I''m working on a CRPG and I had stopped working on it for a few days because I ran into a problem. I''m trying to make the game world interactive, but I also wanted a storyline. I''m also looking for replayability, not just non-linearity. What I was looking to do is generate a world and terrain from scratch, place cites randomly and generate a few elements (i.e. town A has been at war with town G for 3 years, town B is the richest in the world). The problem is that it''s hard to place a story around that without creating that non-linear game. Like, I can''t have key NPC''s because then the game becomes a game of chase the NPC''s. So I wanted to know if placed in a random world and given a conflict (i.e war, disease), would survival be enough initiative to play the game? In essence you will make the story through traveling and interaction. You would have to find food, fight off wild dogs, and protect yourself from criminals. Just kinda rambling now, haven''t really sat down and thought about this a lot, but I thought I''d throw it out there. I don''t know if any games have taken this approach. Please let me know what you think. --I don''t judge, I just observe Stuck in the Bush''s, Florida

I ran into the same problem about a month ago, thinking of a game idea almost identical to yours, a world that allows you to do what you want, with no set story, maybe just a few details to tie it together. I like your idea about "random history" between towns, how about the same thing with NPC, which could allow for many different types of quests if implemented correctly. I would be interested in sharing ideas if you''d like

e-mail me if interested at WorkBoxJones@netscape.net...

"There is humor in everything depending on which prespective you look from."

I think any time you have an input/output mechanism combined with some hint of danger, you can make gameplay out of it. You get sort of an RPG meets Oregon Trail, and as long as the decisions are interesting, the pressure intense enough, and the situations fun I think it could work (in fact, I''d like to play something like that, it sounds cool).

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Just waiting for the mothership...

I would immediately say that the more you base your game around a story, the less replayable it is. Stories lose something with the retelling, and more so in games. My recommendation is either dump the story or dump the replayability, and concentrate on the aspect that remains.

I must agree with Kylotan. Once you''ve heard a story you know it, especially with a game, it usually doesnt change the second time thru. I f a game could be made with a series of personal survival quests, with some relevance to each other, it could be fun. I''d say something like this would need a lot of thought and development time though.

"There is humor in everything depending on which prespective you look from."

Disclaimer: I''ve never done anything like that, so this is just an idea.

I think you could set up the NPC ai into different states. If the NPC is not currently vital to your story, he will act normally and interact with his environment. When that character is needed (I.e. someone says "go see harold the cheese maker"), harold''s AI will enter into a "needed" state, and harold would then go to his house and do nothing till he''s not "needed" anymore.


If you really want to get complicated, you could base your object on reality. 9 to 5 harold is in his cheese shop, except when he needs to run errands. He then goes home. When he get''s hungry he goes out to eat at the tavern.

If you give your main character hints like "Hmmm... the cheese shop is closed, the sign says back in 5 minutes", or "noone is home, but then again it is dinner time"

Personally I''m tired of NPCs that have no jobs and do nothing but wait for me to show up and ask questions. No wonder the middle ages had so much poverty, people spent most of there time doing nothing but waiting for knight in shining armor to show up and ask for help.

Now you are talking about a system that has been done in Shenmue. Everyday the people of the town go about their business. Walk around, go get food, go home at night. I think this system has quite a future in the RPG genre. Especially if you keep track of dates. Say on a certain day a monster or army is supposed to attack the town, People will get ready to fight, shop prices in the town go up cause demand is greater, things like that. It would be a complex system i think though.

"There is humor in everything depending on which prespective you look from."

Shaft, I had planned on making the NPC''s just that, people. I want to create an existing world and throw the character into it. I''m gonna throw a bit of economics in as well as geography. Towns in valleys and on mountains will have great defensive values and towns on coasts will prosper from tourism and trade.


--I don''t judge, I just observe
Stuck in the Bush''s, Florida

Well, just today I was thinking about an idea I had a while back; the game called for a hero of sorts, but I decided on a pacifist as the central figure - an individual with a vehement distaste for all forms of violence and weaponry. I also, conveniently, made him (her) an engineer.

I then thought it would be interesting to have story "threads", all of which contain some information that points at the games protagonist, but sometimes in extremely circular fashion. Of course, a few "pointless" scenarios are a possibility, but playing without any form of objective may infuriate some gamers. Anyway, the idea is to have the player go about his (her) routine as usual, prompted by the game through phone calls, paging, news and Post-It notes, among other things. For example, if the player is at his (her) apartment, there may be a note saying "don''t forget tomorrow''s 9:00 am presentation, Baily Room." The player would then have incentive to seek out this Bailey room, but something may happen en route which furthers the story.

Comments?

Survival is good.

Encounters are good. Random encounters are good. What will kill it though are random encounters that feel like the last random encounter but with a changed variable or two. Big deal.

There needs to be some underlying concept which makes each encounter unique. I have explored this concept with the situation introduction concept. The idea is to not think in terms of throwing encounters at the player, but to throw situations at the player.