I was going to reply to a point doctorsixstrings made in another thread, then thought maybe I'd open this up to a wider discussion. Time and again I hear RPG players express enthusiasm for assuming leadership in single player RPGs (I exclude MMOs because of the human community). Yet the leadership gameplay that being a head merchant, mercenary company owner, leader of the thieves guild or even king/president/dictator implies would appear to stretch the bounds of the RPG into other genres, causing loyal RPG gamers to cry foul. Let's take the thieves guild leader. As doctorsixstrings mentioned, this implies giving orders to minions who case potential targets, run scams and fence loot. But we've become accustomed to being shown, not told, everything in games, so how would you do this? You couldn't suddenly start controlling other units, or you'd lose character identification, a strong element of single person and party RPGs. How would you provide gameplay that was still RPG in nature? Or let's take winning the post of chief of police, countering the thieves guild. What are you doing? Rounding up suspects? Setting up patrols? Responding to the citizens needs, making everybody happy? If you weren't already doing that, you can't start doing it now! And let's take the granpappy of them all: The king. This guy orders invasions, plots assassinations against rivals, deals with intrigue in the courts, develops the country and has to manage the economy, all through advisors. Yet NONE OF THIS is implied in the typical RPG role given to us by 99% of all RPGs. Fighting in mass battles as a character is the realm of a Dynasty Warriors style game; land and economic development is empire game stuff; and any personality interaction gets filed under the title "Sims." [rolleyes] Is it possible that we're asking for something that we don't really want? We like it in abstract, but don't want it in detail.

I prefer to be the grunt. Kings are expected to be superior, but the grunt is praised for such results :)

To answer the question, I believe it is bridging two much of a gap. I can see it working well in some non-RPGs, though. As an example, the Romance of the Three Kingdoms or the Dragon Force series could have allowed personal crusades and single player freelance fighting to take over territories. Even after you've won yourself a domain, what is to stop you from fighting with your soldiers in battle? You just have to worry about the domestic situations and economy in between the battles.

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Original post by Wavinator Is it possible that we're asking for something that we don't really want? We like it in abstract, but don't want it in detail.

Exactly.

One of the things that really attracts me to RPG's is the focus on romanticizing the Hero, and to a certain extent trivializing the quest / journey the hero undertakes. The biggest thing is properly achieving abstraction. We want to have the excitement and the glory, while minimizing the other stuff. It is really amazing how pissed off people get having to run from area to area. A journey of 5 minutes is absolutely miserable (well, if there is a concrete goal in mind). Certainly it would suck to spend 2 weeks playtime to go to a neighboring town. Or what if the Hero had to go to the bathroom a few times a day. Sure, maybe some grade school kids would get a kick out of it the first time. But after that, it would be a hassle.

Now, The Sims managed to handle the poop issue pretty well. But that is because it fit into the core idea behind their gameplay. And even most hybrids seem to do their best to unify the genres, so I think if you wanted to have a more developed "leadership game" within a single player RPG ... well this is something the player needs to be doing from day 1. This is just my personal opinion, but I certainly do not intend to ever purchase "the game that is all other games", because I already play that game every day when I wake up.

Minigames are fun though, as long as they are put in their place. I mean, if Zelda had a gigantic minigame where I take the role of a travelling salesman, not only would I be confused, but I would either a) find fault in the salesman gameplay and then say "why the hell cant it just be pure Zelda" or b) find fault in the Zelda game and say "man why cant I just get back to town without having to do these stupid dungeons, i have like 20 wooden swords I need to unload before the price drops. And who the hell is this princess? I bet she would go for a few rupies".

I hope some of that made sense.

You've got a good grasp on the problem. It would change gameplay too much, and muck up player's expectations. It would also complicate the crap out of your design. I think you need to choose a paradigm, and design other features to maintain that tone.

If I'm playing a chopping game, and I become king, I don't want it to change anything except how many guys are on my team and what people call me. And maybe I get a bonus unlockable sword or something. If I'm running a spreadsheet, balancing my budget and planning new civic center, don't tell me zombies have risen from the grave, give me a shotgun, and make me fend them off. That's why I made room in the budget for a SWAT team. I have paperwork to do.

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Original post by Wavinator Let's take the thieves guild leader. As doctorsixstrings mentioned, this implies giving orders to minions who case potential targets, run scams and fence loot. But we've become accustomed to being shown, not told, everything in games, so how would you do this? You couldn't suddenly start controlling other units, or you'd lose character identification, a strong element of single person and party RPGs. How would you provide gameplay that was still RPG in nature?

Maybe the key is to keep things simple and work within the existing "RPG framework". Imagine that the player has just become the Master Thief. A new conversation option could become available when the player talks to the Guild's NPC advisor.

This conversation option would bring up a simple interface that presents the player with a list of available thieves (of varying skill), amount of loot in the treasury, and cased targets (with associated risk and reward values). Each thief could be given various missions, such as infiltrating a target, picking pockets on the street, scouting for new targets, or recruiting new thieves. Missions would take a specified amount of time to complete, and the results would appear in future conversations with the guild advisor.

The player would then have a direct influence on the guild's operations, without becoming too bogged down in the day-to-day details. The player would also have the option of ignoring this mini-game, leaving the details of running the guild to the advisor.

The most important aspect of this feature would be that it is completely contained within the player's conversation with his advisor. The player's reputation and wealth would be affected by his strategic choices, but the majority of the player's time could be spent doing other things (like personally infiltrating the juiciest strongholds). There would definitely not be an entire game mode where the player takes control of an NPC thief on a mission, for example.

So in summary, the solution is probably something more than a grandiose title and shiny cod-piece, but less than squeezing a full-fledged strategy game into an RPG.

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Original post by Wavinator And let's take the granpappy of them all: The king. This guy orders invasions, plots assassinations against rivals, deals with intrigue in the courts, develops the country and has to manage the economy, all through advisors. Yet NONE OF THIS is implied in the typical RPG role given to us by 99% of all RPGs. Fighting in mass battles as a character is the realm of a Dynasty Warriors style game; land and economic development is empire game stuff; and any personality interaction gets filed under the title "Sims." [rolleyes]

Actually, I think that done correctly becoming and then being a king would work in a RPG paradigm, as long as you have advisors to deal with administration. From what I remember of medieval history, a king was pretty much still a war chieftan, just on a larger scale. Go on crusades, fight a few wars (note the king would be doing this in person on the battlefield), this can be all done similar to an RPG. Stuff like the intrigue in the courts and assassinations should be in more RPGs. You can leave all the economy stuff to the Chancellor of the Exchequer, that's what he's there for.

What I don't think would work is if the king has to fetch items for other people and fight through endless forests of low-grade slimes just to get to the castle, but I've never really liked that particular aspect of RPGs anyway.

I guess I'm just saying that the 'being a king' RPG might be different from the standard RPGs in some degrees, but it still would be similar enough to call it a RPG.

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Original post by doctorsixstring This conversation option would bring up a simple interface that presents the player with a list of available thieves (of varying skill), amount of loot in the treasury, and cased targets (with associated risk and reward values). Each thief could be given various missions, such as infiltrating a target, picking pockets on the street, scouting for new targets, or recruiting new thieves. Missions would take a specified amount of time to complete, and the results would appear in future conversations with the guild advisor.

I agree with funneling this through a known aspect of gameplay. (And I like the idea, btw) But the problem is where do you get the experience doing this from Level 1? You're ready to take on the thieves guild by Level 60 maybe, but it would mean that you've had no time to prepare to take on the duties associated with the conversation options.

Consider: Infiltrating a target. What's involved with that? What's the chance for success? What factors are associated with it? Having the right equipment? Bribing key guards to look the other way? If you just make it "The chance of infiltrating Harley's Tavern is low, boss" and that's that, then it has no flavor. Worse yet, if you enjoy this kind of gameplay, you now have to wait until you reach level 60 (or whatever) each time you play.

Also further consider: Scouting for new targets. Is there a risk/reward trade off? It shouldn't be a choice unless there's a decision the player should make, it should be automatic. If your guys can potentially be captured, or picked off by competing guilds, then that suggests more strategy.

See, I think something like this can't be an RPG. We've got too rigid a definition. I think that you could sneak by with "RPG-like" but you STILL risk losing a huge swath of your audience because they'll be afraid that it's not what they like (I swear, we gamers are like picky eaters! [rolleyes] Then again, with all meals being $50 without refund, I guess we have a right to be.)

If you were destined to take over the thieves guild in a game and run it, I think you could start as a street punk and work your way up. But you'd have to have little ruffians to order around as well as all the hero-centric activities you normally find, all at level 1. Players I think have to be prepped from day one for ANY activity that appears later on (that is, later gameplay can be different but only within the framework of what the player is familiar with).


(oh, side note... sixstring! not sixstrings! Sorry about that.) [grin]

It might be interesting to contemplate abstracting away this complexity; i.e. you would work in an election quest to become "The President", hire your advisors and just check in at the White House every once in awhile to deal with the top four or five issues, then collect your paycheque while continuing to adventure. You could even do it from payphones, or pony express, or whatever out in the game world.

I imagine something similar to GTA:VC's businesses working quite well; they'd autonomously run themselves and you'd just pick up the cash and maybe do some high-level thinking.

Hell, I doubt the President (or the King) would do any of the low-level stuff anyway. [grin]

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Original post by Trapper Zoid Actually, I think that done correctly becoming and then being a king would work in a RPG paradigm, as long as you have advisors to deal with administration. From what I remember of medieval history, a king was pretty much still a war chieftan, just on a larger scale. Go on crusades, fight a few wars (note the king would be doing this in person on the battlefield), this can be all done similar to an RPG. Stuff like the intrigue in the courts and assassinations should be in more RPGs. You can leave all the economy stuff to the Chancellor of the Exchequer, that's what he's there for.

Okay, let me challenge you on this: When you first start the game, what can you do? You could start the game as a war chieftan with a small tribe (which I think would be VERY VERY cool.) But what happens along the way? How do you grow bigger? A lot of RPGs seem to involve fixing people's problems (the worst example being Fedex Knight quests, as in "Go here, get me this, come back and I'll give you a reward.)

I could see some game where you only have about 8 or 10 followers sharing a couple of tents. You roam a magic filled land defending your tribe in personal battle, leveling your stats, gaining or creating better stuff, and growing in size. Maybe you grow in size by winning royal contests / competitions, which attracts people to your flag.

But as your numbers improve, gameplay begins to scale outward, which is always problematic unless that gameplay is going to be extremely simple (like Spore, I think). So a lot of the nuance and detail has to go away, and the game gets boiled down to six or seven real options if you're going to scale outward.

Consider a specific example: Combat. Maybe you're fighting the black knight and it's very enjoyable to shift your weight, dodge attacks, block and chose your strikes.

Now, in Braveheart fashion, imagine 1000 NPCs around you going at it. What do you control? Are the x hundred or so on your side automated? If there are strategies like entrench, protect the archers, shield wall, etc., then where do you get the experience using them if it doesn't start at level 1?

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I guess I'm just saying that the 'being a king' RPG might be different from the standard RPGs in some degrees, but it still would be similar enough to call it a RPG.

I'll bet if designers took this on it would evolve into a completely separate genre called "Royal RPG" or "Leader RPG."

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Original post by Wavinator Okay, let me challenge you on this

A game design challenge! You're on! [smile]

Okay, so the dynamic we're working with is to build an RPG about becoming king. Let's assume that you start off as someone who is of royal blood but not in direct line to the throne; let's say the son of a Duke, for example. Let's also assume that you are only really controlling the main character, and not a group. Maybe you can bribe other characters to do your dirty work, or maybe you have to do the stabbing yourself (is this a dagger I see before me [grin])

So there's two ways you can become king:
- move your way up the line of succession until you are king
- usurp the throne

Either way, typical objectives will be to say;
- assassinate anyone with a more direct claim that you
- bump off a more direct claimant in a more subtle way (say by promoting risky behaviour in battle, royal scandal leading abducation, etc.)
- rallying support for you so that you have some political backing
- tournament fighting (to gain popularity)
- helping out the church (to gain political backing)
- courting and marrying royalty that will get you higher up the list

Then while you are doing this and also when king, you'd have to stop other nobles from doing the same thing. Once king, you can set your eyes on an empire by going after a second or third sceptre.

Set this in the Royal Palace of a fictional medieval nation and I think this would work. Not really a typical quest type RPG but more of the open-ended simulation type affair, I'm thinking.

Any one else want to contribute to the 'To Become a King' design ideas?

Edit: Had a look at your last post in more detail, Wavinator, and I'm thinking that maybe we're arguing about nomenclature here. What exactly do you mean when your refer to a RPG?

[Edited by - Trapper Zoid on July 17, 2005 6:21:13 AM]