Your dream RPG

[Agesilaus]

An expanded version of Teudogar set in the Hellenic world roughly 400 years prior would be great.

ahem... then why did you set your game in the heroic age rather than the much cooler classical period?

I initially planned to make a game set in the Peloponnesos during the early 4th century, but I decided to make a simpler game first. There's a certain incident that happened in the 4th c. that I think would make for a great, geneforge inspired game, but I didn't want to screw it up because of my inexperience.

The original scope of the Theseus game was much simpler. Find out that your dad is the king of Athens, kill bandits and monsters as you walk to Athens, game ends when you get there. It has ballooned considerably since then because I wanted a lot of choice & consequences/factions, but it's been a good learning experience.

 

[Kyl Von Kull]

I initially planned to make a game set in the Peloponnesos during the early 4th century, but I decided to make a simpler game first. There's a certain incident that happened in the 4th c. that I think would make for a great, geneforge inspired game, but I didn't want to screw it up because of my inexperience.

The original scope of the Theseus game was much simpler. Find out that your dad is the king of Athens, kill bandits and monsters as you walk to Athens, game ends when you get there. It has ballooned considerably since then because I wanted a lot of choice & consequences/factions, but it's been a good learning experience.

Hmm, Timocrates of Rhodes and his ten thousand Persian archers? Or maybe doing the same kind of underhanded work for Lysander, like rumor mongering your namesake onto the throne? Cinadon’s conspiracy?

Too bad somebody else already made an “RPG” named Hellenica.

 

[Cael]

Would love to have Magic Candle redone in modern graphics AND NOTHING ELSE. And then sit back and watch the soy boys scream and squeal and cry.

No quest log, no quest pointer, absolutely no blatant clues.

 

[Agesilaus]

I initially planned to make a game set in the Peloponnesos during the early 4th century, but I decided to make a simpler game first. There's a certain incident that happened in the 4th c. that I think would make for a great, geneforge inspired game, but I didn't want to screw it up because of my inexperience.

The original scope of the Theseus game was much simpler. Find out that your dad is the king of Athens, kill bandits and monsters as you walk to Athens, game ends when you get there. It has ballooned considerably since then because I wanted a lot of choice & consequences/factions, but it's been a good learning experience.

Hmm, Timocrates of Rhodes and his ten thousand Persian archers? Or maybe doing the same kind of underhanded work for Lysander, like rumor mongering your namesake onto the throne? Cinadon’s conspiracy?

Too bad somebody else already made an “RPG” named Hellenica.

Very good, it is contained in that list. I doubt someone is going to beat me to the punch, but I don't want to discuss it too much until the Theseus game is done and I'm free to start something new. I'm definitely looking forward to starting from the ground up again and dealing with a better defined historical period.

 

[Sykar]

My dream Sci-Fi RPG containing:

1.) A wide variety of races, belief systems, culture, etc. to chose from also affecting the starting location. A bit like the Origin stories from DA:O but better and not coming together for the same plot at the end and instead experiencing the plot from mulitple points of view.
2.) Class free similar to Daggerfall with attribute system similar to D&D 5th edition, Perks and Traits similar like FO 1/2 adapted to that setting. Not many levels to be gotten, at most 20, probably only 10 to keep relative powerlevel close enough that even a level 1 enemy can still kill you of you get too cocky. I always hated it when lower level content and enemies become irrelevant. Or make levels very gradual.
3.) "Magic" similar to that of Anarchy Online where nanites and the operation of them give a wide variety of applications where you can specialize in things like deconstruction, construction, regeneration/repair, mind affecting, energy transfer, etc. with corresponding skills of course
4.) Experience system similar to the Oddity system of Underrail but more refined or the experience system of Vampire:Bloodlines.
5.) Ground based missions, hunting for crew, information, jobs or freelancing, etc. utilizing a variety of vehicles
6.) Fully destructible environment and free aiming (no MMO tab targeting, I hate this shit)
7.) Destroying environment can have severe consequences. Leveling that police station over there for shits and giggles? Have fun running away from the local or maybe even planetary authorities.
8.)You get your own spacecraft and a party of up to 8 people. More people won't always be better since detection is a big part of the game and there would be plenty of circumstances where you want to avoid detection at all costs. Some party members might be not very useful for ground missions or certain types of. Whether you use the spacecraft just for transportation or start a business, legitimate or otherwise, is up to you. There would be a variety available giving more living space and therefore more potential party members but also have different types of firepower, speed, stealth/detection, etc.
9.) More complex outcomes of combat besides kill or be killed. NPCs have at least a basic survival instinct and might either run away or surrender or negotiate.
10.) A large system or galaxy to explore. Managing resources like fuel and getting access to various spaceports which is NOT a given is up to you.
11.) Several to some degree exclusive factions/companies which have high and specific requirements just to enter and even higher requirements to gain ranks. You can also act as an independent contractor which leaves you free to act and do missions for whomever you see fit but also berefts you of certain benefits you could get by joining a faction/company.
12.) Loot is varied but instead of just getting another Laser Pistol +x you would get different types of Laser Pistols which have very different strengths and weaknesses from the one you already have which can be further enhanced with a modification system. This is again to keep the relative powerlevel in check. Exceptionally powerful weapons, armor, shields and the like will have big drawbacks like huge ammo consumption, heat problems, malfunctions, charge up time before firing, etc.
13.) Scarcity of consumables like health restoration. Also no instant recovery, all forms of recovery take time including anti-venom medicine for example. This is left to nanite manipulation which has its own drawback. Also different races have need of different consumables.
14.) Implant systems somewhat similar to Shadowrun divided into two general categories, bio-mods which improve you moderately with relatively low drawbacks but long recovery time and very expensive and cybernetics which can give you drastic increase of for example muscle strength but with severe drawbacks like having to keep them up to date and regular maintenance so they can be quite a hassle. As outlined earlier they force you into a long recovery time making you potentially miss out on certain lucrative missions and opportunities.
15.) A news system telling you where you might find opportunities and employment but also comments on events related to the main story and potentially some fluff which may or not be connected to the main plot or side plot.
16.) Various settings like Ironman, randomized loot or hand placed loot, etc.

 

[Cael]

Just remembered this old gem:

Pretty it up, make it bigger, more in depth, with more fun stuff (weapons, armour, ships, etc.) and a RPG style skill system and it would wipe the floor with just about every other cRPG out there.

 

[Cael]

Also i will go punish sjws a lot in the game,no good ending for their faction/nation

Civ4. Age of Ice scenario.

Anyone going the sjw route gets their capital (and likely only city) blown into orbit.

 

[Lurker47]

-Desert biome.
-Consequences more interesting than the choices themselves or even the initial conflicts (obviously, I'd like them all to be interesting to a degree)
-Turn-based (maybe something to do with a TCG system)
-No voice acting.
-Unique take on sci-fi. Actually give bullshit made up elements some weight, functionality, and identity and create a plausible scientific environment revolving around the stuff you just pulled out of your ass. Everything else is realistic.
-Journal system.
-Open-ended character progression- lots of number-crunching and trees per level.
-A built-in alignment system.

Also, I can't believe I forgot this but ending slides are an absolute must. I love those damn things.

 

[Generic-Giant-Spider]

Darklands 2.

 

[PhantasmaNL]

Turnbased Vampire tM-B, handcrafted by Golden Era.

 

[Ninjerk]

I have had many ideas for this sort of thing, but I recently read a number of things that have contributed to certain ideas I had about a FO/JA2-like game set during one of the many wars of the late 19th or early 20th century:

Spoiler

"I feel particularly close to both the author and the subject of this book. I met Boris de Schloezer in Kev, in 1918, as we converged in teh capital of the Ukrainian Republic among the multitudes fleeing the famine and cold of Petrograd and Moscow. Schloezer, his widowed sister Tatian Schloezer-Scriabin (Scriabin died in 1915), and her children...were guests of the Kiev industrialist Balachowsky, who was a friend and champion of Scriabin. I stayed at the same house, which was the only 'skyscraper' in Kiev (it rose six stories and dominated the broad expanse of the Dnieper River). Such a conspicuous building was an obvious target for requisition by various military forces active in the area during the Civil War. (Kiev had changed hands seventeen times in 3 years.) To protect ourselves against intrusian, we organized a Scriabin Society, and, amazingly enough, the Red Army and some Ukrainian revolutionary groups actually respected our Society as a legitimate shield. At one point an aggressive raiding party of the Soviet military attempted to dislodge us. I remember the intruders as a curiously mixed group led by an officer who carried a tennis racket. During the peculiarly internecine struggle, I developed a certain expertise in handling various feuding factions and was particularly adept in confronting the Bolsheviks, with whom I even used the technique of dialectical materialism. However, my efforts did not avail with the tennis-playing Bolshevik officer, who gave us twenty-four hours to clear out of the 'skyscraper.' In desperation, I sent off a telegram to Lenin, asking for his intercession as head of the Council of People's Commissars at the Kremlin. 'While Moscow is erecting a monument in honor of the great composer Scriabin,' my telegram read, 'a squad of the Red Army is trying to evict his widow and her children from the apartment they occupy in Kiev. Please intercede for the sake of Russian culture.' I knew that Tatiana Schloezer-Scriabin was not legally married to Scriabin because his first wife refused a divorce, but such legalistic niceties would be no obstacle to action for a revolutionary regime. I never found out whether Lenin actually made a ruling on my appeal, but we were left alone, and the tennis-playing officer never bothered us again."

Spoiler

Of all the problems of military organization associated with the mass conscription of the peasantry, none was as serious, or had as many consequences for the civilian sector, as the difficulties of military supply. The decision to maintain a Red Army of five million soldiers, rather than one or two million, necessitated the militarization of the Soviet economy (War Communism) to supply it with food, uniforms, boots, weapons, transport and medical services. But the Red Army grew much faster than the productive capacity of the economy. Material shortages in the army increased. Living conditions deteriorated. Diseases spread. Discipline broke down. And desertion accelerated out of control, so that hastily mobilized - and often untrained - reinforcements had increasingly to be sent to the frontline units, although these were precisely those most likely to desert.

Spoiler

In political terms, most of the reinforcements were also poorly equipped. Few had anything but the dimmest notion of why - and whom - they were fighting. There was little party agitation in the units according to most reports, and what took place was all too quickly broken down into free-for-all meetings (mitingovanie), at which it was common to hear soldiers reject outright the authority of officers and political commissars, in the revolutionary spirit of the early partisan detachments. 144 Not surprisingly, the front-line units could be severely weakened by such reinforcements, especially if the latter were taken from regions close to the front, where the peasantry was hostile to the military authorities. A good example was the 202nd Artillery Brigade of the 23rd Division (9th Army), at the core of which stood a Communist brigade and a number of volunteer workers. Having suffered heavy losses in August 1919, it was reinforced by local peasant conscripts from Saratov province, "most of whom were infected by Green elements [deserters]". During a subsequent attack, two hundred of the peasant conscripts broke off from the main force, killed the political commissar of the brigade, and deserted to the enemy. The result was further losses, and a collapse in the morale of the rest of the troops, necessitating the break-up and reformation of the whole brigade.

Imagine, if you will, a game with not only a physical combat dimension, but also one in which advantages/disadvantages (purchased at character creation) and knowledge of political and philosophical systems could play a part in party organization. Conscripted into a unit comprised mostly of peasants? Use your knowledge of folk wisdom and even balaika or garmon playing to convince them to overthrow the commissar and take command of the unit yourself! Are you a highly educated orator? Rhetorically outwit the commissar and rise in the Bolshevik ranks--who knows, perhaps you can even usurp the exasperated Bolshevik leadership! Or maybe you're totally selfish, in which case you volunteer for frontline service and sneak off to sell your gun and uniform repeatedly and amass a small fortune for yourself.

 

[ERYFKRAD]

I have had many ideas for this sort of thing, but I recently read a number of things that have contributed to certain ideas I had about a FO/JA2-like game set during one of the many wars of the late 19th or early 20th century:

Spoiler

"I feel particularly close to both the author and the subject of this book. I met Boris de Schloezer in Kev, in 1918, as we converged in teh capital of the Ukrainian Republic among the multitudes fleeing the famine and cold of Petrograd and Moscow. Schloezer, his widowed sister Tatian Schloezer-Scriabin (Scriabin died in 1915), and her children...were guests of the Kiev industrialist Balachowsky, who was a friend and champion of Scriabin. I stayed at the same house, which was the only 'skyscraper' in Kiev (it rose six stories and dominated the broad expanse of the Dnieper River). Such a conspicuous building was an obvious target for requisition by various military forces active in the area during the Civil War. (Kiev had changed hands seventeen times in 3 years.) To protect ourselves against intrusian, we organized a Scriabin Society, and, amazingly enough, the Red Army and some Ukrainian revolutionary groups actually respected our Society as a legitimate shield. At one point an aggressive raiding party of the Soviet military attempted to dislodge us. I remember the intruders as a curiously mixed group led by an officer who carried a tennis racket. During the peculiarly internecine struggle, I developed a certain expertise in handling various feuding factions and was particularly adept in confronting the Bolsheviks, with whom I even used the technique of dialectical materialism. However, my efforts did not avail with the tennis-playing Bolshevik officer, who gave us twenty-four hours to clear out of the 'skyscraper.' In desperation, I sent off a telegram to Lenin, asking for his intercession as head of the Council of People's Commissars at the Kremlin. 'While Moscow is erecting a monument in honor of the great composer Scriabin,' my telegram read, 'a squad of the Red Army is trying to evict his widow and her children from the apartment they occupy in Kiev. Please intercede for the sake of Russian culture.' I knew that Tatiana Schloezer-Scriabin was not legally married to Scriabin because his first wife refused a divorce, but such legalistic niceties would be no obstacle to action for a revolutionary regime. I never found out whether Lenin actually made a ruling on my appeal, but we were left alone, and the tennis-playing officer never bothered us again."

Spoiler

Of all the problems of military organization associated with the mass conscription of the peasantry, none was as serious, or had as many consequences for the civilian sector, as the difficulties of military supply. The decision to maintain a Red Army of five million soldiers, rather than one or two million, necessitated the militarization of the Soviet economy (War Communism) to supply it with food, uniforms, boots, weapons, transport and medical services. But the Red Army grew much faster than the productive capacity of the economy. Material shortages in the army increased. Living conditions deteriorated. Diseases spread. Discipline broke down. And desertion accelerated out of control, so that hastily mobilized - and often untrained - reinforcements had increasingly to be sent to the frontline units, although these were precisely those most likely to desert.

Spoiler

In political terms, most of the reinforcements were also poorly equipped. Few had anything but the dimmest notion of why - and whom - they were fighting. There was little party agitation in the units according to most reports, and what took place was all too quickly broken down into free-for-all meetings (mitingovanie), at which it was common to hear soldiers reject outright the authority of officers and political commissars, in the revolutionary spirit of the early partisan detachments. 144 Not surprisingly, the front-line units could be severely weakened by such reinforcements, especially if the latter were taken from regions close to the front, where the peasantry was hostile to the military authorities. A good example was the 202nd Artillery Brigade of the 23rd Division (9th Army), at the core of which stood a Communist brigade and a number of volunteer workers. Having suffered heavy losses in August 1919, it was reinforced by local peasant conscripts from Saratov province, "most of whom were infected by Green elements [deserters]". During a subsequent attack, two hundred of the peasant conscripts broke off from the main force, killed the political commissar of the brigade, and deserted to the enemy. The result was further losses, and a collapse in the morale of the rest of the troops, necessitating the break-up and reformation of the whole brigade.

Imagine, if you will, a game with not only a physical combat dimension, but also one in which advantages/disadvantages (purchased at character creation) and knowledge of political and philosophical systems could play a part in party organization. Conscripted into a unit comprised mostly of peasants? Use your knowledge of folk wisdom and even balaika or garmon playing to convince them to overthrow the commissar and take command of the unit yourself! Are you a highly educated orator? Rhetorically outwit the commissar and rise in the Bolshevik ranks--who knows, perhaps you can even usurp the exasperated Bolshevik leadership! Or maybe you're totally selfish, in which case you volunteer for frontline service and sneak off to sell your gun and uniform repeatedly and amass a small fortune for yourself.

Man I'd love a decent condotierri game.

 

[Ninjerk]

I have had many ideas for this sort of thing, but I recently read a number of things that have contributed to certain ideas I had about a FO/JA2-like game set during one of the many wars of the late 19th or early 20th century:

Spoiler

"I feel particularly close to both the author and the subject of this book. I met Boris de Schloezer in Kev, in 1918, as we converged in teh capital of the Ukrainian Republic among the multitudes fleeing the famine and cold of Petrograd and Moscow. Schloezer, his widowed sister Tatian Schloezer-Scriabin (Scriabin died in 1915), and her children...were guests of the Kiev industrialist Balachowsky, who was a friend and champion of Scriabin. I stayed at the same house, which was the only 'skyscraper' in Kiev (it rose six stories and dominated the broad expanse of the Dnieper River). Such a conspicuous building was an obvious target for requisition by various military forces active in the area during the Civil War. (Kiev had changed hands seventeen times in 3 years.) To protect ourselves against intrusian, we organized a Scriabin Society, and, amazingly enough, the Red Army and some Ukrainian revolutionary groups actually respected our Society as a legitimate shield. At one point an aggressive raiding party of the Soviet military attempted to dislodge us. I remember the intruders as a curiously mixed group led by an officer who carried a tennis racket. During the peculiarly internecine struggle, I developed a certain expertise in handling various feuding factions and was particularly adept in confronting the Bolsheviks, with whom I even used the technique of dialectical materialism. However, my efforts did not avail with the tennis-playing Bolshevik officer, who gave us twenty-four hours to clear out of the 'skyscraper.' In desperation, I sent off a telegram to Lenin, asking for his intercession as head of the Council of People's Commissars at the Kremlin. 'While Moscow is erecting a monument in honor of the great composer Scriabin,' my telegram read, 'a squad of the Red Army is trying to evict his widow and her children from the apartment they occupy in Kiev. Please intercede for the sake of Russian culture.' I knew that Tatiana Schloezer-Scriabin was not legally married to Scriabin because his first wife refused a divorce, but such legalistic niceties would be no obstacle to action for a revolutionary regime. I never found out whether Lenin actually made a ruling on my appeal, but we were left alone, and the tennis-playing officer never bothered us again."

Spoiler

Of all the problems of military organization associated with the mass conscription of the peasantry, none was as serious, or had as many consequences for the civilian sector, as the difficulties of military supply. The decision to maintain a Red Army of five million soldiers, rather than one or two million, necessitated the militarization of the Soviet economy (War Communism) to supply it with food, uniforms, boots, weapons, transport and medical services. But the Red Army grew much faster than the productive capacity of the economy. Material shortages in the army increased. Living conditions deteriorated. Diseases spread. Discipline broke down. And desertion accelerated out of control, so that hastily mobilized - and often untrained - reinforcements had increasingly to be sent to the frontline units, although these were precisely those most likely to desert.

Spoiler

In political terms, most of the reinforcements were also poorly equipped. Few had anything but the dimmest notion of why - and whom - they were fighting. There was little party agitation in the units according to most reports, and what took place was all too quickly broken down into free-for-all meetings (mitingovanie), at which it was common to hear soldiers reject outright the authority of officers and political commissars, in the revolutionary spirit of the early partisan detachments. 144 Not surprisingly, the front-line units could be severely weakened by such reinforcements, especially if the latter were taken from regions close to the front, where the peasantry was hostile to the military authorities. A good example was the 202nd Artillery Brigade of the 23rd Division (9th Army), at the core of which stood a Communist brigade and a number of volunteer workers. Having suffered heavy losses in August 1919, it was reinforced by local peasant conscripts from Saratov province, "most of whom were infected by Green elements [deserters]". During a subsequent attack, two hundred of the peasant conscripts broke off from the main force, killed the political commissar of the brigade, and deserted to the enemy. The result was further losses, and a collapse in the morale of the rest of the troops, necessitating the break-up and reformation of the whole brigade.

Imagine, if you will, a game with not only a physical combat dimension, but also one in which advantages/disadvantages (purchased at character creation) and knowledge of political and philosophical systems could play a part in party organization. Conscripted into a unit comprised mostly of peasants? Use your knowledge of folk wisdom and even balaika or garmon playing to convince them to overthrow the commissar and take command of the unit yourself! Are you a highly educated orator? Rhetorically outwit the commissar and rise in the Bolshevik ranks--who knows, perhaps you can even usurp the exasperated Bolshevik leadership! Or maybe you're totally selfish, in which case you volunteer for frontline service and sneak off to sell your gun and uniform repeatedly and amass a small fortune for yourself.

Man I'd love a decent condotierri game.

How very civilized of you.

 

[ERYFKRAD]

I have had many ideas for this sort of thing, but I recently read a number of things that have contributed to certain ideas I had about a FO/JA2-like game set during one of the many wars of the late 19th or early 20th century:

Spoiler

"I feel particularly close to both the author and the subject of this book. I met Boris de Schloezer in Kev, in 1918, as we converged in teh capital of the Ukrainian Republic among the multitudes fleeing the famine and cold of Petrograd and Moscow. Schloezer, his widowed sister Tatian Schloezer-Scriabin (Scriabin died in 1915), and her children...were guests of the Kiev industrialist Balachowsky, who was a friend and champion of Scriabin. I stayed at the same house, which was the only 'skyscraper' in Kiev (it rose six stories and dominated the broad expanse of the Dnieper River). Such a conspicuous building was an obvious target for requisition by various military forces active in the area during the Civil War. (Kiev had changed hands seventeen times in 3 years.) To protect ourselves against intrusian, we organized a Scriabin Society, and, amazingly enough, the Red Army and some Ukrainian revolutionary groups actually respected our Society as a legitimate shield. At one point an aggressive raiding party of the Soviet military attempted to dislodge us. I remember the intruders as a curiously mixed group led by an officer who carried a tennis racket. During the peculiarly internecine struggle, I developed a certain expertise in handling various feuding factions and was particularly adept in confronting the Bolsheviks, with whom I even used the technique of dialectical materialism. However, my efforts did not avail with the tennis-playing Bolshevik officer, who gave us twenty-four hours to clear out of the 'skyscraper.' In desperation, I sent off a telegram to Lenin, asking for his intercession as head of the Council of People's Commissars at the Kremlin. 'While Moscow is erecting a monument in honor of the great composer Scriabin,' my telegram read, 'a squad of the Red Army is trying to evict his widow and her children from the apartment they occupy in Kiev. Please intercede for the sake of Russian culture.' I knew that Tatiana Schloezer-Scriabin was not legally married to Scriabin because his first wife refused a divorce, but such legalistic niceties would be no obstacle to action for a revolutionary regime. I never found out whether Lenin actually made a ruling on my appeal, but we were left alone, and the tennis-playing officer never bothered us again."

Spoiler

Of all the problems of military organization associated with the mass conscription of the peasantry, none was as serious, or had as many consequences for the civilian sector, as the difficulties of military supply. The decision to maintain a Red Army of five million soldiers, rather than one or two million, necessitated the militarization of the Soviet economy (War Communism) to supply it with food, uniforms, boots, weapons, transport and medical services. But the Red Army grew much faster than the productive capacity of the economy. Material shortages in the army increased. Living conditions deteriorated. Diseases spread. Discipline broke down. And desertion accelerated out of control, so that hastily mobilized - and often untrained - reinforcements had increasingly to be sent to the frontline units, although these were precisely those most likely to desert.

Spoiler

In political terms, most of the reinforcements were also poorly equipped. Few had anything but the dimmest notion of why - and whom - they were fighting. There was little party agitation in the units according to most reports, and what took place was all too quickly broken down into free-for-all meetings (mitingovanie), at which it was common to hear soldiers reject outright the authority of officers and political commissars, in the revolutionary spirit of the early partisan detachments. 144 Not surprisingly, the front-line units could be severely weakened by such reinforcements, especially if the latter were taken from regions close to the front, where the peasantry was hostile to the military authorities. A good example was the 202nd Artillery Brigade of the 23rd Division (9th Army), at the core of which stood a Communist brigade and a number of volunteer workers. Having suffered heavy losses in August 1919, it was reinforced by local peasant conscripts from Saratov province, "most of whom were infected by Green elements [deserters]". During a subsequent attack, two hundred of the peasant conscripts broke off from the main force, killed the political commissar of the brigade, and deserted to the enemy. The result was further losses, and a collapse in the morale of the rest of the troops, necessitating the break-up and reformation of the whole brigade.

Imagine, if you will, a game with not only a physical combat dimension, but also one in which advantages/disadvantages (purchased at character creation) and knowledge of political and philosophical systems could play a part in party organization. Conscripted into a unit comprised mostly of peasants? Use your knowledge of folk wisdom and even balaika or garmon playing to convince them to overthrow the commissar and take command of the unit yourself! Are you a highly educated orator? Rhetorically outwit the commissar and rise in the Bolshevik ranks--who knows, perhaps you can even usurp the exasperated Bolshevik leadership! Or maybe you're totally selfish, in which case you volunteer for frontline service and sneak off to sell your gun and uniform repeatedly and amass a small fortune for yourself.

Man I'd love a decent condotierri game.

How very civilized of you.

Condotierri can be barbaric too.

 

[Kyl Von Kull]

I have had many ideas for this sort of thing, but I recently read a number of things that have contributed to certain ideas I had about a FO/JA2-like game set during one of the many wars of the late 19th or early 20th century:

Spoiler

"I feel particularly close to both the author and the subject of this book. I met Boris de Schloezer in Kev, in 1918, as we converged in teh capital of the Ukrainian Republic among the multitudes fleeing the famine and cold of Petrograd and Moscow. Schloezer, his widowed sister Tatian Schloezer-Scriabin (Scriabin died in 1915), and her children...were guests of the Kiev industrialist Balachowsky, who was a friend and champion of Scriabin. I stayed at the same house, which was the only 'skyscraper' in Kiev (it rose six stories and dominated the broad expanse of the Dnieper River). Such a conspicuous building was an obvious target for requisition by various military forces active in the area during the Civil War. (Kiev had changed hands seventeen times in 3 years.) To protect ourselves against intrusian, we organized a Scriabin Society, and, amazingly enough, the Red Army and some Ukrainian revolutionary groups actually respected our Society as a legitimate shield. At one point an aggressive raiding party of the Soviet military attempted to dislodge us. I remember the intruders as a curiously mixed group led by an officer who carried a tennis racket. During the peculiarly internecine struggle, I developed a certain expertise in handling various feuding factions and was particularly adept in confronting the Bolsheviks, with whom I even used the technique of dialectical materialism. However, my efforts did not avail with the tennis-playing Bolshevik officer, who gave us twenty-four hours to clear out of the 'skyscraper.' In desperation, I sent off a telegram to Lenin, asking for his intercession as head of the Council of People's Commissars at the Kremlin. 'While Moscow is erecting a monument in honor of the great composer Scriabin,' my telegram read, 'a squad of the Red Army is trying to evict his widow and her children from the apartment they occupy in Kiev. Please intercede for the sake of Russian culture.' I knew that Tatiana Schloezer-Scriabin was not legally married to Scriabin because his first wife refused a divorce, but such legalistic niceties would be no obstacle to action for a revolutionary regime. I never found out whether Lenin actually made a ruling on my appeal, but we were left alone, and the tennis-playing officer never bothered us again."

Spoiler

Of all the problems of military organization associated with the mass conscription of the peasantry, none was as serious, or had as many consequences for the civilian sector, as the difficulties of military supply. The decision to maintain a Red Army of five million soldiers, rather than one or two million, necessitated the militarization of the Soviet economy (War Communism) to supply it with food, uniforms, boots, weapons, transport and medical services. But the Red Army grew much faster than the productive capacity of the economy. Material shortages in the army increased. Living conditions deteriorated. Diseases spread. Discipline broke down. And desertion accelerated out of control, so that hastily mobilized - and often untrained - reinforcements had increasingly to be sent to the frontline units, although these were precisely those most likely to desert.

Spoiler

In political terms, most of the reinforcements were also poorly equipped. Few had anything but the dimmest notion of why - and whom - they were fighting. There was little party agitation in the units according to most reports, and what took place was all too quickly broken down into free-for-all meetings (mitingovanie), at which it was common to hear soldiers reject outright the authority of officers and political commissars, in the revolutionary spirit of the early partisan detachments. 144 Not surprisingly, the front-line units could be severely weakened by such reinforcements, especially if the latter were taken from regions close to the front, where the peasantry was hostile to the military authorities. A good example was the 202nd Artillery Brigade of the 23rd Division (9th Army), at the core of which stood a Communist brigade and a number of volunteer workers. Having suffered heavy losses in August 1919, it was reinforced by local peasant conscripts from Saratov province, "most of whom were infected by Green elements [deserters]". During a subsequent attack, two hundred of the peasant conscripts broke off from the main force, killed the political commissar of the brigade, and deserted to the enemy. The result was further losses, and a collapse in the morale of the rest of the troops, necessitating the break-up and reformation of the whole brigade.

Imagine, if you will, a game with not only a physical combat dimension, but also one in which advantages/disadvantages (purchased at character creation) and knowledge of political and philosophical systems could play a part in party organization. Conscripted into a unit comprised mostly of peasants? Use your knowledge of folk wisdom and even balaika or garmon playing to convince them to overthrow the commissar and take command of the unit yourself! Are you a highly educated orator? Rhetorically outwit the commissar and rise in the Bolshevik ranks--who knows, perhaps you can even usurp the exasperated Bolshevik leadership! Or maybe you're totally selfish, in which case you volunteer for frontline service and sneak off to sell your gun and uniform repeatedly and amass a small fortune for yourself.

I agree 100% that the Russian revolution/civil war would be a great RPG setting. That said, I would kick things off in Petrograd, 1917. I think this would work very well with AoD style design where each class has a unique starting point. You could be a labor organizer, a soldier, a demagogue, a Czarist secret policeman, a foreign spy/agent working for the central powers or the entente. Ride the revolution to power or throw yourself across the gears of history and yell, “stop!”

Obviously this would limit large scale C&C, but you could have a lot of smaller scale consequences and limited objectives. A czarist can’t stop the revolution; maybe he can sneak a Romanov or two out of the country in secret and replace them with a double for the Bolsheviks to kill. A Menshevik can’t swing the whole revolution to his way of thinking, but perhaps he can win some local concessions from the Bolsheviks in exchange for his support, etc...

 

[Jacob]

I expected a thread about RPGs to devolve into "what is an RPG?" but this is the first time I saw a discussion about "what is a dream?"

Always learn something new from the Codex, I guess.

 

[Egosphere]

Any rpg where you can personally execute Trotsky and Lenin would be an instant classic in my eyes

 

[The Fish]

Off the top of my head, a Dwarf Fortress style simulation emergent roguelike but made by a 300 person strong hivemind featuring graphics as good as the Lunatic Dawn boxart models

Spoiler

Though I'd probably just get bored of it after a week like I do most roguelikes so I'll also throw in rune factory 4 farming because that game was like crack and have Yasumi Matsuno write a new main story every couple of months to be released as free expansions.

Though thinking about it again, if the sky's the limit then I might as well ask for super virtual reality plugged into the back of my skull taking me to the hyborian age or post-catastrophe Berserk.

 

[Artyoan]

My answer to this would change weekly but here are some bullet experimental things I'd try or things I'd definitely include:

-Dragon's Dogma's pawn system. Six party members, Three of them crafted by the player, the other three recruited from inns that are other people's creations. The three of your own are fully controlled and customized, the other three are only partially controlled but mostly play under the AI customization their creator set and also pick up behavior styles based on how those players used them. I really think that DD's brand of user created content is a vastly underused and neglected piece. Not to mention it triples character creation.

-Battles would be real time with pause. I'd like to see some incentive to not pause frequently. As if the length of time between pausing allows the player to buff a character or cast a spell if they can go long enough before pausing and the strength of the spell/buff depends on that time lapse. This incentivizes making AI customization robust and not annoying but also choosing worthy adventurers that are smart and hold their own.

-A limited save system. The player can save when resting, at an inn, or at specific points like a shrine. Each time the party rests at an inn they get three quick saves. Once those are spent they must rest again. Camping gives one quick save. The point here is to give a sense of tension with battles and strategic management.

-Heavy amount of exclusive non-combat utility and drawbacks.

-I also like the idea of being able to see a replay/video of the way your characters die when helping other people. And a review system with possible gifts. I don't want creations to be personality lacking pawns though. They should feel like people.

-The game's center is still around dungeon delving and exploration. It can still have a good dialogue system with checks and consequences, but the characters shouldn't be center to the world. They should be regular people who are sturdy adventurers with a disposition defined by the player by the end. Never Gods and Kings.

-I'm not sure how I would handle itemization but I do like the rate of acquisition and replacement of PoE. Gear comes in and stays relevant for a long time, a lot of items are side grades, but I'm not constantly having to replace things like DOS2.

Tons of details I'm not sure how I'd tackle.

 

[wyes gull]

3 games I'd like to "improve" on.

Blade Runner (Westwood)- Make it a 3rd person action RPG. Give it a GTA style urban open world whose limits are the limits of the player's precinct. Put the player at day 1 of the job, with the replicants as a much bigger issue than in the movie. Design a slew of police investigations (think the one at the start of Condemned or the ones in Still Life) for the player to tackle and randomize them at the start of the game. Give the game a set time limit (that is unknown to the player) within which it's only possible to solve ten or so cases and after which, game over ensues via the player getting murdered (in game, not during a fucking cutscene). The catch here is that every other case adds up to a bigger conspiracy that the player must solve to prevent the timed game over. Succeeding in your investigations helps this, failing at them prevents this. Failing too many gets you fired and a game over. After a game over, the player is permitted to carry the character through a new game, keeping whatever character growth he has accrued, making future investigations easier because "your vision is augmented". Why? Because, shock twist, the player is actually a replicant that keeps being taken out and recommissioned via retcon voodoo magik.

Sword of the Samurai- The M&B engine seems capable enough to replicate everything in this except the RTS (maybe bonerlord is better on that end), so why hasn't it happened yet? I'd expand on the character stats; keep the 4 main attributes (Swordfighting, Generalship, Honor & Land) but add physical stats (fitness, longevity, intelligence, charisma) that -can't- be changed throughout the character's life that influence your playstyle. So for instance, if you're fit and not very smart, you'll want to prioritize fighting 1-on-1 or defending villages over raiding/invading. Or if you're charismatic but have low longevity, you'll have no problems making friends with other retainers or recruiting samurai but on the flipside you'd better get on that arranged marriage or you're going to die without an heir. Now your first character's stats will be almost all up to you (there's the clan bonus, still) but the more interesting/challenging aspect is that your subsequent heirs are going to depend partly on your character and part on whatever wife you procured. Maybe your firstborn is an imbecile, or maybe he's ugly as shit. Maybe you want to have him kidnapped before you retire. I'd also introduce perks that you pick up depending on how you resolve events. Win a battle while vastly outnumbered, get a perk that gives your samurai an attack bonus; lose a battle to a smaller army, get a perk that makes it harder to recruit; lose a duel, get a broken limb perk that permanently reduces fitness or makes you limp.

Uncharted Waters- Make it not a JRPG. Give me an updated version of Ancient Art of War at Sea's RTS system for ship battles. Give me a mix of Pirates!'s and Monkey Island's swordfighting systems. Give me mates. Give me tavern wenches. Give me boats. And more boats. RPGs need boats.

 

[Reinhardt]

Arcanum 3.

 

[ERYFKRAD]

Give me a mix of Pirates!'s and Monkey Island's swordfighting systems. Give me mates. Give me tavern wenches. Give me boats. And more boats. RPGs need boats

You might want to look at the Sea dogs/Age of pirates series.

 

[Bohrain]

I'd like to relive Morrowind's stranger in a strange land setting. So the game would have an island with very alien culture. The way New Vegas handled faction conflict from story perspective was very well executed, both sides wanted to gain permanent control of an economical asset that also had symbolic meaning beyond that. In my setting it would be something like the War of the Pacific where Chile, Peru and Bolivia waged war on a strip of land filled with literal birdshit, which sounds sort of ridiculous, but it had serious consequences since Bolivia became landlocked and nitrate rich guano is useful for making gundpowder and fertilizers.
The game would be party based and have turn based combat and feature open world. The game would have parties of 4 with maybe 6 different companions, but bonding with specific companions would change the interaction with others. For example being buddies with one would make other companions slaves or put them under some form of mind control, while some permutations would be more like common RPG parties. Depending on your intial faction allegiances the difficulty and hostility of different areas would change.
The dungeon design would put more emphasis on getting in dungeons as a separate experience compared to getting out. Getting the relevant rewards from some dungeons would be somewhat trivial, but getting out would be the actual challenge since ambushes on the entrance could be a thing. Dungeons would also feature a lot more potential enemies you could realistically handle, but they would be in different factions that you should manipulate to win on your side, ignore you or fight against each other.
In terms of systems it would have stats similar to S.P.E.C.I.A.L that you can't affect much after character creation and bunch of skills where a single character could max maybe 3 out of 20. Unlike Fallout however, it would put more emphasis on noncombat skills, where a single character (including the protagonist) wouldn't necessarily have to max a combat skill. In order to make speech not an easy option it would be divided to separate skills like intimidation, lying and charming. Speech and stealth would also have some systemic things tied to them in order to not grow so stale on replays.
The game would also feature rival parties. They would have their own schedules and could attempt to ambush you in dungeons or vice versa. The systems as a whole would have some things taken from roguelikes where potion ingredients would have different randomized effects on each playthrough and enemy weaknesses would have some variation so information gathering would remain important.

 

[agris]

I have had many ideas for this sort of thing, but I recently read a number of things that have contributed to certain ideas I had about a FO/JA2-like game set during one of the many wars of the late 19th or early 20th century:

Similarly, I'd love a RPG set around NE Egypt, the southern Levant and the Arabian peninsula in about 1917, with British-occupied Cairo being the hub and the bedouin tribes and geopolitical factions (Ottomans, US oil, British, French) as game-altering players. The game would be single-player with occasional companions, movement is real time and combat is TB similar to Silent Storm, with fully destructible environs and sound localization for NPCs outside of LOS. Combat would occur in the same map as the rest of the game - no jRPG style combat maps. Travel on the worldmap would be similar to Fallout 1, with random encounters and locations either discovered through serendipity, dialogue or the odd map. Quest design would be be focused on multiple skill-paths similar to Fallout 1, with combat-heavy maps designed for different skilled pathways similar to Underrail. The player can annotate local maps similar to BG2, there is a Quest Log similar to the IE games, with no quest compass or screen pop-ups. The UI would be skeuomorphic (think Indiana Jones), the perspective oblique-cavalier, with likely AOD's style of camera control. Player inventory is a grid, with item weight and volume restrictions similar to Neo Scavenger, including the ability to expand capacity via bags. There would be an IE style paperdoll, with approximately that many item slots. The main game world interface has a fixed combat log, and all conversations can be reviewed after the fact. The art style would be pulp 90s style take on the era and location, with the silly levels of violence present in Fallout. There might be light scifi, at the late stages of the game.

The character system would be classless, so your character's abilities are entirely driven by stats, gear, perks, quirks and flaws. A combination of SPECIAL and Arcanum - which is pretty well approximated in Hackmaster 4e. Primary attributes are not rolled, but allocated out of a fixed pool (SPECIAL style). There is a pool of building points (BPs) that you can use to tag and increase skills and modify attributes. Your BP pool can be increased by random (greater BP value) or specified (less BP value) selection of physical flaws and mental quirks, such as weakling or agoraphobia. Depending on the skills tagged, an entirely optional list of CYOA 'splat-book' style scenarios can be played out near the end of character creation, which can modify everything from attributes to skills to starting gear and quirks/flaws. There will be at least a 50% chance that the results of this are bad. Perks are available every X levels, and rarely for the completion of quests. There would be pre-made "Fighter / Thief / Talker / Engineer" characters that can be selected to jump into the game (with or without manual tweaking), or even all-encompassing stat/skill/quirk/flaw templates that can be applied to the character creation screen as a starting point, and then modified. Final characters can be saved as new templates to tweak in the future as well.

Quasi-historical, WW1 Cairo, TB combat, classless with deep character abilities and Fallout 1 / Underrail sensibilities. With destructible structures. And no romances or crafting (maybe Cromwell-style item upgrades..).

 

[Andhaira]

Realms of Arkania 4, 5 & 6 using the fifth edition of the rules, and all the hardcore adventuring rules (diseases, weapon breaking, equipment for wilderness survival, etc) Party based & turn based.

Get into the mood with this: