I'm trying to make a text RPG that somehow won't get stale after 50 (or 5) enemies. Instead of using numbers I was thinking base-strengths combined with abilities and knowledge (so Bob will never reach lvl 600 and one-shot dragons) The idea is, combat should feel like encounters, playing like a real(ish) battle. Beasts charge attempting a defense break to grapple and brawl, gaining the advantage, but may also flank and confuse depending on your weapon.

The problem is core mechanics and damage system, avoiding traditional HP bars and such. Any ideas or examples?

Also, visually I wanted sort of blurred backgrounds depicting landscape, weather, towns, and enemy outlines. Good idea or no?

I've started with a text based RPG too before centrueis (feeled ) in Java (no comment!) and the command line. My system was with traditional health bars and choices to either defend, attack or flee in a turn based combat. The question here is if you want a turn-based combat system too or just a real.time combat system?

In the turn based variant, you could give character feelings to the player like

> The White Dragon attempts to swipe his tail in Wolfgang's direction
> You rolled a 15 and missed to evade the impact
> Wolfgang got hit by the White Dragon's tail and feels a bit dizzy

what means that the player recognized the damage but has to estimate if he/she should drop a potion or not.

A real-time system can be interesting too. Here the player has to keep attention on the console while typing and react for example

> The White Dragon attempts to swipe his tail in Wolfgang's direction
> [Wolfgang] evade
> Wolfgang was too slow and got hit

In general, text adventures are are a good starting point

3 hours ago, moppman said:

The idea is, combat should feel like encounters, playing like a real(ish) battle. Beasts charge attempting a defense break to grapple and brawl, gaining the advantage, but may also flank and confuse depending on your weapon.

Problem is, if you have the same strategy over and over, it will become repetitive. If you're not thinking about a dungeon crawler, perhaps a good idea is to use combat more sparingly and try to give players as much options as possible to make combat feels unique (observe enemy, circle, look at environment, items, this kind of thing).

3 hours ago, moppman said:

The problem is core mechanics and damage system, avoiding traditional HP bars and such. Any ideas or examples?

Why take this information from the player? It is very hard to judge combat strategies without such information, and I'd say it is only worth doing it if it doesn't feel gimmicky. The one example that comes to mind right now is Bushido Blade, which had no HP bar, but the fights were more often than not about the right strike rather than multiple ones.  In a text based game, I can imagine describing the current situation of the player and letting them evaluate how bad things are, but if they need to do this often, it's possible that it becomes an annoyance much more than immersion. 

@Shaarigan Huh I hadn't considered real-time, that might be interesting. Turn-based being more strategic and inventory-heavy? I may go real-time, I think it suits my idea and should be fun with horde enemies, or unforgiving, play testing ahoy!

That just leaves combat, what kind of interaction is going on. Power, base and pinpoint strikes maybe? Lots to consider!

@Thiago Monteiro That's the problem being too unfamiliar. The biggest issue I think is not fully adapting the concept in terms of world, pacing and other factors especially when the genre is so consistent. That's why I want something different though.  Got a prototype in the works, I'll post it here soon then we can see if it works

For a real-time version you could take reference to Typing of the Dead, a game where you must 10 fingers type words randomly occuring on the screen to defeat enemies

Not text based, but mildly related: http://www.epistorygame.com

@Shaarigan Hah That game

@Thiago Monteiro Gonna have to check this out, thanks

So after some thought I realized the game would probably require more visual interplay. One control scheme I found is simply wasd and spacebar. S blocks, W attacks, AD could dodge (or item/attack related?) then spacebar for power blocks, attacks, etc. Double-tapping S, W, Spacebar for specials, while passive abilities handle other factors. This could be a way outdated concept I'm not sure

Back to the text adventure for now, since I can't art in the slightest.

Also, working on this dynamic NPC chat, so you could type "I like your hat" and improve affinity. Or alternatively something insulting, causing a possible action or event-chain to occur. Anyone think it's worth the hassle? Or just use a Compliment/Insult button?

8 hours ago, moppman said:

Also, working on this dynamic NPC chat, so you could type "I like your hat" and improve affinity. Or alternatively something insulting, causing a possible action or event-chain to occur. Anyone think it's worth the hassle? Or just use a Compliment/Insult button?

You have two ways to go here. The first one is a more "mechanistic" approach. That is, you'd look for key words in what the player types to adjust some stats/mechanics (like reputation). Similarly, the NPCs could understand a fixed set of key words and they would say that they don't understand what was typed, otherwise.

A second possibility is that you try to go fancy. You will not be able to have true natural conversation, but you might try to combine text speech emotion recognition (see link below from number 14 on) with some keyword identification to create some interesting interactions.  Whether it's worth to go through so much trouble for that, entirely depends on your game. If the game is mostly combat with the occasional talk, it's likely not worth it. If there are a lot of interactions, you might be able to build some interesting mechanics on top of them.

https://nordicapis.com/20-emotion-recognition-apis-that-will-leave-you-impressed-and-concerned/

16 hours ago, moppman said:

Also, working on this dynamic NPC chat, so you could type "I like your hat" and improve affinity. Or alternatively something insulting, causing a possible action or event-chain to occur. Anyone think it's worth the hassle? Or just use a Compliment/Insult button?

I would recommend just using the buttons, at least initially.

Understanding/parsing text to the level you describe is much more difficult and complex.

If you decide to swap out the buttons later on, you can always do that. But to get things up and running as quickly as possible, go with the simplest solution first. Expand later, if you need to.