Is the evil prevailing the only possible (or wanted) ending to the story? Personally, The lonely, parent-less hero who was adopted three times and just happens to be the only person who can save the world take on RPG's is getting kind of boring.
What if, after a predetermined length of time the village of *insert name here* decides to make a mass pilgramage and collectively fight (and die) to dispose of said evil. If the hero (in this case me) had not been flirting with the 'pretty girl' standing by the big oak tree in the neighboring city for so long, I could have fought the baddy myself and kept countless villagers from committing mass suicide. Either way, the evil blemish is removed and good prevails. But how many friends did I have to lose 30 or 300?
The end is still very much predetermined and if you wanted to, the villagers could still join in the fight when their time came.
- Just a thought from the jedi side of things - -Xyphyx
I was recently brainstorming on an rpg I'm developing and have thought of something in a moderate relation to this type of storyline (It's probably been implemented before but I'm still a noob)
If all enemies are categorized by classes (for now we'll say by element) and in these classes there existed a general subclass structure with an assigned rank. For simplicity, we could say that each element had peons, lone-wolves, recon ... all the way up to bosses. Each enemy would have an assignment. A general set of instructions for reference during battle. So the bottom peons would always be: 1)Fight to preserve all teammates whos rank is higher than yours 2)Fight to defeat the enemy (me) 3)If health is too low - fight to survive! - This instruction would take precedence over all else - But recon could have a different instruction set: 1)Collect intel on the enemy (me) 2)Escape when life gets too low or memory is full and report intel Then the recon groups would alert their element on the heroes current status and general fighting techniques. All intel helping their bosses to be more prepared for battles that may (or may not) occur. This may also segway into smarter enemy subclasses having an almost precognitive sense about the heroes fighting patterns and would remove the generalized attack patterns of bosses.
Wow - after writing this out, I'm not sure if it has much to do with your storyline at all. But hey - I think it's a good idea.
Actually, that relates a lot to the system I'm using.
It's basically the same thing, except it also applies to non-combat actions, organizations, and NPCs. Eventually it will all be broken down into algorithms, and look something like this:
Text: Bob (person) is a spy for the League of Shadows (organization). He has been hired at the Basic Mining Corps, and his goal is to remain there until he gains enough information to go back to the League of Shadows. Also, he must access the Vault and scope out the defenses there before he leaves.
Name: Bob Affiliation Status: 3 (has false affiliation(s)) - Cover Affiliation A: Basic Mining Corps. - True Affiliation: League of Shadows
Affiliation Type: 5 (member) Motivation Type: 2 (orders from affiliation) Level of Motivation: 10/10 (zealous) - Orders Type: 6 (spy) - Orders Subtype: 2 (task-based) - - Specific Task A: 21/100 (time spent in the HQ for Basic Mining Corps.) - - Specific Task B: 0/1 (gained access to the vault [requires trust of vault guard 45/50]) - - - Generated Subtask: 12/50 (current gained trust of vault guard)
Orders of Type 6, Subtype 2 require that all tasks be completed before reporting to true affiliation. Orders of Type 6, Subtype 1 require that the spy periodically report information.
For programmers, it works very much like the Warcraft 3 Event Editor, where you select things like this in a drop-down menu, and the code takes it from there. Each NPC and organization has their own little page.
And that's the general idea. Basically, if you were to stab the spy, or blow up the Basic Mining Corps, or anything related to that event, the NPCs and Organizations involved are affected. If Orders become impossible to achieve, the spy would return to the League of Shadows, and report the cause of failure. The more complex this system gets, the more fun it is to interact with the world, because you do NOT have to know all the formulas that are running behind the scenes. You just look at it normally.
