Dwarfsoft : it was me.

In fact it''s the way my PCs ''Player Characters) are built up in my RPG.

People don''t play a role because you don''t allow them to !

Diablo 2 is a wargame, nothing more.
Don''t call it a RPG, even FF is more likely to be a RPG than Diablo !

Paul :
No I don''t meant stereotypes, just exagerated characters.
Like what you do when you write story for children, the good character is always perfect and the evil very bad...

You see ?

Maybe if characters don''t have character it''s because players don''t have, so they must fit well into the role :p


I like both exagerated characters (Lara croft, duke nukem...), and deep and complex ones.


-* So many things to do, so little time to spend. *-

Cheers Ingenu... Always good to hear from ya . Anyway, I have come to the realisation that the actual name that I was forgetting was: Roguelike. So now that we have that downpat.

I would actually say that Might and Magic would be a better example of an RPG... Enough talk, more sleep

-Chris Bennett ("Insanity" of Dwarfsoft)

Check our site:
http://www.crosswinds.net/~dwarfsoft/
Check out our NPC AI Mailing List :
http://www.egroups.com/group/NPCAI/
made due to popular demand here at GDNet :)

There''s an opposition here, between two styles of games:
1. The story game. The old adventures. You are not the main character, really. You watch the main character, and make him/her do certain things that you think he/she should, to make it interesting. If the character does something stupid you hadn''t told him to do, you think "oh well, it''s a stupid character, lets see if I can put this right". Here, voice-overs, characters talking for you, characters talking to you, are not intrusive.

2. Immersive games.
You are the main character. You spent an hour tweaking stats, traits, personality. You take care to imagine every detail of the limited interactions with the environment. You can almost feel the wind in your own hair. And then... YOU speak in a voice wholly alien to what you were imagining, saying something you would have never DREAMED of saying. This is bad. This is very bad. The designers should have realised HOW bad, because they spent so long immersing you in the game.

I guess the difference is this:
In 1. You become the character they chose you to be.
in 2. You are the character YOU chose to be.
They are not reconcileable.


Give me one more medicated peaceful moment.
~ (V)^|) |<é!t|-| ~
ERROR: Your beta-version of Life1.0 has expired. Please upgrade to the full version. All important social functions will be disabled from now on.

Unfortunately I don''t think that the second is probable until we have full voice recognition and full speach generation... and are able to do it REAL TIME... Unfortunately for the industry that is. But if you take away the characters voice, then you can type in text conversation and there can be the usual "text and voice" response. You can''t have it "text and voice" both ways.

I think for those hotkeyed voices (anyone pressed keypad 0-6 in Diablo II?), well you should be able to customise them... Say your own short sentence. Then that data gets sent at game Init time (for Multiplayer) and then whenever your character "says" those lines, you can have the voice actually yours. The problem I see with this is vulgarity. People don''t want to hear some things and as such should be able to choose not to hear it.... But this adds complexity


-Chris Bennett ("Insanity" of Dwarfsoft)

Check our site:
http://www.crosswinds.net/~dwarfsoft/
Check out our NPC AI Mailing List :
http://www.egroups.com/group/NPCAI/
made due to popular demand here at GDNet :)

You can replace the wav by your voice easily in Baldur''s gate.

Highly customisable character...

The problem is here :
-Custom character : nice but no FMV
-Predefined appearance : not as nice but FMV !

...


-* So many things to do, so little time to spend. *-

I might argue a bit with the titles you gave them, but you''ve got the point down alright. "Immersive" is a qualitive buzzword, and a story game can be extremely immersive, sometimes much more than a very interactive game. I would rather call the Objective and Subjective, meaning you can or cannot affect the goings on in a meaningful way.

Even "interactive" is a buzzword, which is why it confuses people so when we try to tell them it''s not ALWAYS a good thing...

======
"The unexamined life is not worth living."
-Socrates

"Question everything. Especially Landfish."
-Matt

dwarfsoft : LOL, well at least you seem to like your knew word
If you want to learn more about it, go there
If you want BETTER gameplay than Diablo without the nice graphics (everything has a price, isn''t it), I advise you to browse a while through the existing roguelike. The most played one being nethack, the nicest one being probably ADOM, and for the rest, you tell me

ingenu : do you know the game Simulacres ?
and for F$ck sake, Diablo is a damn ROGUELIKE (j''m''enerve po, msieur l''agent, j''exspiiiiique !" )
and we go that way, Dungeon Master, Eye of the Beholders are Roguelike, with a 3D representation... hey ... think about it, that''s why most RPG are so crap ! They jsut bred on those old games, adding more and more plot, but keeping the same old rules system. Like an original Beetle with a spanking brand new coat of paint... it shines all it can, but it''s still slow as f:ck.

paul and ingenu :
actually paul some vocable for all of us to use :

archetype : a model, an ideal. Ex : Galaad,Lancelot,etc are archtype of knights (the Paladin, the Fearless). These are models (types) upon which you will create other more detailed characters, usually less perfect, hence more interesting to play. The Archetype is a reference if you will. Galaad is the reference for all paladins knights.

stereotype : A ready made piece of text carved in wood. Something that everybody uses to print the same thing.
The word means "cliche", in a figurative way.

prototype : the first of its kind. Adam and Eve would be prototypes

mmmh .. just thought it might be useful to use the proper words for the proper use.
As well, I think ingenu was refering to Shadowrun RPG.
I think there was a system of such archetypes to choose from when creating a character. This really was just another word for describing a class system. The idea being that a Solo (a mercenary warrior, a hitman) would create a character based on the archetypical solo, which gave the player a good idea of the way to play the character.
My description of a Burgmeister above would be the archetype of a burgmeister, each being different but based on this model.

another very good use for archetypes is the creation of ready to play characters. A notion vastly present in paper RPG, where people don''t always want to bother creating a character (which is usually a long process, minimum an hour for some), but would love to have a balanced character that will fit in the scenario they are about to play. As well, with a party of ready made characters, the skills and abilities are usually spread amongst the chars to create a much more intersting team, and more interactivity.

When we played the Imperial Campaign for Warahammer RPG (3 years of roleplay...) for instance,
"I was the dwarf warrior, using his trusty battle axe to solve most daily problems, not once did I run for cover, so cold was my blood. My friend was an elf coward, barely able to wield a dagger, but versed in the art of reading and medecine, which led me to protect him more than anyone else, as well as use him as my personal reader for anything written
Another was a magician apprentice, he had fled from the laboratory of his master, stealing enough components to brag and convince us of his usefulness. To battle the forces of Chaos, my elf friend told me, we would need magic indeed, so we let him join us. And here am I rambling again, ah .. they are gone the days I was riding through the fields of Kieslev... "

Just to say that yeah, characters have character, it''s just the designers who don''t know how to do it properly. (now, that''s unfair, isn''t it )

youpla :-P

(I promise when I get back to the uni, I''ll offer you to play a nice online RPG ... through IRC. I am sure this would be useful to some people here)

Thanks for the clarification Ahw.

So what are we trying to say here? That RPG''s are the "Book" version of a story and a FPS is the movie? No way, i can''t agree with this. You can get the same immersion factor from a FPS as you can from a RPG. In fact you can probably get more immersed in a FPS.

But for now let''s get back on track by remembering that character is not role.

For your character to have character in a rpg then they don''t have to talk. They just need habits and distinguishing features. Which they don''t have. I like my beer flat and frozen like an icey, call it a quirk if you must but it''s part of my character. Now, when you play a rpg and your asked to build a character, i ask you.. Are you, or have you ever built "Character" in a RPG? Myself, No.

I love Game Design and it loves me back.

Our Goal is "Fun"!

Paul : Yes I do

I''ve built numerous ''character'' for RPG (tabletop) games.
When it comes to CRPG (Computer ones), I simply make their appearance a bit more strange...

Do you want to allow Players to create their own character with character ?
Only a few will succeed, so you may prefer build it for them...

FPS/RPG...
You can make a RPG in a FPS style (Requiem : Falling angels) is a good try.
I prefer to see my character as in Outcast or Jedi Kinght.
Why ?
Because I remember what I''m trying to play, it''s best than being in FP view, cause in such a view, I tend to be me, no more than me...


Does it make sense...
I think I''m a bit lost.

-* So many things to do, so little time to spend. *-

the day I can play my druid character in a MMORPG, I''ll know the industry has stepped a bit further.
Because right now, I don''t even wanna try playing a non-fighting, scholar type, benevolent character. I mean, do you know a game where ceatures don''t attack you ??? The ONLY case I have seen it done is ADOM (a roguelike) ...

youpla :-P

ps paul : I''ll have to get you some sites so you can see a bit more what RPG is, there are quite a number of resources that even a non player can use, and would probably be useful to a designer.