This is a sweet idea. I immediately think of role-playing Professor X of the X-Men. You could totally keep this an RPG if your goals were to build a team, coach and encourage the memebers, train with them, and when necessary fight with them. Your goal would be to stop a Magneto-like character and his evil plans. I think this would work, but you''d have to rethink a lot of standard RPG assumptions (like how and why XP works, how AI works, etc.)

I posted awhile back about the idea of sending your party off to different places, and this is just the kind of situation I imagined. Like Xavier, you might choose to personally involve yourself in some situations (the equivalent of encountering the badguy from time to time in a regular RPG); or you could let your agents (evil minions equivalents) tackle it.

I would have a concern, however, that hardcore RPG players would be a little put off if they weren''t the hero against a million that they typically are in a normal RPG. I''m also a strategy gamers, so I think it has interesting possibilities there as well. I think this would be a really interesting game to play.

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Just waiting for the mothership...

Hmmm.... so, like a meta-strategy game, huh?

I think this idea could really take off, if done right. It would open up a LOT of possibilities if it really mattered who you placed in certain situations. Like, if you place a strong diplomat in a battle situation, they will not likely succeed (or not as strongly as the warrior/leader that could be placed in the same situation). This same diplomat would be great in a treaty situation (if he didn''t die in the battle (: ).

Along these lines, perhaps the player shouldn''t be given obvious labels for each of the players... i.e., you don''t know who the diplomats, warriors, scientists, engineers, peons, priests(magicians?), etc. are... you only know their name or face, and must place them in situations in order to find out what their strengths and weaknesses are. By placing them in situations that utilize their strengths, they become better at their inherent skills (there''s your solution to XP). This way it''s not simply a matter of putting the square blocks in the square holes, you have to experiment to find out what attributes each character has. Optionally, a game can begin placing random attributes to your players, adding replay value.

Situations could also be somewhat vague in their description. The battle situation from before might come to some sort of stalemate eventually, becoming a treaty situation, and that diplomat would come in handy after all. Likewise, characters that are involved in a diplomatic situation gain some skills associated with it, so the warrior would gain some skills from his experience in drafting the treaty, but would not perform as well as the character that is inherently good as a diplomat.

I think it would benefit to gray-scale that distinction between good and evil, also. A storyline would still be included, but your goal would be to advance your Kingdom or Empire or Community. Players who want to think they are evil, can be evil. Players who want to think they are good, can be good. If done right, both of these can be in the same storyline. It''s simply a matter of perspective. But I think there should be more than one opposing force (though they may band together).

Some people might say, "If you want to build an empire, play Civilization (I/II)". But with the feature of characters playing roles, the game becomes a lot more than ''deploy-your-citizens-around-the-world''. Plus, the game doesn''t have to be as high-level as Civ was, nor span across such a long amount of time. And it could have a storyline!

I think this kind of idea would be a great way to reduce micro-management while still keeping the strategy element.

Anyways... just a few ideas (possibilities, if you will)... there are a dozen ways you can implement this "planner" idea (proof of a good idea?). If anyone decides they want to take this idea and run with it, I''d be willing to lend a hand programming it, just contact me with your approach to it (who knows, you might make a whole new genre (: ).

kbdamm@hotmail.com


"Man is the only animal that laughs and weeps; for he is the only animal that is struck with the difference between what things are and what they ought to be."
        --William Hazlitt