A couple mentioned already, but The Sims is pretty much an RPG with no combat. It just isn't in a fantasy or sci-fi setting.

Sure you can have an RPG without swords and killing, but conflict of some sort is required for a story. Although you don't absolutely need a story, I'm just saying you should be aware. That said, if your problem is primarily the violence rather than the mechanics, you could replace weapons with "harsh vocabulary", defense with "thick skin", agility with "wit", etc. :P

Quote:

Sure you can have an RPG without swords and killing, but conflict of some sort is required for a story.

Get rid of the story too, then. Just start hacking chunks off the typical genre constraints till you end up with something interesting.

Lemme get tangential here and just list off a few points.

1. I think games should be implemented in terms of what the player can do. Ignore mechanics and features and gameplay systems for a second. Come up with some use case scenarios. What do you want the player to be able to do? And be specific about it.

2. I think a storyline is superfluous, in terms of a linear narrative constructed of texts and passages as written by the devteam. Reading text is rarely considered gameplay. Even in IF and text adventures -- which are ALL text -- what you're reading is just description. The gameplay is the puzzle solving. Again, the stuff the player can *do*. While a good story can help a good games, and a bad story will generally hurt, it's not essential, a great story won't bring up a crappy product, and ultimately, a less-is-more approach seems to work best.

3. Instead, let the game itself be the story. Let the story be what HAPPENS in the game. Let the story be the result of all those things you decided to let the player do.

I think the best example of what I'm talking about here is Dwarf Fortress, as exemplified by the Boatmurdered Let's Play, although you also see this kind of thing come up in the Sims, or even more open-ended FPSes like Operation Flashpoint.

What you want is for the player to be able to tell cool stories about their exploits and how they figured out how to do certain things or beat a certain boss or whatever. DON'T build you game so that every player has the same experience.

So, let's take this back to RPGs.

Start with the most basic plot ever. You're the good guy and his party, and you have to overthrow the evil empire. The exception is that you can't use fighting to do this.

So what can the player do to achieve this goal?

Quote:

Original post by KorJax Quote: Original post by GavinRPG I'm a table-top game master, programmer, and computer gamer who has become disillusioned by console and computer RPGs as well as table-top games like AD&D 4th edition. Developers need to get the memo: some of us are through with hack and slash. A great number of RPG series' left my friends and I behind when graphics/combat took the driver's seat to a good story. I'm assuming you have never heard of Sim City, Flight Simulator, Tropico, Myst (one of the TOP SELLING and most succesful adventure games of all time), pretty much the entire adventure genre, many platforming games, the entire puzzle game genre, farmville, harvest moon, etc...

I'm assuming you didn't read his post very carefully - look at the part I have highlighted in bold. In fact, look at the thread title. Nobody's really suggesting there are no non-combat games, just that there are very few non-combat RPGs.

Quote:

And Sims is increadibly good, and it's sales reflect this. It's one of those games that are fun to play by anyone. Hell I have had plenty of fun playing sims and I generally play more combat-oriented games than anything else. To say that it's a bad example of how non-combat oriented games can be just shows that you might be pretty ignorant of the genre or topic.

Why are you calling someone ignorant because they don't enjoy a type of gameplay that you do? No need.

I get the comparison between The Sims and a combat-less RPG. But I didn't think the Sims was very good, personally. You were sort of limited in options, inter-personal interactions were typically shallow and easily exploitable, and the biggest issue is that it was essentially an artificial life game and needed *far* better AI than it actually had. Also time seemed to move unrealistically fast which didn't help things.

Most people that play the Sims don't actually play it, they've found. Most of the people using it just build houses or skins or make weird machinima and Twilight fanfics with it.

Thank you, Kylotan.

I was only stating that there are few non-combat oriented games on the market that could be considered role-playing games if you don't take the loosest possible view in which "I, the player of X, am playing a role in this game."

I'm not saying that nobody should like The Sims, but to call it a "good RPG" without combat elements is a stretch. Your characters have no real effect on the game world aside from what you build on your "lot", and there is no storyline or progression aside from any single character's nearly linear progression through skills or a career choice (which have no appreciable game effects other than making more money).

Getting back to the OP's question, is there more to ask a player to do than "obtain item X" or "talk to everyone".

There are two ways of looking at this:

1: If you are thinking about games that made you do that one too many times, you'll have a very negative view of it. However, there are many fantastic games in which this is their bread and butter. They pulled it off in such a way that you hardly noticed, or were so enthralled by the story (or your own internal motivations) that it was unimportant.

As an example, "Maniac Mansion" was a sandbox full of "obtain item X" quests, but the player generally doesn't care because they are so busy exploring and avoiding the family that lives inside.

2: It sounds to me like the OP is interested (or at least thinking in terms of) a classic RPG or possibly a MMORPG. I suggest taking a look at the current crop of MMOs and learning from their mistakes. Additionally, look at the huge steps away from combat that many of them have taken (although not far enough, IMHO) with their crafting systems. If it's a classic RPG feel that you are interested in recreating without a heavy emphasis on combat then consider puzzles, mysteries, and social intrigue in the game, or focus on exploration (social or otherwise).

Movies and books already have this dilemma mostly solved. There is a place for the dire wolf attack in some stories. Lord of the Rings had one. The key word there is "one". Once it's been done there isn't usually a good reason to revisit it (unless you change it up by putting some Orcs on their backs ;).

The reason we have fetch quests in games is to break up the monotony of fighting (or to give us a reason to fight a specific enemy 1,000 times). If you take out combat then you might as well take out the boring fetch quests, too.

Quote:

Original post by: MeshGearFox 1. I think games should be implemented in terms of what the player can do. Ignore mechanics and features and gameplay systems for a second. Come up with some use case scenarios. What do you want the player to be able to do? And be specific about it. 2. I think a storyline is superfluous, in terms of a linear narrative constructed of texts and passages as written by the devteam. Reading text is rarely considered gameplay. Even in IF and text adventures -- which are ALL text -- what you're reading is just description. The gameplay is the puzzle solving. Again, the stuff the player can *do*. While a good story can help a good games, and a bad story will generally hurt, it's not essential, a great story won't bring up a crappy product, and ultimately, a less-is-more approach seems to work best. 3. Instead, let the game itself be the story. Let the story be what HAPPENS in the game. Let the story be the result of all those things you decided to let the player do.

I think all this cna be summed up with: Let the game be a set of tools by which the player cna build their own story.

Of course, this does not imply a sand box game, or that there is no plot or setting designed by the developers. What it means is as a developer, don't force a player to deal with or react to a situation the way you want them to. What you ahve to do is give the players the tools needed to react and deal with the situations you create the way they want to.

Because as the develoeprs you create the situations, you still retain control over the plot and setting. It is just that the player has control over how they (or more specifically their character) reacts to the situation.

In so many cRPGs (Neverwinter Nights I'm lookinng at you :p) the player can react in a preset number of ways, often it amount to 2 ways - The Good way or the Evil way.

This is not giveing player tools to react to the situation as they want. It is forcing the playert ot choose between ways you want them to react.

Now, this is all easier said than done, but it is getting the NPCs to react to the way the player reacts that gives the players actions meaning.

The reason it is easier said than done is that not as much development has been spent on refining and modeling (in terms of gameplay rather than real world models) combat mechanics than social mechanics. Usually social mechancis have been pretty simplified (eg: the preset story states that NPC 1 will like that action and NPC 2 will not like it).

One of the things that has never been modled in gameplay is internal conflict of NPC. What if you have an NPC that really hated someone, but they were a good person. If they saw someone kill the person they didn't like, should they turn in the perpetrator, or should they let them go free (there is also the decision to kill or not kill their enemy too)? It would depend on how that NPC dealt with their internal conflict (liked seeing their enemy killed, but also dislikes murder).

The only game that came close to this is the Sims. Yes, it wasn't an RPG, but it seems like it was because it tried to model character's internal states (in terms of Needs and Personality Traits).

Also, what the Sims tried to do (although simplisticly) is to model the relationships between the characters, however it didn't go so far as to build a Social Network between them. In its defense though, it is only been in the last 10 oir so years that a lot of research has been done into social networking, mainly because of the social networking sites have given scientists a lot of data to use.

Becasue of this research science is now developing quite accurate and extensive models of how people interactw ith each other and how social networks form and change voer time.

IF you want to improve RPGs, I would recomend looking at social networks and doing a bit of research on the curent state of science on them.