Hey guys, I'd like to share with you my idea for a game that I have had rolling around in my head for awhile now. I understand you receive a lot of these threads here, so I greatly appreciate anyone with the patience to share their input. If it counts for anything, I've worked with mod teams and indie titles for close to 6 years now, primarily as an artist, but also dabbling in game design when the need arose. I've decided to finally see my brainchild realized, and the first step I'm taking is to receive as much C&C on the design as possible. (I'm also currently hammering out the game's unique visual style on my own, and I hope to have pretty pictures to lure a programmer in with soon.) I'd love some input on two separate things... So without further delay:

The Classes:
Project Dignity is the game I have had floating in my head for a few years now. It is based around the design philosophy, "Easy to learn, Difficult to master." Basically, I've taken the class based team vs. team gameplay and simplified it down to only three classes, but made each class extremely flexible. (So you can visualize this in your head, picture TF2 with only three classes, but with 20+ weapons for each class.) The three classes are the Weapon Master, the Pugilist, and the Adept. These three classes each play extremely differently, and have their own strengths and weaknesses. The Weapon Master is most effective against the Pugilist, the Pugilist is most effective against the Adept, and the Adept is most effective against the Weapon Master. [font=Arial]This full circle gives each player a prey class and a predator class. The prey class is the intended target, while the predator class is considered a threat. The ideal strategy involves pursuing your prey class, while avoiding your own predator class. Skilled players who are capable of defeating their own predator class can accomplish both simultaneously.

IE: If you are playing as a Weapon Master, your job is to eliminate the enemy Pugilists from the battle field, while avoiding enemy Adepts.

This is intended to be a very simple and intuitive concept that lets almost anyone pick up the game fairly quickly. The depth lies in the flexibility of each class. For example, the Adept is the magic user and it's high damage projectiles allow it to tear apart the slow moving Weapon Masters. That's a constant mechanic behind all of it's abilities, but it doesn't end at that. Ice magic does less damage than Fire magic, but controls the battlefield much more effectively. Earth magic is more defensive, and gives greater survivability against enemy Pugilists. Wind magic grants greater mobility on the battlefield. And on top of this, each magic discipline has it's own set of offensive/defensive/support spells to choose from, and since you can only enter a fight with a limited number, choosing spells that work well together is important. Too much support magic won't give you the offensive capabilities needed to eliminate the enemy Weapon Masters. Too many offensive spells will leave you vulnerable to enemy Pugilists.

And the Adept is not alone in this flexibility. The Weapon Masters have a wide variety of weapons that all play differently, each bringing a broad selection of attacks that can be used to execute even more combo attacks. The Pugilist can invest in speed and mobility to out maneuver every other class, or defensive capabilities that allow them to stop fire balls and broadswords with their bare hands. What starts off as a simple Rock, Paper, Scissors mechanic evolves into something deeper. You get a Scissors that stands a better chance at beating Rock, but at the cost of being less effective against Paper. And so on.

The Bait:
To be perfectly clear: I'm an experienced artist that fully understands the scope of this project art-wise. I know I can handle the art side of things by myself well into our late prototype stages. The problem is that I can not seem to find a programmer willing to partner up with me to get this started. I understand there are a lot of hurdles for someone in my position: The whole "program my game for me!" vibe and the Fantasy RPG genre so many programmers seem to hate. I'm not ignorant to these 'programmer repellent' factors, so I've already begun working on pieces that help establish the visual style of the game, as well as a few prototype environments. Stuff that says, "I'm serious about this." I also understand the importance of setting realistic milestones and deadlines. (Prototype -> Vertical Slice) But I simply don't know enough of the programming aspect of things to hold some new programmer's hand or to properly inform an experienced programmer to any great extent; I still don't know what engine would be best for this project. (To be fair, we'll probably prototype on Unity, but the final game engine is up in the air.)

Other than getting started on the art and typing up my design document, what entices programmers to pick up a project? What other ways show I am willing to carry my weight?

(Dear god, are you still reading? You poor thing!)
I lack brevity, sorry. Any and all C&C is greatly welcomed and appreciated!

As a college student, with lots of free time, I love jumping in projects to help out in programming when possible for the experience. But, the person(s) who started the project have to show me they are serious about the work that needs to be done. Just a few pictures of guns and people aren't enough normally for myself, but I do remember one project last year, that even though it failed to take off after alpha, it was still fun. I was approached by a fellow student who had about 100 concept images, a self-bound notebook with 325 pages of game play and design notes, and even a little bit of pseudo-code. This was a large undertaking for this single Arts Major, so I really felt encouraged that the project would end up somewhere.

tl;dr -> the most work and effort you show, the more people will want to work with you.

And one final note, at least for me, it's not that I hate fantasy/RPG genre games, but they are more difficult to work on due to the leveling, equipment, etc, and most designs are horridly imbalanced.

When you're an artist, life is much easier The easiest way would be to start with a mod where you already have enough "game" code and just need to modify existing code to approximate your goal. Many games start as mods and transform later into a full fledge game. I.e. a UDK based mod and later on a UDK based game would be a nice start.

I myself teamed up with a friend of me to make a RPG. We are into the third year now and made quite good progress, using my own engine(in development since 12 years). So, it is possible, but if you want to progress faster or with higher quality you need time (we both have day jobs) and more man-power.

Start with concept and ingame art to visualize your vision, once you have some eyecandy coders will join your project.

Thanks guys, I'll be sure to stay on top of getting some early art work done!

@dragonhawk360: You've brought up an interesting point. For some reason, it didn't occur to me that programmers would instantly associate all those things when Role Playing Game pops up in their head... But it seems terribly obvious now. I'll be sure to clarify early from now on what aspects of the RPG this project includes, and what it does not include!

@Ashaman73: I've been on teams that have failed before, and it sucks. I don't want to be the guy that assembles a bunch of talented individuals for his team, only to see all that work wasted. So until we hit late-late-late prototype phases, I think we'll be able to get by on one programmer and one artist. We'll inevitably bring in more people. I've also got a pretty aggressive schedule set for development and proper PR plans laid. Projects like these are almost always involve a team biting off more than they can chew, but going to insure we take it once step at a time and do things right. I can't really prove that I am capable of that until we get started, but I just won't be satisfied until I've had a chance at making this game. I'll find a way!

And good luck to you and your project!