I would just like a role where I am not required to slaughter mindless minions to complete the game. All I want to do is solve puzzles and meet intelligent NPC''s.

-Chris Bennett of Dwarfsoft - Site:"The Philosophers' Stone of Programming Alchemy" - IOL
The future of RPGs - Thanks to all the goblins over in our little Game Design Corner niche
          

It would be great to be able to finish a story-based game w/ diplomacy and wit if the player so wanted to, or treachery and lies also.


"All you tough and all you see is all your life will ever be --Pink Floyd

"Though the course may change someimes the rivers always reach the sea" --Led Zeppelin

Need help? Well, go FAQ yourself.

Yeah, though I just finished pitching that idea to a friend and he didn''t get it. The response I got was "Would I rather influencing a political stance that would remove the goblin invasion, or would I rather be out whacking them away myself? Hmmm". He does have a point, so I pitched him this "What if you could do both? If you got bored of one, you could try the other? No harm in it?"... I think that is the issue

-Chris Bennett of Dwarfsoft - Site:"The Philosophers' Stone of Programming Alchemy" - IOL
The future of RPGs - Thanks to all the goblins over in our little Game Design Corner niche
          

WARNING: This post contains a shameless plug!

I agree that it would be nice to have an RPG which could be ''won'' without ever once resorting to violence. However most people would rather resort to bashing the poor little goblins over the head with a dirty great sword rather than trying to hold an intellgent conversation with them (ok maybe having an intellegent conversation with a goblin is an impossible task, but u know what I mean).

Producing am RPG where you couldn''t pick a fight with anyone, probably wouldn''t sell, but it would be nice to (sometimes) have the option of taking your enimy down rather than always having no choice but to fight him (or her, lets not be sexist here)

I would like to see an RPG that offers the option of completing the game without (except on rare occasions) resorting to a fight, but also at the same time, as Niphty said, if you did happen to kill a lot of one type of NPC (whether that type is an orcish horde, or the member of a gang) then the rest of that type are going to go on some kind of vendetta against you, probably to the point of hunting you down.. (this of course rases interesting questions like how can they find you.. some kind of rumour system where stories of where you''ve been recently can filter back to the ''gang'' responsible)

Ok, shameless plug time

_______n________ <- shameless plug.. (ok, bad ASCII art)
\______________/

I''m part of a team that is trying to produce an RPG (for fun not profit..) that tries to cater for this kind of behaviour, so that the player can complete the game without ever resorting to violence. The problem though is to make it challenging enough, without making it down right impossible. I think that finding the right balance for that is going to be difficult. At the moment a lot of the ''fight avoiding'' stratergy can only be to run away. (But thats probably because we havent done any where near enough thinking in that area...)

Obviously this brings up the whole issue of multiple story-lines.. since things may go very differntly later on in the game if you didnt bump off the goblins when you had the chance (They may actually put in an appearance and kill the big arch bady person without you having to touch a weapon... which would be quite good... *Mental note: Add this idea to design notebook*)

At the end of the day RPG''s should offer this choice.. the question is, why dont they?? is it lazyness on the part of the designers, or do they just think that no-one will take that option?

quote: Original post by dwarfsoft
He does have a point, so I pitched him this "What if you could do both? If you got bored of one, you could try the other? No harm in it?"... I think that is the issue

Yep, I agree. That is one of the most wonderful thing about the genre that starts w/ an R and ends w/ a G. It has potential to allow different roles in the same world. You could be a stealthy backstabber, a calm intellectual, or short-tempered and aggressive.






"All you tough and all you see is all your life will ever be --Pink Floyd

"Though the course may change someimes the rivers always reach the sea" --Led Zeppelin

Need help? Well, go FAQ yourself.

quote: Original post by NightWraith

WARNING: This post contains a shameless plug!

I agree that it would be nice to have an RPG which could be ''won'' without ever once resorting to violence. However most people would rather resort to bashing the poor little goblins over the head with a dirty great sword rather than trying to hold an intellgent conversation with them (ok maybe having an intellegent conversation with a goblin is an impossible task, but u know what I mean).

Producing am RPG where you couldn''t pick a fight with anyone, probably wouldn''t sell, but it would be nice to (sometimes) have the option of taking your enimy down rather than always having no choice but to fight him (or her, lets not be sexist here)

My main solution is that you let the violent player be as violent as he/she wants, but there should be severe consequences in the game for being such. Likewise, there should be consequences if someone finds out that the player is lying to them or betraying them.


"All you tough and all you see is all your life will ever be --Pink Floyd

"Though the course may change someimes the rivers always reach the sea" --Led Zeppelin

Need help? Well, go FAQ yourself.

Well I''m hoping (and I empasise HOPING) that that will be the case, a lot of it is a question of imbuing the NPC''s with the right level of AI and programming it correctly.. The plan is though that if the player takes out a certain ammount of a gangs members (or kills someone high up) or interfears in the buisness of the gang, then that gangs going to try and kill off the player. Similerly if he betrays someone then they''ve got to go after him... the biggest problem is getting this right, making the NPC''s intellegent enough to see that the player''s trying to frame them, etc.

It would also be quite good to get some NPC''s setting up the player in a similar manor...

One thing I would like to do is get a paticularly irate gang to ambush the player and things...

I think this is going slightly off topic now, so I''ll stop here

Explanation: I think people didn''t get my post about using both, and it showed when my friend said what I quoted. Basically, everybody thinks that when you go around saying ''End Goblin Genocide'' that you want to make a game with NO violence. Hell yeah we know that it wont sell if there is no violence. We know very well, all we want to do is add in a few more decisions and a fair bit of concequence for the players actions.

A funny concequence that I just thought of - Every time a player kills something, when they come out of the battle frenzy they throw up. Basically the killing of things causes physical and mental distress. If you want to know where this idea comes from then read some Katherine Kerr (Jill kills the evil bastard who can''t be killed by any MAN )

-Chris Bennett of Dwarfsoft - Site:"The Philosophers' Stone of Programming Alchemy" - IOL
The future of RPGs - Thanks to all the goblins over in our little Game Design Corner niche
          

I understood that you ment that the player could do both, depending on what he wanted to do. I was just adding to that in my post, saying that it would be nice to have the option of completing an RPG without ever killing anything. Would be very challenging I think (both to write that option in and to play it that way). I dont think many RGP player would choose to play that way.

I''m interested to know why we dont get that option in an RPG... or is that option available, but just too difficult for the player to play that way.. or what??

I think the throwing up thing would probably depend on how they killed the victim(s) if there''s severed limbs and mashed heads lying arround all over the place then the player is most likely to throw up.. If on the otherhand they stabbed them once then they''re not likely to.. its all a case of how much gore there is, and how much the players character has already been subjected to.