Half the reason Sims bores me is that the characters don't have clear, consistent personalities.

sad, but true, except maybe for Bella. <g>

The Jim Henson movie Labyrinth is low fantasy

thats not the one with david bowie is it? and who was it? the brunette? not demi moore... she was in requiem for a dream too, i think. can't think of her name.

But, if you don't want to have magic in your world that kind of rules out both low and high fantasy as options.

true. god influences are still in there from the first version, so gods do have some effect, but that should probably be the limit as far as supernatural stuff goes, unless i get into modeling ESP or something like that.

but it doesn't rule out epic stories similar to high fantasy etc translated to a different universe (a paleo-universe). assuming they translate well, that is.

You could theoretically find some 'players' to tell you what stories they would like to be told in your game. I expect they would ask for less realistic stories than you want to tell though; either fantasy or stories where the player gets to invent everything from fire and farming to pottery and architecture. That's kind of what we've been trained to expect from prehistoric stories.

and those would be great if it was your typical "caveman game".

i think i need to find something else to call it. not the title, or for marketing, but to simply describe it and talk about it. while its most similar to a rpg, any first person view simulation of any depth will be. in game terms its a fpsrpg/peron sim hybrid i guess. but its really more like a VR world simulation. almost like a holodeck, running a paleo-planet simulation program, and you're in it!

As far as how I personally come up with story ideas, did you see my brainstorming map thingy in the writing forum?

Didn't get a chance to check it out yet, i think it popped onto my radar when i was still hot and heavy on the questgen design. I'll take a looksee, thanks!

BTW I enjoyed that comment about me being the yin to most people's yang around here.

I thought you'd appreciate that. <g>

Btw: how do you address the activity if the player has no skills at the begining? I mean clicking to stone can mean anything from picking to attacking the stone.)

Default input mapping is similar to Oblivion, left mouse button is draw/attack/shoot. spacebar is "select" or "interact" if you will. the selection point is about 3-5 feet in front of the player, and does not currently use a ray pick. when you select something, a menu of actions appears. if you select nothing, the "general actions" menu appears, actions you can do anywhere, anytime.

So for example, when you move into a map square (a 5x5 mile area) that has rocks terrain flag set (rock outcroppings present), it draws lots of big rocks everywhere that you can select with the space bar. when you do you get:

The Jim Henson movie Labyrinth is low fantasy

thats not the one with david bowie is it? and who was it? the brunette? not demi moore... she was in requiem for a dream too, i think. can't think of her name.

Yes, that one with David Bowie and Jennifer Connelly.

but it doesn't rule out epic stories similar to high fantasy etc translated to a different universe (a paleo-universe). assuming they translate well, that is.

High fantasy isn't particularly compatible with a sim where there isn't a "special" character or adventuring party who is/are the player's avatar(s). High fantasy is generally about some superhumanly powerful force (a monster, a villain, or a natural/supernatural disaster) which has perverted the natural order of things, and a special person, typically a teenage boy, is called to defeat the powerful force; this hero is tested and taught by guardians, who give him magical abilities or tools which he eventually uses to defeat the great evil. Usually there's a secondary theme about the boy doing this to protect his people against "those bad people over there" who are either allied with the great evil or enslaved by it. And at the end the hero returns to his people with treasures that improve their collective lives, and he is a leader or celebrity among them, often gaining the leader's daughter as a wife as one of his rewards. Generally there's a moral about how the hero's philosophy triumphed over the bad or dysfunctional philosophies of the hero's various enemies. That's the hero's journey in a nutshell. Creating an equivalent of this without magic is questionable, though technological discoveries can be used as a substitute. It's more questionable how an epic story of any kind would be compatible with total non-linearity, as the epic story pretty much has to have a dramatic ending where the big problem with the setting is fixed.

Meaning, you seem to be solving your issue already in that you are supplying more content to continue interacting with.

thats the whole point of this thread.

speaking about rpgs in general, my concern is that once you get to "high level" it gets dull. everything is "been there, done that". just when you seem to be starting to really get somewhere, you run out of game.

I don't want that to happen with Caveman.

You know what they say, "life starts at 50". I'm thinking that in RPGs, life should start at _LEVEL_ 50. <g>.

That's the hero's journey in a nutshell. Creating an equivalent of this without magic is questionable, though technological discoveries can be used as a substitute.

yes, i think the classic "hero's journey" might or might not work. when you're limited to no superheros or super monsters, the "hero's journey" takes on a different flavor, perhaps too mundane.

however it may be possible. the journey of Kestrel in "People of the Sea" from the Prehistoric America Series by W. Michael, and Kathleen O'Neal Gear is a hero's journey if i ever read one, and its set in the late paleolithic. Its about a pregnant teenage trophy wife fleeing her neglecting/abusive rich older trader husband half way across america to return to her own band. I've found the entire series very interesting and a gold mine for caveman related research. although they do tend to have similar themes (?) in each book, usually something about keeping the world in balance, and spirit dreamers. But both of the authors are archaeologists and attempt to portray things as they actually were. Each book usually centers around a particular paleolithic or neolithic native american culture.

It's more questionable how an epic story of any kind would be compatible with total non-linearity, as the epic story pretty much has to have a dramatic ending where the big problem with the setting is fixed.

and for that, you need a big problem in the world first, like some dude named Sauron setting up shop yonder to the east in Mordor.

a problem that may not work so well with an open ended world.

and i guess if the problem wasn't big enough to negatively impact open world gameplay, it wouldn't be big enough to be epic, eh?

yeah, storylines are going to require some thought.

perhaps the thing to do is to think of "epic" in relative terms. while in a fantasy rpg like Oblivion, "epic" might mean no less that battling the devil himself in hell, in the paleolithic era, epic might be climbing to the top of the forbidden mountain on the island where you live, the place where the "big people" are (australiopithicenes). and hunting one as a rite of passage or something. "epic" on a more intimate, personal level. We're talking about a time when you might only meet 100 other humans in your lifetime. so "epic"on the scale of "save the world" probably doesn't apply.

Meaning, you seem to be solving your issue already in that you are supplying more content to continue interacting with.

thats the whole point of this thread.

speaking about rpgs in general, my concern is that once you get to "high level" it gets dull. everything is "been there, done that". just when you seem to be starting to really get somewhere, you run out of game.

I don't want that to happen with Caveman.

You know what they say, "life starts at 50". I'm thinking that in RPGs, life should start at _LEVEL_ 50. <g>.

Try this exercise:

Start several characters at "end level" and play them.

Find out what you don't like about that experience.

Also, while you're at it, think about this as well.

Until "end level", you don't have the "character that you want". You have a character that you are building.

So until you reach "end level", you are - in a way - playing character creation.

So then the "end level" character becomes what you actually wanted, sort of like finally finishing a doctorate.

We don't really look at finishing a doctorate as being out of things to do, say, with physics.

Instead, we see that as just beginning to actually do physics.

Try an exercise of treating your "end level" character as a graduate who is now finally ready to do what they "trained" to do.

Perhaps this is the stage where a character becomes part of the world more fully - perhaps this is when they can openly build and reshape the different societal sectors of social dynamics in society (politics, science, war, engineering, etc...)

Perhaps this is when the character begins to work on "leaving their mark".

Try this exercise:
Start several characters at "end level" and play them.
Find out what you don't like about that experience.

from testing high level bands of 10 cavemen at once, while its still engaging and challenging (i think only 7 are still alive now), there's also a feeling of having gotten the hang of that aspect of the game, and wondering what's next, or a desire to take it to the next level.

So until you reach "end level", you are - in a way - playing character creation.

yes, this is a big part of the game, as is it is in any RPG. RPG are primarily about character development.

but given the limitations of the game universe in technology and magic (no magic) there's only so much "stuff" to get. its not like my D&D world of yore where i could just create a whole new series of magic metals, weapons, armor, and items and expand the magic item rules from +5 to +10 magic items, or later incorporate the rules from D&D and Traveller together to create an even bigger game, where the D&D world was just one planet in a larger (non magic) Traveller universe. or then expand the Traveller rules from tech level 13 to tech level 24 (star trek and beyond).

once you have the bow, flint tipped arrows, flint tipped spear, flint knife, cave, 10 band members, full storage pit, and best armor, that it. Granted, your 10 cavemen can take over many cave and rock shelters, and can build 10 huts, but without the high level things for the high level player, you've more or less "made it" and there's less satisfaction and sense of accomplishment from the "character creation" aspect of the game.

Try an exercise of treating your "end level" character as a graduate who is now finally ready to do what they "trained" to do.

Perhaps this is the stage where a character becomes part of the world more fully - perhaps this is when they can openly build and reshape the different societal sectors of social dynamics in society (politics, science, war, engineering, etc...)
Perhaps this is when the character begins to work on "leaving their mark".

precisely. this is the part of the classic version of D&D that is lacking in most RPGs i've seen. once you hit 20th level or something like that, you could take all that gold and build a castle, clear the countryside of monsters, hire troops and equip them, establish a little fiefdom complete with 2-8 villages that yielded taxes, and then start whacking your neighbors, if you so chose. there was a lot of emphasis on the design and construction of defensive works, with highly detailed rules about the cost, size and strength of everything from barbicans, bastions, and barbettes, to things like embrasure shutters, crenels and merlons, machicolations, and parapets.

but the biggest thing was that financing all this gave you new incentive to go adventuring. Now you weren't going to slay the dragon to save the village, you're taking on monsters and cleaning out dungeons cause you need 60,000 gold to buy banded armor for your troops. it gave you something to do with all that treasure. and a reason to keep playing.

and a reason to keep playing.

maybe thats what it all boils down to. most games (PC rpgs), once you reach high level, theres no reason to keep playing.

Well there you have it.

Why can't you "graduate" from having 10 decked out/maxed out cavepeople to being able to eventually manage 10 GROUPS of cavepeople (or more)? In other words, why can't you go from first person caveman back to RTS caveman? Where you're more focused on the general concepts of maintaining tribes instead of the minutia of finding the next berry bush to pick.

I believe you stated/hinted a couple of times that the original incarnation of this game was like that? Think of it! You will have come full circle, grasshopper!

:P

From one caveman to 10 cavemen to god mode caveman nation simulator!

Just a thought....

Norman.

You might want to look into 2nd or 3rd edition pnp RPG Shadowrun for ideas of how to handle a game that pretty much doesn't focus on advancement and instead puts most of it's weight in gameplay.

Equally, think of it like this - grab a basketball or something like that. Make rules that you start out on your stomach and after each 5th time that you get the ball, you get to go "up a level", first level gives you knees, next level gives you elbows, next level gives you one foot, next is two feet, next is one hand, and final level is both hands.

Now, the whole time this is going on, you are actually playing a game of basketball.

Pay attention to what's fun about basketball once you get all of your limbs back that were taken from you by the rules.