Alright, unfortunately I am uncertain as to what has already been said as there are 4 pages behind me and I'm not slogging through it just to add this.

Basically, I've played two really compelling games like that.

Swords of Chaos, an old BBS hack/slash RPG. Excellent game, no real goal.

Ultima Online, another great game with no real goal (at least not on any of the shards I played on.)

Both of these games had me hooked for months. So yes, there can be RPGs with no goal, and they can be awesome. UO and SoC are really my favourite online RPGs to date, even beating out WoW and FFXI.

Now, of course there are a few different types of RPG... Pen+Paper, original Final Fantasy style, Text Adveuntures!, problem solving type dungeon games, Fallout style, and tons of others... Morrowind style anyone? That's basically like a MMORPG without the MMO aspect. Most of these require an end and a goal... Playing on your own is limiting in fun if you have nothing to push you...

With friends, you can push against eachother for a quest of power... It's a constantly fluctuating environment which can be captivating without any quests.

That's how I see it.

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Original post by Omegavolt But once again, you are trying to lead the player through a story AND trying to combine story with freedom of choice. The idea I'm trying to describe, and seemingly doing a very poor job of, is that the power of the story that develops should be competely up to the player. Stories are nice and all, but if youre going to be led through some developer's story, why not just read a book instead?

The idea that makeshiftwings was describing, which I also agree would be the perfect RPG, is not to have a fixed story but to have a computer AI "Dungeon Master". It's a completely different beast from the standard RPGs which has a fixed storyline - the idea is to figure out what kind of plot line the player wants. It's akin to having your own personal storyteller whose role is to try and tell you the most exciting story that you want, based on your personality and what direction you want to go in.

I understand the concept behind your idea, and I agree that it would make an interesting game, but it seems more of a simulator a bit like The Sims rather than what I traditionally consider an RPG. Most RPGs have the player as a hero, which means more than just the guy who kills the monsters. Having the player as the hero means the entire game world revloves around that character. Major events always occur when the hero is around, every landmark has a purpose, even the high ratio of weapon stores to warriors show that the whole world is designed around the player characters. Of course that's because they are designed by the designers for the players, but it also has the side effect of making the player feel special. If you have a dynamic world that does not care about the player, that specialness is gone. Basically you're left with an MMORPG without the multiplayer elements.

The other reason I think the A.I. Dungeon Master approach is more workable is the limits to what you can put into the design. No matter how flexible you want to make the game world, there will be a limit as to how much content you can cram into the game. There is going to be some things that the player can't do, or just aren't plain fun. With a dynamic world without control though there's also the problem of nasty random situations that can crop up due to no fault of the player. I remember a few examples from Oblivion being listed earlier, such as important AI NPCs picking fights and ending up being killed. I'm not sure I'd like to play an RPG game where a minor disagreement can blow up into an entire village wiping itself out while my character is away in a coal mine somewhere [smile].

So how does the A.I. Dungeon Master approach make this any better? The difference is since the computer is in charge of making things interesting, it can "steer" the player towards interesting options and away from dead ends. It can also stop events getting out of hand and spoiling the game.

I still think that this managed dynamic world would be my ideal RPG. You still can have multiple ways of solving problems with solutions thought up by the player, much like the example of the unjust tax rise. The dynamic world is still there, it's just controlled by an A.I. storyteller to ensure the experience is still fun and with the player as the central focus of the experience.

The question should be, "Can there be an RPG with no goal and it still be as fun as one hand-crafted?"

The answer to that, I think, is no.

Maybe there wasn't enough space in the subject line

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Original post by Trapper Zoid So how does the A.I. Dungeon Master approach make this any better? The difference is since the computer is in charge of making things interesting, it can "steer" the player towards interesting options and away from dead ends. It can also stop events getting out of hand and spoiling the game. I still think that this managed dynamic world would be my ideal RPG. You still can have multiple ways of solving problems with solutions thought up by the player, much like the example of the unjust tax rise. The dynamic world is still there, it's just controlled by an A.I. storyteller to ensure the experience is still fun and with the player as the central focus of the experience.

Oh ok, then thats sounds I lot better than what I was imagining that you were getting at. As long as the player gets to make the decisions that steer the story, having an AI DM to sort of 'clean up' the loose ends and focus the gameplay on the player would be a nice way to present the way the story unfolds.

What I wanted to try to avoid from the DM description was to give the players some end goal, like "Your quest is to beat the evil lord Morttago and save the world!" A dynamic RPG would let you join Morttago and make your own end game goal up, if you so desired.

I understand a dynamic environment like that would require some nifty algorithms or something to pull off, even with an AI DM. But I do think its possible. One way might be to make it so that there is a varied but limited amount of possibilities for each interaction in the game. For instance, Player A meets Farmer B in Farmer B's bean field. Give the player only certain options for interaction, but keep them varied. The player can 1) buy produce, 2) ask for a job, 3) ask him for farming tips, 4) kill him, 5) make him pay protection money, 6) insult him, 7) hide from him and steal his crop, or 8)sing him a song. The responses are varied, but common enough interactions with NPCs that they can be handled by macros that are available anytime an NPC is approached. The NPC macros, perhaps. And there can be others too. Ship running macros, musical instrument macros, baking macros, etc etc. The problem though is that the more macros there are available, the more dynamic the world will seem, but the harder it will be to program them.

Thats where Im headed with that though. :)

Yes, Trapper Zoid summed up a lot of what I intended. The purpose of the Dungeon Master AI would not be to force the developer story onto the player, but to ensure that the dynamic story centers around and is interesting to the player. Taking your "evil king raises the taxes" example... in a purely simulationist model, with the game not really treating the player special, there's a large chance that the NPC evil king will raise the taxes, and then some NPC rebels will revolt, an NPC will assassinate the king, etc.... basically, all the NPC's do all the interesting stuff themselves, while the player is farming in his field and doesn't even hear about it. Under a dungeon master styled game, the evil king would raise taxes only if the DM/computer really thought the player would be interested in that plot line, and then the story would automatically be steered to include the player prominently. So if the player seemed like he was trying to side with the rebels, then he'd be made part of a special strike force team sent in to the castle to take out the king. If he was siding with the king, maybe the king would send him a personal request to act as a bodyguard and then reward him with knighthood. Something generally more interesting and dramatic than just overhearing that a bunch of stuff happened when you were farming, and more interesting than being just random angry mob member 246 while a bunch of NPC heroes do all the actual adventuring.

A Dungeon Master AI would be great not only to ensure interesting storylines, but also to limit the overall processing that a global simulation would entail. A DM would focus all of his time and effort on making a bunch of events that will interest and involve the player. A global simulation has to figure out what every single person in the world is doing at every time, even if the player will ignore 99% of it.

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Taking your "evil king raises the taxes" example... in a purely simulationist model, with the game not really treating the player special, there's a large chance that the NPC evil king will raise the taxes, and then some NPC rebels will revolt, an NPC will assassinate the king, etc.... basically, all the NPC's do all the interesting stuff themselves, while the player is farming in his field and doesn't even hear about it.

I see what youre saying with that and it makes a lot of sense. However, what I was hoping to get out of a global simulation is that things can happen without the players involvement. I want there to be things that happen that the player isnt involved in. What if the player in your example doesnt want to be involved in politics? The player may not want to be involved in that scenario at all, which goes along with the pirate example I gave. If the player chose to be a pirate, he wouldnt give two flips about what the king did or whether or not the king died. Or what if theyre a mercenary and get hired by the king to quell the revolution? Now theyre against the revolution, not for it. Making the player the center of all major events limits their choices of characters. If theyre Lawful Evil, count them out of being the revolutionary hero.

Having these things occur may seem like unnecessary nights of coding, but it accomplishes 2 things. It greatly increases player immersion by making the player feel as if they are only a small part of an ever-changing world, not one that revolves around them. And it allows for immense replay value by making the game different every time. The player may choose to be a pirate one time, allowing said revolution to occur without his involvement, and a merchant the next time, which would make the player want to be on the front lines of the revolution.

I still think that global events not focused on the player is the right way to steer future RPGs.