What would aid computer roleplaying games to become more like P&P dungeon master run games? The main difference between the two mediums is that games masters are (should) be good at "inventing" original & appropriate responses to player actions and creating an entertaining 'dramatic' experience for the players. Computers are not very good at doing this (yet?). So what techniques would help in creating a system which is more like a human run roleplaying game? Flexibility ------------ This is one of the most important differences between a computer and a human run game, the human run game does not need to be as concrete.. it is created with words.. the DM can create a new monster, or a Non Player Character in the blink of an eye.. DM: "there is a large bloated figure slumped in the corner of the room".. with the change of a few adjectives this creature could be anything from a drunk, zombie, or even a giant teddy bear. A computer has far more difficulty in this area, first of all most computer games would need to show you what this was .. unless there was fog to obscure your view. Secondly it would need to be able to apply and display a large range of visual / audio characteristics to this object to change what it was. So Graphical Flexibility is important, a morphing graphics engine (as recently seen in Black & White) is an good asset in this area.. as it would allow you to (pre)-morph a basic figure into a variety of sizes and shapes. If this was combined with a flexible system of "gameplay" attributes (speed, attacks, health etc.) there would be a lot of power to such a system.. For instance, you could create three different types of dragon just by modifying a few properties.. a [Some cheesy examples] green dragon = 100% size, green tinted version of skin + ability to breathe fire + GOAL protect trees. red dragon = 200% size, red tinted texture map + ability to conjure lighting clouds + GOAL kill "heroes". small gold dragon = 45% size gold skin, ability to turn things into gold, GOAL eat local wildlife. Appropriateness ---------------- Is this situation appropriate for the game world / player's abilities etc. This decision can be easily made by a DM, but a computer needs a good logic / rule / approximation ?? based system to decide if something is appropriate. Let the computer do the work, for instance in Arcanum the world editor allows the designers to Spray terrain type tiles to create a world map, and has an procedure which automatically blends between say "tundra" and "desert" in an appropriate manner. So this kind of predefined procedure could be applied to a game which generates its own terrain on the fly / at the start of the game. What about on the level of ingame occurances? [Any ideas?] Imagination ------------ This is the third area. How to make the computer seem to be imaginitive? Whilst bearing in mind the other criteria (appropriatness, uniqueness etc). /End Post/ Edited by - Ketchaval on May 1, 2001 5:11:02 PM

I see a conflict forming up between how much random you allow and how much control you want for yourself over the game world.

- Too much random and the game stops making much sense. (giant goblins, smart ogres, random levels that look remarcably similar (Nethack) etc.) This is overFlexibility.

- Too much control and the game is quite small (cause everything has to be designed), replayability drops, and you have to reuse some carefully designed monster just to fill up enough game space to be able to ship the game (all goblins are green, small, weak, all ogres use clubs, the ground textures keep repeating, etc.) This is overAppropriateness.



A compromise must be reached between these two. This can be done if the world designer can choose the limits while the randomisation (is that a word?) engine must randomise levels, characters, objects, but within the limits imposed by the designer.



I started a while ago a roguelike game. It had some nice random object generation features. All objects had a quite a large number of descriptions flags, material description, price, weight, chance of generation. When the game had to generate a random object in a random level, it just generated objects with the common_object flag, and some min/max value, depending on level difficulty. But, the game had special locations, that were linked by corridors with standard randomized level rooms. In these locations, I could ask for something as vague as random objects with the common_object flag and value between 200 and 500 gold pieces, or as specific as objects made of gold, with value greater than 800, that were weapons or armor pieces, and were specific to the paladin class. In short, while level designing, I could easily choose how much freedom the random object generator has. I could ask it everything between letting him choose whatever object it likes and making him generate a specific unique object.

The same approach could be used for level generation, quest generation, etc.

What do you think ?

Guess who that AP was..