back had the aspects of multiple worlds with different environments for each. The gameplay possibilities are endless. People are too stuck in there fantasy only or sci-fi only ideals to phathom the concept of combining the two.

I''m glad to see I''m not alone in my quest to create or find the ultimate roleplaying game.

And Dwarfsoft I too agree with your statement. Isn''t the role a major aspect of RPG games. Hence ROLE playing game. People are too afraid to let there own selves go and take up a new an exciting role. I roleplay myself every day. It''s called life. RPG''s give me a chance to be someone I''m not and do something I normally can''t do.

Exactly Nazrix. I feel CRPG''s don''t even come close to allowing people to resolve the same problem using different solutions. I would go even further than making the solutions class based like in your example. The engine I''ve been designing for a while will hopefully allow players to use come up there own solutions to a problem. Say the character gets to a chasm that is 15 feet wide but drops down several hundred feet. The obvious would be to jump the gap but if a character wasn''t able to jump it then they would have to come up with some other solution to get across. This could even involve a method that would take weeks to accomplish. Put time constraints on the character and hear the gears start to crank as they have to think for once instead of doing the obvious.

Most CRPGs end up being games, rather than game universes. They seem to be very linear and strictly structured in most case. You have to do to get the great axe of to kill the greater lich, etc. Failure to do something in order even resurrects objectives already done in some games. There is so little flexibility in most games they shouldn''t even be considered role playing games.

I really thought I was going off the deep end with my ultra flexible and detailed design for a new game core, but it is good to see others like the idea of good role playing rather than basic hack and slash, and lots of flexibility.

I do have on question though, what would you think of a single game core (C library file maybe) that would contain all the rules for a single flexible system that would be available for programmers to make games from? Basically I think it would be similar to making AD&D rulebooks and allowing lots of end users to make adventures for it.

Currently I am working on designing and coding a game core that would work like the above. I was wondering if I made it a GNU project, what my chances of recruiting others would be?

Relic I''m currently working on a group of utils that along with my game engine do essetially what you are doing at least from the little I know about your game core. But I think we have the same idea and are just manifesting it in different ways. I''m glad to see someone else in creating something along the same lines as I am. I would give you more info on what I am doing but I don''t have alot done and I don''t want to promise to be able to do something I''m not. But if you would like to discuss our projects and maybe we can work together drop me an email.