Crispy™ Obscure RPG ideas that were never tried again

[turkishronin]

What are some old ideas for RPG systems that are forgotten today?

I stumbled upon this video the other day about some 80s Dragon Quest clone.
It had some interesting ideas.
1: There's no level, XP or equipment
2: Instead of HP you have the number of people following your party(here they happen to be soldiers you recruit)
3: Since there's no healing items, the only way to replenish your "HP" is to recruit ppl from random events with money
4: Sometimes you can class change enemies from different classes so they would join you(giving spare katana to a band of ninjas and they may join you), the only use of buying weapons is to recruit enemies really.
5: Your army(party) runs on provisions and if you run out of them they will desert
6: There's 12 classes of soldiers, they don't have any specific abilities, each one is weak against a certain class and strong against another.



Most of these sound like they were tried in Strategy genre but I haven't really seen many games these days implanting these ideas in a typical RPG

 

[lukaszek]

being one with a dragon

 

[Gregz]

Beyond Divinity permanently tethered you to an NPC, it sucked.

 

[turkishronin]

Beyond Divinity permanently tethered you to an NPC, it sucked.

How

 

[Davaris]

I've been hunting for a thread similar to this. There was a comment in it, where they described a CRPG that is cut down to the bare minimum of rules. You only get 1 HP, can only move in 4 directions. There was more but I forget.

 

[Spukrian]

Beyond Divinity permanently tethered you to an NPC, it sucked.

How

IIRC the companion is permanent, can't be dismissed and if it dies it's game over, just like if your own character dies. On the other hand, you can customize it's stats in the beginning just like your own character.

 

[Darth Canoli]

Not that old and probably done in other games but Tyranny had one single good idea, customizing spells with the limits being discovering runes allowing some options depending on the nature of the spell and your knowledge or something, each modification costing knowledge points.

It was pretty good.

Not as good as handcrafted d&d spells but still a good idea.

Mountains, lakes, oceans and some dense forests blocking the way in early Might & Magic but you could learn skills to go through rivers, forests and mountains or use the teleport spell, which you could also use i most dungeons.
In 6/8, you could fly over foes, oceans and mountains alike...

 

[octavius]

I'd like to see more games where you can "sweep" weak enemies (one per character level), like in the old Gold Box games. Usually what happens instead is that when you level up the goblins and kobolds get more HP instead.

Learning spells from enemies. It was very poorly impemented in the HoMM games, but I really liked how it was done in Nahlakh. I remember I used to record the battles against spell casters to learn the syllables they spoke, that would flash too briefly on the screen.

 

[Ghulgothas]

Be able to make your whole party from scratch at the beginning of a game, and having the game be built around that fact rather than just making a single protagonist with the expectation that you'll either accept pre-written companion characters into your party or resort to paying a fee to custom-make other party members at a Tavern.

I wish there were more games like Icewind Dale.

 

[Butter]

Be able to make your whole party from scratch at the beginning of a game, and having the game be built around that fact rather than just making a single protagonist with the expectation that you'll either accept pre-written companion characters into your party or resort to paying a fee to custom-make other party members at a Tavern.

I wish there were more games like Icewind Dale.

This describes the vast majority of CRPGs made before 1998.