Perhaps we worry too much about the world engine anyway.
All my favourite RPGs are the ones that flow like a good fantasy
novel. When done well, the story takes the users focus away from
the surroundings, and plants it directly on the story itself.
When you go to pains to make the user aware of the mechanics of
your game, it becomes sci-fi. I have never liked any sci-fi
that I have seen or read.

Note: By fantasy & sci-fi I do not refer to time-periods, merely
styles. Star Wars (epidodes 4,5,6) are fantasy. Star Wars
episode 1 & star trek are sci-fi.

In a fantasy game, the action would go like this:

"The mitey hero charged at the alien menace, waving his mitey
hero laser sword like a deranged baboon. He bravely ducked
the alien''s clumsy swipe and easily lopped his head off. Then
he made merry with some busty space wenches..."

The sci-fi game, however, goes like this:

"Sir SpazBoy put on his 16th century battle armour that provides
him with an X level of protection. He drew his double edged
sword thad does Y damage, and Q loaves of bread because he was
hungry. He inocculated himself against the flu, put on his
magic cape that doubles his speed and went to an inn where he
drank Z beers."


My point: Simplify mechanics, hide statistics and promote the
STORY

In RPG the best success is achieved when the player suspends his
disbelief and actually feels as if he/she is the main character.
No engine, no matter how sophisticated can achieve that.

(btw: sorry if this rant is off topic, it just came to me then
and I''m lacking sleep big time and stuff.)

----------
Erick: i think that all this talking and such is paining my head to astounding annoyance
Disco Love For Everyone

I find myself agreeing with you, about the sci-fi & fantasy regime. I found Dune to be of the fantasy genre more than the sci-fi. What you need is the ability for the player to feel a part of the game, the way you feel like you are in the novel. A good novel that I read never feels like I am ever reading the words. It is all images in my head doing everything for me...

A story should involve the player and as such, we should diverge from statistics and how we use them. This is kind of heading back to "What''s with stats" but I think most things here in the Game Design Corner (niche) are linked anyway... Less tedium and more abstraction. Instead of having a number for health, you should just have a bar. It is then up to the player to judge. Even better, just have a face with varying ammounts of gore or painful expressions. Then it is abstract and really would be up to the player to judge.

Pull the player in, use simple systems that don''t require a numeric value. This is what I believe as truth

-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
-Chris Bennett of Dwarfsoft
"The Philosophers' Stone of Programming Alchemy"
IOL (The list formerly known as NPCAI) - A GDNet production
Our Doc - The future of RPGs
Thanks to all the goblins over in our little Game Design Corner niche

Would you happen to remember which thread that was Paul? I cannot seem to recall, yet it has been mentioned to me by Ingenu from time to time.

-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
-Chris Bennett of Dwarfsoft
"The Philosophers' Stone of Programming Alchemy"
IOL (The list formerly known as NPCAI) - A GDNet production
Our Doc - The future of RPGs
Thanks to all the goblins over in our little Game Design Corner niche

Paul, you are rethinking the way Walt Disney thought years ago . If I am not mistaken, he is the one who started the idea of ''elastic'' characters. The idea is that we can''t really draw exact beings, so we have to emphasize their defining characteristics, one of them being the way to move.
This is why most animated 3D graphics characters suck big time, because the guy doing it assume that since the technology now allow us to create realistic models, then we can do realistic motion-captured animation... but most of the time, it jsut feels ''cold''. Well ... that''s what you are talking about, you have to give some elasticity to the animations.
I think there is something about that in the SIGGRAPH workshops, you would have to check it out. Or just check out any good book about drawing comics ! (there is a french one by a guy called Duc if I remember, an encyclopedia in two volumes, a must read for a comic artist).

About the sci-fi/fantasy :
Well, if you come to think about it, sci-fi means Science Fiction, which means a fiction based on scientific facts, isn''t it ? Fantasy being the opposite. We just assume that sci-fi is set in the future, and fantasy in the past.
But if you look at P&P RPG, you''ll see that limiting yourself to only those two definitions is not enough.
for instance, Conan the Barbarian is Dark Fantasy, while Tolkien is Medieval Fantasy, I think some old games that are more wargames than RPG are sometimes called Hard Science (usually very strict, with very real physics and scientific based stuff).
Cyberpunk is a genre on its own. It''s science taht ''could'' be, but not totally fantasy, and too dark to be called sci-fi (usually). The term used for Star Wars (as far as I know, in france at least) is space opera, which is very much what it is. The action goes from one planet to another jsut like the acts of an opera, with heroic battles, dramatic duels, love, honor, etc
mmm, I am probably forgetting some, but anyway, all this to say that yeah, SpazBoy is making a very good point here

but are we not off topic anyway ? Ah well, I guess you can cross this thread with the Toughness thread anyway.

youpla :-P

It''s not really motion that is the problem, it''s more about the way to recreate motion. Most computer graphic guys think that since there software kick a$s, and they can do so realistic graphics (as in you can''t tell the difference if you look at it), then they should as well use realistic motion. The problem is that it jsut doesn''t work as well as an "artistic" rendition of movement.

If you look at any comic (comic explains the phenomenon much better), the postitions of the bodies are all extremely exagerated, if you look at the amrican style, you can see every existing muscle existing and probably some yet unknown If you look at the way people fight, run, jump, all is exagerated, stretched, shrunk, etc. It''s hard to explain without a picture, but the basic concept is that trying to be ultra-realistic is not as succesfull in giving emotions as being caricatural...

Look at a guy like Spiderman, all the movement he do hen jumping, climbing, are stretched to the maximum, to give this impression of agility, speed, etc. Look at Batman fighting ... etc. It''s like watching a french movie gunfight and a John woo movie gunfight Sometimes reality just suck.

I think what you want to look at is comics drawing (I already mentioned Duc, a french artist. I think Vallejo has a book on the topic as well, and if I am not mistaken the artist of Sandman ? Not sure though, but look in any good comic shop)

youpla :-P