in reply to infused´s post:
I don´t really like the sims approach to RPGs, mostly because it widens the rift between player and player character - in a worst case scenario the player becomes frustrated with his character because he doesn´t do what he wants. I think for a RPG to work well you have to let the player character be controlled more or less completely by the player (dangerous statement, I know, maybe I´ll revise it later
), anything else creates the need for more diversified interaction which is imo at the moment only possible by providing more characters for the player to interact with in a detailled way (if you decide to seperate player and played character you again have the need for some kind of avatar which is NOT the played character... more on that later).
I would limit these kinds of attributes to rewarding in-character behaviour, nothing more. The example of the player character getting turned away by someone and becoming depressed does not work well, because the player may not feel frustrated, thus creating the situation where the player and his character go on divergent paths.
A more appropriate system would be a detailled character generation system (from my experience most players create characters pretty close to their own personality anyway), maybe even a small psych test to determine how the character/player reacts to certain situations.
Then, if a special situation occurs, you can determine how the players character is most likely to react and match that with the actual behavior. If the player acts consistently in-character he gets rewarded with either enhanced skillchecks or XP, if he acts out of character his characters attributes get modified in order to accommodate the new direction he´s taking. If you have a player who keeps doing unexpected things he´ll eventually get an "unstable" flag.
This would of course primarily apply to various quests, but will work to some extent for player to player interaction too... it won´t be binding, and text recognition for player interaction rating is imo not anywhere near realistic. Since you can´t stop players from talking (both in and OOC) to each other, you simply have to provide enough of the supporting framework (i.e. detailled characters, detailled feedback) to encourage players to act in-character. For now that seems to be the only way.
in reply to MSWs last post:
Those are some interesting concepts, apart from your idea of player death I think they´re useful... I´ll try and put together a more detailled summary of how I think this could work:
Introduction: The players take on the role of Soullords, powerful magical beings (I´d still make them as human as possible, for identification purposes) who are able to posess and control the NPCs, which I´ll just call Daps (dumb artifical population). In the best-case scenario they´d be full human NPCs, but since I don´t believe the complexity of interaction needed for a convincing simulation is doable at the time I´ll leave it at that.
Control, Skill and Rewards A player can posess any non-occupied NPC. The player has now complete control of the posessed creature (interesting option: the player is not limited to NPCs, but can inhabit any creature in the gameworld?), with control of all of the creatures skills, which he can use as in any traditional RPG. The amount of control is determined by the compatibility between Soullord and NPC.
Compatibility is determined by a number of factors, such as the amount of experience an avatar has with a certain NPC or type of NPCs, the alignment of avatar and NPC a.s.o.
If the compatibility is high then the player has more direct control of the NPC, if it is low something like B-movie zombie type interaction would be the result (only crude motor control, etc.).
Skills also get modified by the avatars own skills (or rather: the skill to use skills), which increase by using an NPCs skills. These skills also get transported from NPC to NPC, i.e. if the soullord has spent a lot of time in a thieves body picking locks a blacksmith might also be used for picking locks.
Rewards come from two main points: the ability to better use different types of NPCs and the ability to give the controlled NPC some of your own skills. The gain in abilites would best be modified by the amount of time a player has spent in one NPC - to encourage longer, more stable play.
One thing which one would have to work out in more detail is the NPC actions when a player is not present, i.e. how a player can modify an NPCs behavioural patterns (otherwise it wouldn´t make much sense creating such a complex system).
Death Death is always a problem, I would not reset the avatar upon NPC death, it simply takes away too many possibilites. I´d simply take away all the XP gains gained during that posession, maybe restrict the kind of characters he can posess for a limited amount of time.
Another fun possibility: the soullord always has to inhabit a body, if one host dies the avatar gets bumped down to some lowly creature nearby.
Grief Players / Player Killing Since allingment determines what kinds of NPCs can be controlled, the situation of a player taking over somebody in the street and running amok is greatly reduced (i.e. a player with an evil alignment could only take over characters with these tendencies as well).
In addition to that there could be restrictions to what a posessed NPC will do - at least when it comes to killing someone. A kind of depletable control energy for the soullord would be thinkable, as long as you let the NPC do things he´d do anyway only little energy has to be expended, the more the actions deviate from the normal course the more energy it costs.
These players could also become proficient in playing the monsters, i.e. build up skills for multiple control of low creatures or focus on a certain type of monster.
GM Players since the ability to take on every role creates quite a load of features it would be possible to let players manage their own quests (like you mentioned), for that you´d probably need control of more than one NPC at once and the ability to set complex behavioural patterns. These skills could become available to very high level players (because usually with these you can be sure that they are dedicated players) who could then go on to create quests, for which they would be rewarded in some sort (i.e. rewarded for players completing their quest).
I suppose that´s it for now, so far I can see a few grave problem areas that would need to be worked out, but I like the idea in general.