What do you want from an RPG?

[DarkSign]

The more I think of this method of branching storytelling, Im wondering if categories of theme might need to be introduced, to give arc/conflict/climax to the story?

Think of your branching story decsions as starting at the top of a piece of paper working down from the top. Now break the branches up with horizontal lines drawn across it...say 4 lines. All the decisions within each band could be based on a type/theme of the story - good vs evil, chaotic choices vs lawful choices, being inclusive of strangers vs xenophobia, whatever you wanted.

Does this sound interesting or useful? Do people even really want a story in their games beyond progression for augmented stats?
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If a guy needed just 30 minutes to understand how shitty the game is I simply can't imagine how shitty the whole game is.
-skyway's response to FO3 review.

[RGE]

No, I don't really want a story, I want freedom and exploration. The reason I want one event/NPC/place to affect another is because when these things exist as islands in a sea, it's too easy to experiment and explore every possible outcome for every event. I often experiment like this in traditional CRPGs because I don't want to replay the same main story due to becoming too familiar with it. Travelling along a highway with 2-3 lanes is still travelling along a highway, and I'd rather just jump into a bumper car and drive it around for a while.

If I wanted stories, there are books, movies and the PnP RPG official campaigns that my friends seem to enjoy playing and DMing. Personally I prefer more freedom in my PnP sessions, but what am I going to do, find new friends? Nope, too lazy. :|

I'm not a big fan of progression for augmented stats either. I want to create my character with its strengths and weaknesses at the beginning, and then those stats should remain roughly the same throughout the game. If my character needs to become better, then new weapons and armours can be used to augment combat stats, and ingame information can be used to let the character deal with other forms of threats. In a fantasy RPG, the character could find new spells or magical items that allows certain actions to be taken, or allows certain enemies to be defeated. I'm becoming seriously bored with the whole "level 1-20 progression", which only seems to be spreading. Apparently everyone else is a huge fan of it, so all that remains is to kill off every human on this planet. But nooo, I'm too lazy to do that too. :evil:
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A young man's battle against an ancient cockasaurus:
EDGE the Devilhunter

[Digit]

Hmm. Thats a good point, because many of the big RPGs blow you away initially with the presented level of freedom, until you see that you are sort of snared into a storyline. Thats what I thoguht could be improved, the storyline, because it is forcing people along a certain route. But maybe there is another way to approach it. For example, you could ideally populate a world with characters, areas, items etc, drop a player in and see what they do. Sort of like an RPG sandbox. Obviously with no motivation, this will leave the player somewhat floundering. Maybe you could then push some stories into it, depending on the actions of the player. For example if they start off pennyless and with beggers clothes, and they mug someone. Maybe the local thieves guild will contact them. If instead they try to get work as a baker or something, there would be a quest to buy some ingredients etc, I dunno. But either way, this sounds like more work than my initial idea, but it also sounds more interesting.

Digit