If you could change the powerful players in an RPG world, should the change stick or should it create a power vacuum where new NPCs step in to fill the void? Consider an RPG where you can drive out or eliminate the guilds/factions in the game world. For now, let's keep it simple and say that you can either buy off the leader or kill him, and when he/she goes the whole enterprise goes with them (in that town). What should happen next, considering that there are many many more towns scattered throughout the game universe? On the one hand, it can be satisfying to make a change that sticks, like killing off a tyrant or getting rid of a fighter's guild. If a new leader stepped in to challenge you it might feel like you could NEVER make any lasting progress. Yet the world would feel static as you made change after change, and as you came back to old areas they would be a bit lifeless/less immersive. OTOH, if new and different leaders stepped in to try fill the void it would feel like you're being actively opposed, like the game world is reacting to your changes, especially if they got tougher and tougher. But you could never permanently mark an area.

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Compromise? Maybe guild/faction leaders respawn as long as they have certain types of people. Police and military might draw from civilians, which would be infinite unless the town was isolated. But pirates and mafia would need criminals, and there would only be so many of those generated based on the conditions of the town itself (like poverty or strong criminal faction operations).

You could make one of two things happen:
First, what the citizens of the area want/need could be taken into consideration, and something to appease that could be created and placed in that position. Example: The players kill a tyrant who ruled a small town, but then the town is left with no guidance. At this point a leader arises out of the current population and takes a position as Mayor, with the people's approval. That example seems complicated, and I imagine larger situations would get increasingly so, but it doesn't need to be that complicated. The system could be simplified.

Second, a larger entity such as a corporation sees an opportunity, and goes to make the best of it, using whatever means necessary as long as the cost doesn't outweigh the benefits. So if a crooked Mayor is removed by you, and the town has some sort of resource that corporation A would like a lot of, corporation A would make a move to take control of the town to gain access to the resource (assuming that was necessary). I hope you understand what I'm getting at, I can't think of a very good example. But the corporation could make a few attempts, and when the main character manages to thwart each of them the corporation decides the cost isn't worth the gain and gives up, and then maybe the first item would occur.

Hope that made sense. It may be overly complicated, but it would be worth the time to make the game infinitely more immersive if the time was available.

What if you had to secure and build up the area after defeating it. An invading army can destroy an enemy city, but someone has to build it back up. It could make for some interesting power struggles between factions trying to control a city/area. It would also be a great boost to a player when they finally manage to secure and unify the city under their leadership.

Well, there'd have to be some variety here. Sometimes you'd get a new evil leader, sometimes you'd get a new good leader, sometimes you might not get a new leader at all. Sometimes the new leader would like you, sometimes he'd hate you and send assassins after you in your bed. Maybe a neighboring town sees your little leaderless town as ripe for the picking and tries to come take it over. Maybe the brother of the guy you killed comes after you, even though the town has since elected a good leader.

Variety is really all you need to feel like you're making *some* progress without making it seem boring and easy. Some areas will adore you and give you whatever you want, whereas others will always be under the thumb of *some* warlord or other. The latter would give you plenty of excuse to struggle against a difficult foe, with some slight hope that you'd eventually succeed.

Also, consider that NPC's could run around killing leaders too. Say you killed an evil leader and a good one arose to take his place, then quite some time later another NPC killed your nice little leader and took over instead. Or maybe you're just about to go kill some leader when you find out an NPC did it for you. This could even give you an excuse to team up with various NPC's and/or factions, temporarily or permanently. There could be all sorts of political hijinks...doublecrossing, blackmail, etc.

Overall, I'd say it should be possible to make permanent progress now and then, but if you can turn the whole universe into a happy little playground, how do you have fun after that?

I thought about this a while back. If you have sufficiently compex AI for the "villagers", you could give them goals, motivation, etc., and when they noticed that "Hey, our mayor's dead... we need a new mayor!", either one agent with a good rep could be promoted (cheerfully? reluctantly? nervously? based on setup), or an ambitious agent could try to take the position.

RPG social and economic systems are excellent points to consider introducing emergent gameplay w/ sufficiently complex AI, a specific for a rather vague industry buzzword.

Matters on whether the game is multiplayer or single player.

Single player, there should be a certain amount of 'power vacuum', whereby the player can, if they move quickly, take reins of the power left behind in the vacuum. Only if it furthers the storyline though.

Multiplayer I never advocate players taking more than an 'influencer' part in the game world. Why? Because then the game world is dependent upon a single human being's play time. The game world should continue on without the player's interaction and if you allow players to control a political entity, then you limit the game's ability to continue smoothly without them.

If you can support it...

Could the player maybe bring in someone with apropriate skills to fill the void? That new leader might then have a few friends, enemies which would affect the new leaders ability to succeed. If that leader is loyal to the player, then the player would have a new set of resources available (if that loyalty is maintained).

If the player opts not to fill that void, I'd have the power vacuume remain until another NPC is first capable of taking the position and second able to maintain a presence there. It'd also be cool if a few NPCs try to fill the void, either competing or working with each other.

It's not that hard to create a balance in these situations, and one that makes sense for the player in the context of each specific situation. Assuming you have a basic system of alignments and factions, all you have to do is this: every time a leader is killed, a portion of his or her subordinates are lost (because they do not agree with the new leader, and it also represents a loss in power of that faction); if the faction is small enough, it disappears. It's really easy to see this working with an example. There's the typical tyrant, who is the leader of a group of guards, and the poor peasants are their slaves. You have 2 factions here, one of them with a leader. If the tyrant is killed, part of the guards are lost in the process of the assassination, another part goes away due to demoralization and fights to chose a new leader, and one of the best guards steps up to take the place of the former leader. You should handle the case when the number of guards now is not enough to handle a peasant revolt if the new leader is as ruthless as the other one :) There's also the case when the new leader is a good one, so now the guards are on the right track. You might have to kill a number of leaders before a powerful association is completely shattered (makes sense) but if you kill the biggest bully in a small group of rogues, they all go seperate ways.

Like Sta7ic mentioned in his post, I think it would be cool to add the element of elections. If the current leadership has been killed off or dies or maybe even "retired" you could signal that your town/city/kingdom requires new leadership.

Give the inhabitants (either strictly human or both human and NPC) of this place a set of people which they can elect. These people may be of different class type. For instance, the old leadership was a heavy duty fighter type and one of the running mates is a mage or a ranger to help steer a new direction for the town. It could invite new types of NPC's to appear in a town.

This shift in leadership would effectively cycle a new population. If some of the human inhabitants aren't happy with the elected person than they move to a different place causing bitter rivalry's.

There's a lot more you _could_ do with this type of system if it is indeed possible to implement well.

just my 2 cents.

If it was an RTS hybrid where you have officers and suchlike (I think Suikoden was like this or some game like that) then it would be kind of cool to appoint a party member or lieutenant to regent... and then watch him be swarmed with insurgents, Iraqi-style.

Personally, I'd like to see some MMOs where players can take over. Rule town, I mean... better yet, not full MMOs, but mid-scale hundred-player games, so you can play for dominance and have a real hope of taking over in a half hour or so.