I was so freaked out by this becuase I have been working on a game design document that is very, very close to this. I was almost comtemplating seeing who had hacked my CVS and harddrive. heh

But at least now I know that I'm not out on a limb about this type of perma-death.

Thanks to all who contributed to this thread.

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Original post by Iron Chef Carnage Your idea for this system is very nuanced, sanskrit. Having automated character behaviors that lead to levelling and specialization will also prevent the cultivation of ubercharacters by the players with the leisure to play sixteen hours a day. Academies and "tours of duty" could provide valuable absentee character development for those players who can only spend real gameplay time at odd intervals. Excellent.

I agree that this system does do a little to help the casual player keep up with hardcore players. However, I envision the training systems as just a way to get a character "up to speed." Any "gains" from training will only affect the individual. Actually real world accomplishments will be the only way to futher the bloodline. players that play more will have more accomplishments and therefore will have stronger family members. However, a casual player using a mature member of his family may still be able to cooperate or compete with younger members of a more developed bloodline. It would make sense that a full grown man with some militia training would be able to hold his own against a young teenager with a great deal of warrior training.

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It might be worthwhile to have "active" and "passive" skill development systems lead to different balances of abilities. For instance, have the offline training pertain mostly to intellectual pursuits, while online skill farming would lead to more physical virtues. This would prevent a bloodling from having one champion character and six relatives who polish his armor and cook his dinner.

I agree. However, take this twist. UO used a system where there were stat scores and skill scores. Skills were semi static, but were affected by stats. An increase in strength, for instance, would increase swordsmanship. Schooling and training will only affect the skill knowledge of the character. They will still only progress physically as their ancestors did. However, by actively playing the character you can not only increase the skill development of characters, by also their physical potnetial.

Another little nugget. I am totaly against a "con" system. For those of you unfamiliar with a con system, it is a system commonly used in mmorpgs to give the player an exact or ballpark guess as the level of a target. In this way characters can choose only enemies that are close to their level. I think these systems are bad. Instead I would replace them with a system in which enemies can only be judged by physical appearance. Strong characters will be taller and broader than others. They will show more muscle definition. In contrast, a weak character may have poor posture and a beer belly. As characters age they will get taller and more well-built. as they grow old they will shrink and become feeble; perhaps getting an arched back and grey hair. This way players would have to target their opponents based on a gut reaction. Of course it could be possible for a character to be strong but a terrible fighter, or old and a quite good fighter, but these variations would only add to the adventure.

Another facet of this system that has not been discussed is accountability. In mmorpgs, especially one with a permanent death system, there has to be a way to prevent unchecked murdering. In a bloodlines system you do this by limitin each player to one bloodlines per server. I think this make sense since players can have a number of different cahracters of different professions in the same bloodline. In the same way that characters share honor, so too will they share dishonor. A murderous family member will bring shame upon them all. This is not to say that pvp would be discouraged. I believe that pvp is a healthy part of any mmorpg. What needs to be lessened, however, is the gratuitousness of attacks against unwilling combatants. Again, this is something that cannot and should not be totally eliminated, just lessened to reduce chaos.

Violators will not only be hit with negative reputation (which may exclude their family from certain training... and perhaps open up new training options) but also negative family traits. A player who frequently murders young, weak characters may be stricken with a rash of boils or a hideous physical deformation. These negative traits will progress. In the sake of roleplaying, I don't want these negatives to "ruin" characters, but to act as a deterrent from rogue behavior. In fact, it may be entirely likely that a player would accept these negatives for the chance to prey on other players. However, in doing so, they also accept that their actions will have negative effects on ALL of their characters. It won't be simply as easy as creating a PK character and a non-PK character. In this way you achieve accountability.

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Original post by wackatronic I was so freaked out by this becuase I have been working on a game design document that is very, very close to this. I was almost comtemplating seeing who had hacked my CVS and harddrive. heh But at least now I know that I'm not out on a limb about this type of perma-death. Thanks to all who contributed to this thread.

I welcome you to glean what you can from what has been posted and to post any other ideas or concerns you have with a permanent death system solved by this method.

Hello Everyone.

I am new to GD.N but certainly neither new to RL and OL RPGing (or playing in general), nor storytelling or conceptioning... and only checked this post because "Bloodline in a MMORPG" really reminded me of a concept I'm currently working on- although by reading the whole thread, I realized it's still somewhat different but nonetheless very promising. I tend to write long introductions to what I really want to say and I'm afraid this was another example... heh.

What I wanted to add to this is that by bloodlines, inter-bloodline marriage and "blood -merging", you really do keep the system living and breathing. I love the concept of creating a world as open and modular as possible so players have a great deal of freedom in customizing it- not just their own private space but the world as a whole.

One thing that comes with this that might generate problems is... amount of data. I know that technical possibilities should never be limiting creative processes- but there might be long-term problems arising from this idea.

Many of you have added ideas that will prevent or at least slow down this phenomenon (such as the length of an in-game year, etc) but eventually, once a player *did* grow his bloodline to epic proportions- who's going to play all the available characters in the family?

You'll say they won't have to be played, they are optional and only serve and exist as figures until the player chooses to add some diversity to playing and play his / her own son (or daughter), etc... but you will probably need some sort of "ban" to prevent that one player sends all his (or her) female family members after any available male family member of another favourable bloodline to create offspring...

Even if you add the idea of "having to be able to financially support for your offspring", eventually people will have many, many members in their bloodline.

Maybe there you could go from "one bloodline per player" to "several players per bloodline"... like, branching-off clans and / or married couples leaving their homeland to seek fame and fortune in distant lands...

Seriously- I really love this Bloodline idea, though ^_^

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Original post by ceoofaep Hello Everyone. I am new to GD.N but certainly neither new to RL and OL RPGing (or playing in general), nor storytelling or conceptioning... and only checked this post because "Bloodline in a MMORPG" really reminded me of a concept I'm currently working on- although by reading the whole thread, I realized it's still somewhat different but nonetheless very promising. I tend to write long introductions to what I really want to say and I'm afraid this was another example... heh. What I wanted to add to this is that by bloodlines, inter-bloodline marriage and "blood -merging", you really do keep the system living and breathing. I love the concept of creating a world as open and modular as possible so players have a great deal of freedom in customizing it- not just their own private space but the world as a whole. One thing that comes with this that might generate problems is... amount of data. I know that technical possibilities should never be limiting creative processes- but there might be long-term problems arising from this idea. Many of you have added ideas that will prevent or at least slow down this phenomenon (such as the length of an in-game year, etc) but eventually, once a player *did* grow his bloodline to epic proportions- who's going to play all the available characters in the family? You'll say they won't have to be played, they are optional and only serve and exist as figures until the player chooses to add some diversity to playing and play his / her own son (or daughter), etc... but you will probably need some sort of "ban" to prevent that one player sends all his (or her) female family members after any available male family member of another favourable bloodline to create offspring... Even if you add the idea of "having to be able to financially support for your offspring", eventually people will have many, many members in their bloodline. Maybe there you could go from "one bloodline per player" to "several players per bloodline"... like, branching-off clans and / or married couples leaving their homeland to seek fame and fortune in distant lands... Seriously- I really love this Bloodline idea, though ^_^

welcome and thanks for the post ceoofaep.

While I have thought about the idea of intermarriages and sharing bloodlines, I actually think extending this system that far is a bit too ambitious. There are a number of issues that arise from that sort of system that make it extremely complex and I haven't been able to figure out, nor has anyone presented a way to me in which it could be done simply and effectively (in my mind at least :]). I also think the idea of integrating actual sexual reproduction in a game may not go over well (even though there will be no actual "sex" depicted).

Having said that, I would propose an asexual reproductive system. A relatively simple system in which characters that are mature randomly spawn offspring. The idea of marriage and conception is implied rather than controlled. It would be something similar to how it works in Rome: Total War. A message appears that says that you have a child, or a cousin, nephew, etc, and you are given options such as naming and sending off to school.

In order to limit family size (prune the tree so to speak), I would simply reduce the likelyhood of a large family of having new offspring. Perhaps a large family tree would have inactive elder family members die off sooner to accomodate new young family members. You can really be quite flexible. Allowing players to directly control the genration of offspring greatly complicates this issue and hence I have not integrated it into my idea.

I really like the idea of this system. I've been playing around with ideas for a browser based game for quite a while now and the Bloodline/Family system would be just perfect for it.
The target audience would definitely not be hardcore MMORPG players but the casual gamer who can't afford (or doesn't want) to spend several hours every day playing due to Real Life (tm).
The general idea is to take sanscrit's system and build a small world around it. Imagine a mostly self-supporting medieval town (I think that would be the easiest to handle) with the families living there and working in the different kinds of jobs available (farmer, smith, ...). Some families would be controlled by players who naturally want their characters to prosper. To accomplish this, you have to get better at what you do and you have to provide your offspring with opportunities to advance as well.
For example money invested in a good education for the son could pay off well as he some day takes over his father's business and expands it with the knowledge gained.
Now that may sounds more like an economy simulation than a MMORPG. But remember, you still have access to all your family members and their interaction with other characters. This could be accomplished inside the game with a &#106avascript chat or even outside via IM and email. Also the MMORPG aspect of the game would, at least partly, rely on direct community interaction and content creation. But that's the case with most MMORPGs anyway, just look at all the guild web sites.
The next step here would be to have characters become teachers, maybe even build a school in the village (as opposed to a virtual boarding school somewhere outside the town the children are sent to). With enough players the whole thing would become solely player supported without the need for NPCs.

The big plus of this concept is that it would be far easier to pull off than a huge 3D MMORPG - programming and hosting wise.

Well, enough ranting for now, give me your oppinions.

I think that intermarriage would be missed. With players manifesting families, an economy of genetic material would be expected. Even if marriage didn't lead necessarily to offspring, or was unrelated (asexual reproduction, for instance), there should be some way to trade characters from your roster to someone else's. Even a rental system, allowing for mercenary work, would be interesting.

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Original post by theSquonk I really like the idea of this system. I've been playing around with ideas for a browser based game for quite a while now and the Bloodline/Family system would be just perfect for it. The target audience would definitely not be hardcore MMORPG players but the casual gamer who can't afford (or doesn't want) to spend several hours every day playing due to Real Life (tm). The general idea is to take sanscrit's system and build a small world around it. Imagine a mostly self-supporting medieval town (I think that would be the easiest to handle) with the families living there and working in the different kinds of jobs available (farmer, smith, ...). Some families would be controlled by players who naturally want their characters to prosper. To accomplish this, you have to get better at what you do and you have to provide your offspring with opportunities to advance as well. For example money invested in a good education for the son could pay off well as he some day takes over his father's business and expands it with the knowledge gained. Now that may sounds more like an economy simulation than a MMORPG. But remember, you still have access to all your family members and their interaction with other characters. This could be accomplished inside the game with a &#106avascript chat or even outside via IM and email. Also the MMORPG aspect of the game would, at least partly, rely on direct community interaction and content creation. But that's the case with most MMORPGs anyway, just look at all the guild web sites. The next step here would be to have characters become teachers, maybe even build a school in the village (as opposed to a virtual boarding school somewhere outside the town the children are sent to). With enough players the whole thing would become solely player supported without the need for NPCs. The big plus of this concept is that it would be far easier to pull off than a huge 3D MMORPG - programming and hosting wise. Well, enough ranting for now, give me your oppinions.

That sounds like a very good idea. I think that a bloodlines system would lend itself very well to a web-based format.

It's me, yet again.

As I stated before, I have a similar concept that I've been toying with for over a year, with the idea, not of bloodlines, but of actual "asexual reproduction"... however, my concept is not medieval or even overly human-form-related, so most of my ideas wouldn't go over well in this concept. I already have a post about some of the aspects of it on here but that's besides the point ^^

How do you envision a new player to choose where and how he starts, where he comes from? Or does a player only get to choose which race and maybe climate he / she wants to start with? Does every Character start as middleclass- or maybe you could allow "weighting"... if a player wants to be anything higher than lower middleclass, he / she will therefore not be able to predefine certain other aspects of the character- or start off with less fame / credibility or such. Some P&P RPGs used that aspect. Shadowrun, for example.


That's where I think my before-mentioned idea might actually work- that if families become to big, you can decide to put certain members of your family into the "new player pool" and a player that starts anew could have the option to take over the name (but may be forced to leave the city with that character and it's offspring or such)... That way, the family / bloodline lives on, and actually "stays alive", because it will not consist of 10 or more characters that are almost entirely AI-controlled because the player that they belong to can only play one at a time and would eventually lose the overview...

What do you people think of that idea? ^^