When you play an RPG or RPG-like game, do you need to identify with only one character or band of characters? What if you weren't playing with a goal of leveling yourself up, but rather for the grand story goal of "leveling up" the human race? After several comments from posters here in the past months, I'm questioning whether or not an RPG-like game must only have one character or party you play through the entire game. Rather, what if you switched the character you're playing as a result of: 1) Dramatic shift in world or story 2) End of a chapter 3) Death (there is no quickload, only in-game "saving" such as cloning tech which can be lost) Shifts in #1 would be temporary or permanent. They would be the result of the world changing in such a way as to open a new branch of the game world's story. For instance, if you're out exploring and get captured by hostile forces, you might shift to playing the rescue team; or if you're part of some two front struggle, you might play force one for a certain time, then force two. Shifts in #2 would be designed to give you closure after playing the game in an open-ended fashion. Chapters would mark the end of some era, like being a prewarp civilization. In the next era, the human race's starting position would reflect your successes or failures if you engaged in story-critical missions. (Maybe you'd meet your own character, as a doddering old war hero or statue?) Shifts in #3 would probably be the hardest to take. Maybe your ship is destroyed in a first contact, or you die in a barfight on some distant backwater. Now you're stuck choosing a family member such as a spouse or brother, with whatever money/resources you've built up for them. If you have no family, then you're some random orphan. The only game-ending state that would occur would be if humans were annihilated. I'm thinking that rather than this being exclusively a story event, I might want it to evolve naturally from interactions between powers in the game universe. It might make the player think about "being in it for the species" such that if all humans die, the game is over.

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Some specific questions: Would you feel as connected to a character if you knew that what you were doing wouldn't necessarily help you, but might help humanity? If you could build a dynasty as a way of controlling your starting state, what options for restarting should the dynasty give? Assume that the dynasty develops characters who evolve automatically. Should you be able to just pick any character in the dynasty? Should the mechanism of switching to any character be strictly limited by story, or some in-game resource/power?

If you used some sort of reincarnation or transformation system you could play the same character as a member of different species, and thus preserve the player's identification with the individual character.

I've seen this done in other games, such as the adventure and strategy genres, but not in RPGs (well, apart from temporary shifts as per #1 in your list, such as the temporary loss of the protagonist due to story related illness/injury/temp.death)

The main drawback for this in RPG, from a gameplay perspective, is that you'll lose the stats that your character has built up if they die. You might lose equipment too, although it could be left to the next-of-kin. However, if your RPG isn't as stat based as most of them seem to be, this doesn't need to be that much of a drawback.

To answer your questions:

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Would you feel as connected to a character if you knew that what you were doing wouldn't necessarily help you, but might help humanity?

If you stick with a character for a while, then I would still have a connection to them and what they stand for. You'd have to be careful that it isn't too tempting to just throw their lives away too easily, such as if they had some disability that the player disliked.

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If you could build a dynasty as a way of controlling your starting state, what options for restarting should the dynasty give? Assume that the dynasty develops characters who evolve automatically. Should you be able to just pick any character in the dynasty?

In the Total War games, when you control a monarchy, the rule passed to the heir to the throne. You could implement a similar system, where the player designates beforehand who will continue the legacy of the player.

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Should the mechanism of switching to any character be strictly limited by story, or some in-game resource/power?

I can see both being done well. To take Total War as an example again, the rule of the kingdom would pass to the heir on the death of the king, but the king could die of a number of reasons; old age, death in battle, assassination etc. It can work as a mechanic in RPGs as well, I think.

An related example of number 1, would be Final Fantasy 9. Your characters weren't initially together, and then events kind of bring them together, but you play out all the events. I thought it was one of the more interesting ways of bringing characters with very different backgrounds together reasonably, very beautiful job. I think games where you play as multiple characters are actually a really cool thing if done properly, it gives you a greater view of whats happening on both sides of the story and around the world.

I think of an example of a previous player doing something, then having another player later in history is a cool idea. Like perhaps character one is an assassin who goes to kill a tyrant king. He takes the king's crown as a trophy, but then later finds the crown is the reason of corruption, much like the One Ring in LOTR. So that starts floating around, causes lots of trouble, maybe a war or two... then comes in the next main character who wants to dispose of it, or maybe claim it for himself, etc...

I would say you can't get TOO broad though, because you must keep in mind its a roleplaying game, where every man plays his part signifigantly. It might feel like more of a puzzle like game then an actual RPG if your playing a couple dozen players throughout the game and trying to tie it all together. Instead of nice colored boxes etc to make a shape or picture, your using lots and lots of people, moving them around to complete the main story.

Interesting thoughts though, something I am going to keep in mind for my next RPG story to add some more interesting and less used approaches.

I have this vision of a game which starts with European explorers landing on the east coast of North America. You play various fictional explorers directed by some sort of adventurers club. The success or failure of your tasks has an effect on what the North American map looks like in the present day. Major events can open a new chapter. These events can be affected by the explorers successes or failures. At the end of the game, see if your results match a modern day map or perhaps there's the formation of 3 or 4 other countries. Maybe have some sort of histroy book written up at the end too.

In this case, given people's pride in their heritage, I think they'd find some connection to the character they're playing. In a purely fictional world, I'd bet that pride would also be there as creating a strong dynasty would be akin to winning the game. People like to win.

I don't think space games would be that different mechanics wise, just the amount of territory covered would be different.

As far as being able to switch between any characters, I wouldn't want my player to take some random character to go try to rescue the one he just lost somewhere (though that could have some interesting consequeces in of itself). But still, if some sort of communication between people was made, or a set time limit reached ("If I'm not back in 3 months, send help.") the option of dispatching a rescue team would make sense.

I think this would mightily reduce my vested interest in a character. I'd be less inclined to abort an infiltration if I knew I'd just be "warped" out to my first mate on our orbitting ship when I died. The effect this woud have on gameplay, for me, would be similar to respawning. If I can take a character into an enemy base and suicide-bomb their power core, then "respawn" as the leader of an invasion force, I won't hesitate to do it.

Unless, of course, you have a sophisticated penalty system for having the captain bite the dust, like wrecking morale, causing bickering factions to arise, etc. I'm going to assume you have that end of the process figured out.

As far as supporting the human race goes, I'm all for it. I think that playing as humans in a galaxy full of aliens makes it easier to feel a strong bond to your faction. I play Terran in StarCraft not because they're better, or because I'm any better with them, but because they look more like me, and I think firebats are super cool.

I'd be concerned that death would be such a profound setback that the game would be virtually uncontinuable, though. If I have a superclone in a tank someplace, then I can deal with croaking and coming back in that fancy new chassis, but if I build half an empire and then three precise strikes against me whack my clone, my battlecruiser and then me in rapid succession, I have to start again as a knobby-kneed street urchin with no money, no political clout, no ship and just a warm blanket of newspapers to fend off the harsh venusian winter? Alt-F4, I'm getting a beer. Or a cheat code.

Pirates! (that eternally applicable benchmark in genius) let you keep your social status and the benefits that it brought you. Even if you are marooned on a desert island for three months, get picked up up by Spanish raiders and thrown into the San Juan jail for a year, and then sneak out to the shipyard and stow away on a Dutch manure barge, you can return to St. Kitts, take a bath, put on a clean shirt and head out to the tavern to recruit some new buccaneers, because you're still the #3 most notorious pirate in the Caribbean, no matter where you've been for the last two years.

A way to quickly regain at least some of what you had before you died would be nice. If the game will continue indefinitely regardless of your status, then it's possible to suffer such a catastrophic setback that you really can't hope to recover from it.

In the Death Idea:

Plenty of game here.

-With death, you get to introduce the idea of a soul as the eternal core of your individuality. The gameplay possiblities here are endless.

-The soul could hold your stats through reincarnation. Everytime you die and come back, you keep and build up on those stats (similar to the Shattered Galaxy system of reincarnation)

-During normal gameplay (ala Black and White), your soul accumulates a share of good and evil. Your choices upon reincarnation are based on your accumulated Karma...if you have an abundance of good (or evil), you come back as a higher level good(or evil) character. If you don't accumulate any good or evil, you come back as the same or a lower level character (for example if you go from having lots of Bad Karma to having a balance you go from being a Extremely high level Evil character to a relativiely weak neutral character)

-Given that alot of companies keep the in game IP, it would be interesting to implement a system where your dying in-game is the only way to release the IP so you can use it off-line. Perhaps you can then sell your character and then give the character a small penelty to reincarnate.

-Make several plane (ala DaOC) which can only be crossed by dieing (not unlike Afterlifes two planes). Each death puts you on a higher plane. However, the higher planes want to revive you and so you have death as a way to climb the planes and reincarnation as a way to decend them. This is a naturally self regulating system for if you are a level one noob and die, you go to plane two, and you register -20 HP. While on plane two (a higher level plane for this example), you will quickly be "attacked" by an angel who will heal your -20 points, and back you go to the lower plane with +20HPs. Perhaps a penetly for death and reincarnation would add further balance.

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What if you weren't playing with a goal of leveling yourself up, but rather for the grand story goal of "leveling up" the human race?

How do you plan to do that?

Also, Saga Frontier 2 does some of the stuff you all are describing, what with the character switching and all. Give it a shot if you've got the time.

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What if you weren't playing with a goal of leveling yourself up, but rather for the grand story goal of "leveling up" the human race? How do you plan to do that?

Simple really. Each person's actions, which would normally earn them personal xp, instead goes into the Race Pool. Once that pool reaches another level, every member of that race "level's up".

The interesting thing would be to then make choices for each class upon level up. So that for example when the Soldier levels, they choose new weapons skills or combat manuevuers. When the Medic levels (remember, at the same time), they choose new surgical techniques.

Perhaps making a "race" a "guild" would further this notion by having a "guild xp pool" and thus all guild memeber collaborating to bring their race to the forfront. IN this scenerio, you actually design your race/guild (and not your character) and then you, once in the guild, you get to choose character from within this intial design. So if you are a race of warlike insects, you get to choose from soldier ant or worker bee. If you are a race of pacifist humans, you get to choose medic or scientist.

When reading #3 I recall a game I designed some time ago:

The game is basicly a tactical rpg action survivor/horror game.
The basis is that you control a person(called hero) that has some skills. There is no hp in this game. You are either healthy, hurt or dead. A person with a medical skill can heal other persons(hurt to health), a person with a handguns skill can use pistols etc.
The hero may talk to other persons so that they can join your team, or teach them skills(so they can heal or use handguns).
If the hero dies another hero is choosen based on his team. If there is no other in is his/her team it is game over.
Focus on the game is to manage your team, teach each-other skills, distributing ammo and weapons, giving weapons and shooting enemies.

Survivor/horror from the descrition comes from that the persons in this game is humans and all the enemies are zombies :)

The death of the hero doesn't inflict that much on gameplay. Since the characters can't take much damage the characters becomes the players "hitpoints", and a few hitpoints can be lost if a objective is acchieved and there is a medkit(civilians in this case) a few blocks ahead.
The game is based on a story-line that is tied to a group of characters, not to a specific character so the story doesn't suffer.
I can see no reason why the hero can't temporarily be changed for some special mission. For an example: Your group gets trapped and you have to save them by controling another character. as this character you may kill your old group(ncluding the old hero), get their weapon and become the new hero.
Character connection might be tricky, but I think if the player can costumize how a character looks (through some shop like gta:san andreas) he/she can definitly get a connection to this charcter. However since this is a survival/horror game with some rpg influences it might not be needed since it needs to scare the player, not the hero.