A double dose of Fallout 3 on CVG

[buccaroobonzai]

What about this idea?
The NWN model is a great basis to expand and make some leaps in eventual progress of the MMO I think.
It already has most of the prerequisites:
1. Game master volunteers
2. Dynamic content (as a result of number 1)
3. Actual good storylines and quests (also affected by number 1)
4. Much smaller player worlds, where players effect the gameworld
5. Major advertisement backing

The basis of this style of gameworld can be set up accordingly:
The community is made up of two basic archetypes-players and GMs. People who like to GM tabletop games or otherwise get their "playing" experience from guiding, advising, or full on game mastering certain "zones" of the game world. These people mostly are GMing for enjoyment and are also considered players in the regard that they aren't payed (there may be a few exceptions of course who get payed to arbiter the community). By having enough control to alter the gameworld in their oversight zone, they get to participate in design and create the scenarios that GMs love to do. They can also create or run user or develper created modules that run in someone's zone.

Each GM has a loose oversight of a particular "zone" which includes either a city/town/village and some outlying countryside which can include ruins, temples, wilderness or non-human community settlement etc. The GM can run a game within his zone or another. He or she is also encouraged to design, conceptualize and write plot ideas. He can forward ideas to leaders of the various player factions: city politicians, city guilds, adventuring companies, and non-human group leaders.

Now within each of these zones nothing is spawned. All creatures are parts of communities or tribes. If any group of power players get to small, moderators, or even the player-GMs can infuse the gameworld with events that can raise a population. For example dwarves get assaulted by drow and lose most of their number. The mods make a plotline where the dwarves send out messengers to their brothers and cousins abroad calling for reinforcements against the drow assault. So large numbers of dwarves migrate back into the area as part of the plotline instead of a respawning system.

Also player respawing can be handled with a couple of options. The player character can be one of many siblings, or one of a poll of a few adventurers that the player can choose if he looses a character. So the player can then choose the brother of the knight, who is a paladin, or the apprentice of the wizard. Player character items can mostly be transferred to the new character as well. It is possible to keep the relative power level of the new character the same as the old one in this way as well-since the siblings are aslo adventurers, or the adventuring group is all relativley the same level, and is considered to be also adventuring and gaining levels while the payer is.

Now, each zone is loosely tied to the other zones. But, GMs and players have many diplomatic options available to them. A GM may wish to inspire the organization of a kingdom, where many zones are allied. So he has discussions with the political leader players of several groups telling them of his plans. Then those nobles for example decide to form a kingdom and select a king or whatever. Now their is a nation, and there may be more using this model. At the same time there can be free communities of humans and nonhumans that don't have to be part of a political state, but may be allied against the kingdom if they wish to attack it or defend against it-be it by military, diplomatic, or covert means.

So in summary the NWN multiplayer GM/player model would be the basis for this design, but it would greatly expand upon it. There could be many genres explored using this template, from fantasy,sci fi, techno-fantasy, cyberpunk, post apoc, historical, etc. gameworlds. Of course different rulesets can be designed as well.

Any thoughts on these ideas?

 

[Dgaider]

Some interesting thoughts, there.

Personally I don't know how far I would go in having "volunteer" GM's that could potentially affect the experience of other players in a negative way. It's a tough call. If I relied at all on volunteers, I'd say it would have to be exclusively for things that were positive-- like, say, having a player in charge of a settlement's celebrations and leisure activities. Give them the power to set up community dances or rituals with decorations and all. You might think that sounds frivolous, but for some player that would make all the difference in the world. Imagine going to an in-game city that isn't just a collection of quest hubs and stores, there are things going on in the tavern, actual social functions-- the actual GM's could focus their attentions elsewhere.

And I'm not certain that every encounter out there in the world needs to be hand-placed by a GM, either. The staff required for such an endeavour would be monstrous without a doubt. But could it be cyclical? Imagine something like this:

* a band of orcs has occupied a forest near a settlement and is constantly raiding the road traffic. Actually killing this band's leader would be a difficult endeavour, but once it was done the band would be gone...

* ...causing the survivors to flee into the nearby mountains, where they recruit several other tribes and suddenly you've got bands of raiders coming down into the lowlands. Until the council of chieftains is slain...

* ...prompting an in-game event where one orc hero in particular gathers an army beyond the mountains and invades. The settlement is assaulted and you could have potentially many outcomes. But let's say in this case the orc hero is eventually killed and his army defeated...

* ...causing one group of survivors to take refuge in a forest (probably not the same one, but you get the idea).

Now, it need not repeat ad nauseum -- there could be variances in time and place, but what would be repeated is the nature of the conflict. That one quest involving the roaming ogre happens near this town now... but in two weeks it pops up on the other side of the game-world with a completely different ogre. Have a system like that, with GM's working to insert tweaks and add some variance...?

Someone once told me that Asheron's Call tried this sort of thing, having in-game events that once dealt with were gone and that it didn't work-- players would arrive only to find that other players had already dealt with it. I was told that it sucked. Yet my response was that of course it sucked-- didn't Asheron's Call have the eternally respawning player characters? What did those players have to risk? Naturally they went off and dealt with the plot. Why wouldn't they? What else did they have to do?

And I say give them something else to do. If it wasn't for the fact that the vendor system in Star Wars Galaxies contained too much tedium I actually had an embarassingly good time in that game running my own tailor shop on the ass end of Tatooine. Who knew? Let the players be merchants and tailors and architects and mayors-- if being a hero is a choice, then suddenly it might have some value in that world.

And I like the idea of a bloodline. Grooming your next character right from the get-go... maybe it's an apprentice, or even a child (!) and you get the option to "invest" things in that next character, things you can't get unless you inherit. Maybe your deeds can be invested in a chosen family weapon, one that gets stronger as it's passed on. Maybe there's a system for getting married and having offspring, and that characters you don't end up using eventually end up moving away and entering a pool to be used as characters in the world. Heck, could you imagine receiving an in-game letter from your brother, telling you he's now working as a merchant in another city-- and if you ever happen to come through he'll give you a serious discount? Or getting a letter telling you your brother was slain when his town was invaded by orcs? Perhaps his son is missing, prompting a rescue quest?

Like I said, I think there are possibilities which just haven't been explored.

Hmm. Now I've sort of wandered off on a tangent again. Rather than try to get back to the NWN point, I think I'll just end my rambling there.

 

[Herbert West]

That would be somewhat like world of warcraft world events- for example the world-scale bug-things invasion that happened before opening one of the instanced dungeons. It was a total grindfest, followed however by a trully epic 24h long battle- it was great, I remember that fondly. Those world events were immensly popular and for good reason. They turned the whole static world into something giving at least an illusion of dynamism for a time. It's a damn shame they were so rare, however.

 

[buccaroobonzai]

Some interesting thoughts, there.

Personally I don't know how far I would go in having "volunteer" GM's that could potentially affect the experience of other players in a negative way. It's a tough call. If I relied at all on volunteers, I'd say it would have to be exclusively for things that were positive-- like, say, having a player in charge of a settlement's celebrations and leisure activities. Give them the power to set up community dances or rituals with decorations and all. You might think that sounds frivolous, but for some player that would make all the difference in the world. Imagine going to an in-game city that isn't just a collection of quest hubs and stores, there are things going on in the tavern, actual social functions-- the actual GM's could focus their attentions elsewhere.

And I'm not certain that every encounter out there in the world needs to be hand-placed by a GM, either. The staff required for such an endeavour would be monstrous without a doubt. But could it be cyclical? Imagine something like this:

Yes you absolutely do not want the volunteer GMs to run/micromanage all events/quests/plots. You would want them running in tandem and in addition to scripted events and quests/areas. It would be the combination of both that would make it excel and reach new highs.

Here is a quick example of a "zone" with village with surrounding countryside:
Number of GMs- 3
Number of players- 300

Village- 90 players (politicians, guards, spies, visiting dignitaries,nobles, guildmembers, adventuring groups, unassociated craftsmen, free rogues etc.)
Dwarven mine- 50 players (similar to above but fewer)-placed out in the mountainside
Bandit lair-20 players (human and demihuman)
Wizard's tower-30 players (arch wizard, constructs, servants, soldiers etc.)-placed near mountains or forest etc.
Humanoid tribes-90 players (orcs, duergar, derro etc.) inhabiting subterranean mountain caves and tunnels.
Giant clan-20 players inhabiting the mountains.

One adjacent zone with adjoining mountains contains a rival town with 200 players, as well as more dwarven & humanoid settlements. This one also has 2-3 GMs overseeing the smooth flow of the gameworld.

You can easily see how this can add up to create some dyanmic individual to group political interplay. Multiply this by dozens if not hundreds of zones across varoius geographies within human, demihuman, and humanoid kingdoms. You now have geography and political based factions, ones that can easily change and even move as tribes or armies migrate or conquer.

Now all of this user created content is on top of the scripted dungeons, ruins, sewars, caves, archeological digs, plus all other types of events.

You can have all of that going on, and then run a "D&D/NWN" style module as a GM for a group of players within any one zone. All of the events, including the modules are exclusive and not repeated-exception being the GM runs the same module in a zone very far away from the first zone where the events cuased would not overtly effect the game world.

Now a player can have siblings spread across the game world, a brother in the adjacent zone's town caught up in political machinations against the player's village, a sister in a far off sea port kingdom who needs help against corsairs who have seized the port etc.
If the player loses his character, he can choose to run a similar power level one from a choice of siblings,and can have most items & wealth transferred over.

All of this would bring so many new gameplay methods to the table, almost anything could be possible, grinding would be a non-issue. You could play anything from a craftsman, merchant, guild thief, politician, spy, noble, governor, pirate, bandit, adventurer, explorer, archeologist, dwarven lord, humanoid shaman/chieftan, giant, dragon(or any other monster) etc.

Of course to get this all up and running, and maintained would require either a large company, or a group of independent developers working together for the same goal, maybe even community support (talking about the coding, graphics, and then the scripting). And to make it a success, where there are large numbers of players would require the correct type of advertising, aimed specifically at the target audience.

 

[Herbert West]

giant, dragon(or any other monster) etc.

Now that thought does open a whole new vista, and I don't mean monster play a'la LOTR online.

 

[larpingdude14]

OMG!!! A bioware developer is writing here!!! :shock: :shock: :shock:
Not that i ever played any bioware game.

 

[St. Toxic]

- Early Skill / Stat cap

- Player driven economy

- No Quests / npcs / vendors

- No exp points

- Well fleshed out / constantly expanding crafting system

- Gameworld literally occupied by monsters

- Death is final

Ach, mein favorite. The simple genious of it is astounding.